PC Drivers & Software

[Downstream]

Greetings,

I've been testing my vega 64 strix for a while, the gpu seems to work as intended apart from a few minor graphical glitches when using a dual monitor setup.

That said, the core of the problem would be instead a strange behaviour regarding the power consumption reading (hwinfo with rivatuner has been used for these observations, other software have reported the same reading) of the gpu (hwinfo reports it as ASIC power), it looks to not be consistent with the voltage settings in use and instead drawing immensely more power based on the resolution and refresh rate used at the time.

Mind you i did verify if the load on the gpu was in fact that much more than usual, from what i've seen certain combinations of resolution and refresh rate spike the power draw beyond 300 watts, normally it should be at 230 watts on heavy load (core is undervolted to 1.000 V, frequency is 1580, memory 1100).

A clear example of unusual behavior would be the readings obtained from QHD at 240hz (2560x1440), going down to QHD at 144hz completely eliminates the problem; even though the game is already pushing the gpu at max usage and at 240fps, switching the refresh rate increases dramatically the power draw from about 230 watts to roughly 300 watts (several games were used in this test, Devil may cry 5 was used most frequently). This is also found on lower resolutions like 1680x1050 where power usage results are higher than even 1920x1080, gpu is always maxed out of course. When using a dual monitor setup power consumption results as even higher, QHD 144hz already pushes usage at almost 300 Watts, second screen is idle on desktop (both screens are QHD 240hz).

Obviously this shouldn't be justified, i do understand that refresh rate increases power draw, but the difference is clearly off the charts. Of course the fact i possess a vega 64 strix doesn't help, the cooler is not cabable of handling temps at a 300 watts power draw (hot spot is expecially hard to cool), thus why i undervolted the card at 1.0 V.

In conclusion it looks like the gpu consumes more power when it shouldn't even though it seems it is running at the given voltage. Driver version is 20.11.2, tried already to downgrade or change version but problem persists.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Nemanja]

Same thing is happening to my vega 56 pulse I also changed drivers back and forth but so far nothing helps, have you found the solution?

[Downstream]

Negative.

Are you getting the exact same behaviour as the one i've described?

Anyhow i ended up selling the vega, now i'm testing a RTX 3060, and as aspected this GPU does not behave like the previous card. Changing resolution or refresh rate doesn't alter the power draw, if the GPU is already at 100 % usage there are no drastic changes in the data recorded.

No idea why i couldn't find anything online regarding this issue, it's a real issue expecially since our cards are impossible to cool on normal coolers with a power draw that high; in my case having a STRIX made the situation even worse, very poor cooling solution.

Regards, let me know if you find anything.

[Nemanja]

It is normal for the tdp to increase by a few % when going in resolutions but nothing much, my issue is undervolting my gpu all the way down to 1020mv doesn't decrease my tdp it is still 180w as stock, but overclocking my gpu with 1620mhz and 1070mv still draws 210w as before. So my uv is bugged but not the whole card, I don't know what is going on. Is the 3060 a noticeable jump from vega 64?

[Downstream]

Vega architecture is unusual, already the fact you need to undervolt the card to make it the most efficient out of the box shouldn't be normal.

Be sure to check your power slider in radeon settings, have a look if it's maxed out at 50 or if it's lower, other than that there isn't much you can do, in my case the TDP is strongly related by what monitor i connect, that means which resolution, refresh rate, and how many of em.

My suggestion would be to sell your vega 56 at a profit right now like i did with my vega 64, and then wait to get something else.

The rtx 3060 draws 170 watts at stock, fairly cool as well. Performance is roughly on par with the rx 5700 xt, so superior to both the vega 64 and 56, you also get a bigger VRAM buffer at 12 GB.

Regards.

[Nemanja]

Yeah I know now is the best time to sell my gpu, I didn't know 3060 is fast as 5700xt. Thank for replying, I wish you luck 3060, hopefully you won't face issues like with vega.