Graphics Cards

[mackbolan777]

I was having issues with running FarCry 5 and just general grief for a while now. I was on the fence of whether to go "green" or try a 6000 series card after all the prior driver issues, error 18's, etc. So, I bought the Gigabyte RX 6800, for not exactly a deal at about $200 over MSRP but not a rip off either. It is a BEAST! I was in remorse over not having enough to buy the XT until I installed this. 

Overclocking was a snap. The 20.2.1 driver works fine. I have no complaints amazingly, none! Not saying all "partner" cards or reference models will run this well but mine's set to 2400 min/2500 max GPU clock, 2150 VRAM clock, 1.00mv and passes 3D Mark TimeSpy with incredible numbers. If I try lowering the VRAM the card performs worse. Reason i say that is some reviews mention the ceiling for the VRAM as 2100, not in my case. It never pegs those settings anyway in testing or games. It will hit 2501 or so GPU and VRAM will run fairly steady at 2140-48. Temps at 70c or so under full load.

An XT model doesn't have near the "headroom" for overclocking as they come running pretty "hot" out of the box. See attached results.

[Xpaulo360]

I always use RTSS to lock my fps, but never used to 120 fps, when i was playing with my gtx 1070 ti in 4k it was pretty normal to have like 40 fps average on my games, so i used RTSS a lot to lock my fps on 30 fps, much better then a floating fps of 35 to 45 range. 

Yes my GPU is 99% only when gaming, i will try point a fan like you said to see if it helps cool my GPU.

[Vimes]

Firstly thanks very much got what you posted about overclocking the card. I did try overclocking it, also managing to overclock the memory by 100mhz.

However with what you have written I now have a more methodical way of doing that. Again many thanjs, I'll give that a go. Perhaps more so with other games. A manual fan curve seems more appropriate.

The game noted..... Yup it has elements of being CPU demanding over that of GPU. A bit like Cities Skylines. But I have noticed the following...With the 1080Ti it is as tho the GPU is taking on more of the rendering and is able to run at much higher frame rates than the 6800xt can come close to.

It is as tho the drivers themselves aren't able to work fully with the game engine and support that rendering through hardware, and so it is off loaded to the CPU. A bit like when running a part of the Time Spy benchmark that does CPU rendering.

Overclocking with the 6800xt and that game does nothing as the GPU load is already pretty low as it is.

Taking a very opposite experience earlier today is when running the game Medieval Dynasty. With that one, and GpuZ open on my second monitor, you can see the GPU load up to 99%, the clocks at full, the power load draw high and the FPS just hitting 100 or so. That game benefits from overclocking.

So the Workers game is not being utilised correctly / enough by the 6800xt with the latest drivers. Whether that'll get improved I suppose it's up to AMD. I have reported it, but it is an Indie game, of that matters.

Coming back to the overclocking, and what you wrote, I would not have thought about undervolting as doing anything other than make things unstable.! I guess that you always have your fans running, low when not playing games, rather than stopped with having a manual fan curve.

With the Nvidia card I had a 2D and a 3D profile for the clock speeds.

With the 6800xt do you do it by each game..? You wouldn't want those clock settings to be permanently applied.? 

[mackbolan777]

Personal experience is always better than any "influencer" on YT. Gamers Nexus is one of the better ones. The rest are, meh, influencers with the same skills we have. I see what you mean by a BIOS lock, as the slider only goes to 2650, lol. I didn't try MSI's new tool but I imagine it's locked there as well. Being I'm not stable without more juice at 2650, I'm content with the speed I have. Silly fast and much reduced input lag. Did you buy the water cooled model or add it on?

[xlox]

@mackbolan777yeah i'm not a big fan of gn either .. i like little youtubers , more specialized and not sponsored lol :)

in fact slider from 6800xt goes up to 2800 , but the locks are on power limit , frequency and voltage,

previously with vega (rdna 1 too i think)  you could get over the default max value from adrenalin with morepower tools reg files , so for example instead of having max +20% power limit on my radeon VII in adrenalin, i could change values to the registery and get a +77% slider in adrenalin (even + 100% but that was too much for my oc)
and voltage was even unlocked too and max freq was 2200 but as i didn't even reach it with everything onlocked, so ...

if that was possible again with 6800xt it would easy get above 2650 and with positive gain in performance , and then there is the second lock with frequency to max 2800 on 6800xt , with this one removed i can't say where it could go ..!

i don't know if it's a bios lock and can be changed with a flash or if it's hardware ... i've seen some igor's lab video , but i'm not getting everything lol

and yes i mounted the waterblock , as said still got the loop from my previous gpu so just had to buy the ek waterblock

[mackbolan777]

With GPU's sky high right now I'd be happy where were at, vs. smoke, lol. I just paid $929.62 with the tax for my RX 6800, just ~$200 over retail in December where the guy paid $731 with tax. It was new though, bought a month ago to this day in fact on the invoice he sent me and he never installed it.

The XT's are insane at $1250 or higher, most without a receipt so no warranty! Although I think a modded BIOS to go past the limit might be caught by the manufacture or the melted plastic or the smoky smell... Igor has some god stuff on it and some dangerous stuff as well, lol. Not willing to risk $900+ on a few FPS. I'm hitting my max of 185Hz as it is in most title's on their max settings. Sure, I'm running 1080p not 4K, but judging by my 3D Mark score, 1440p would run just fine. 

Maybe with these in shortage AMD is keeping a lock on to avoid RMA's. There's enough already, most for no good reason, other than frustration. I couldn't believe the difference in stability and FPS just by moving the clocks closer. Honestly, for everyday use these settings are awesome. 

As far as little YT's go, some are ok others like Ancient Gamers is some guy copying other's work. Fabio doesn't have a clue as to what he's doing. He started in 2017, begs for money if you look into his BIO, has some clown that claims to have worked for Asus as his moderator for Discord, lets clowns from all over the world into that Discord, some even try to get you to "screen share" or click on links that are "IP grabber" links. I told him about it and we got into a heated email exchange over his moderator being a disrespectful, threatening, jerk. Fabio tried to say I told some 14 year old I had his IP and called the cops on him based off a convo this dude DM'd with a link to steal my IP so he could try to hack me, his words. Well Fabio nor this kid/dude had a clue I'm a member of HSI CERT and we combat hackers, find exploits in the wild and my IP is monitored by authorities for such attacks. So the kid/dude got himself in a jam. Fabio needs to have his Discord server watched now too. Amazingly, he managed to get sponsored by AMD recently. I guess they don't know about this. Since then, I stick to the well known "influencers" and reviewers.

[xlox]

mmm i paid 800€ for my 6800 XT ...! 1200 € is the price i can buy a 6900 xt

[mackbolan777]

@xlox 

Euro's are worth more than the USD, so it's the same price here if you do the conversion.