Radeon VII Owner's Club!

ccityinstaller

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 23, 2007
Messages
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Hey guys,

I know there will not be a ton of us, but I figured I we should have our own thread vs the RX VEGA owner's club. It will make it easier to share OC/undervolt settings and such. I am getting a late start as I never opened my Sapphire card, and my AMD card just arrived yesterday thanks to the FedEx..I actually have another Sapphire coming, thanks to some crazy NE mess, but that card is going to be sold here on [H] or ebay....

Anyway, here are my twins for now. I am going to due a 24hr burn in before I tear the HSF off and WC the AMD card. I have an Alphacool universal GPU/HBM block for now and some quality copper heatsinks if the koolance VRM block I have does not work properly.

Let's get the party started!

IMG_20190219_064150.jpg
 
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Just got my Radeon VII last night, this card is amazing!

The card is solid metal, it feels hefty and premium. Though plain looking in pictures, it's real nice in person.

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Some quick tests and I'm getting 60 fps at 4K max settings in Battlefield 5, Far Cry 5, Prey, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II.

I might not even need to overclock, but I will take a look today and see how much headroom there is.

I will say that coming from Vega 64 Crossfire, this is a significant improvement in smoothness in some games (for example, Prey and Far Cry 5 that were choppy before).

AMD finally has a card for 4K gamers and the price is not too crazy considering the market. AMD has delivered.
 
Just got my Radeon VII last night, this card is amazing!

The card is solid metal, it feels hefty and premium. Though plain looking in pictures, it's real nice in person.

View attachment 142940

Some quick tests and I'm getting 60 fps at 4K max settings in Battlefield 5, Far Cry 5, Prey, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II.

I might not even need to overclock, but I will take a look today and see how much headroom there is.

I will say that coming from Vega 64 Crossfire, this is a significant improvement in smoothness in some games (for example, Prey and Far Cry 5 that were choppy before).

AMD finally has a card for 4K gamers and the price is not too crazy considering the market. AMD has delivered.

Nice, sounds like a decent card despite all the complaints against it. I know we say this all the time, but, I think it will improve over the next few driver revisions. Once they get those early teething issues sorted it will move from been a decent card to a great card. Once the stock improves prices should improve too. $649 would make this card a really good buy.

Do you have a VR headset? if so, what's it like with VR?
 
It's a pretty good card overall. OC headroom is pretty decent and it's a lot better about staying near the clocks you set. Did encounter the HBM clock speed issue Kyle mentioned where it constantly tanks to 800MHz, but only if I pushed the HBM OC higher than 1150.

Pulls less power than my Vega 64 and is about 30% faster. Pretty happy overall.

Cleaning up my test results in 3dMark, so I can find things more easily.

Firestrike: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/18404947

Timespy: http://www.3dmark.com/spy/6303376

Profile in wattman: 1.1V, 2000MHz core, 1100MHz HBM, stock power limit, custom fan curve (fine if you wear a headset, loud if you don't)
 

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Nice, sounds like a decent card despite all the complaints against it. I know we say this all the time, but, I think it will improve over the next few driver revisions. Once they get those early teething issues sorted it will move from been a decent card to a great card. Once the stock improves prices should improve too. $649 would make this card a really good buy.

Do you have a VR headset? if so, what's it like with VR?

It's pretty decent in VR, though I've had audio just cut out in a few titles. Windows shows that the headset audio is being deselected as an output device and I have to reenable it.
 
Did some overclocking. 2025 on core, 1050 on memory, adjusted fan curve (100% at 90C), and power limit to 20%. Seems stable.

Got a peak of 2024 core and 1280 mem, but the frequencies were changing all over the place. Temp peaked at only 75C, even with the OC. This card is way cooler than expected.

Afterburner doesn't seem to be able to read or adjust any values so I'm doing this in Wattman. Also means the in-game OSD isn't showing me GPU values.

Practically every game I tried was a noticeable improvement from Vega 64 Crossfire to Radeon VII.

The only game where CF was better was Rise of the Tomb Raider. I had to drop to medium settings on VII to get to 60 fps, but it still looked nice and was smooth.

Aside from Tomb Raider, I was rocking 4K max settings in many games:

Far Cry 5, Prey, Mad Max, DOOM, GTA 5, Resident Evil 7, Get Even, Batman Arkham City, RAGE, and Left4Dead (old, but I like to use it for testing since it loads so fast).

Surprisingly, I was able to play Deus Ex Mankind Divided with Ultra settings and it was playable at 4K. Granted, it was just below 60 fps (usually around 50 - 55) but this was okay with FreeSync.

When DXMD came out, I tried for about a week of tweaking to get it running with a Titan X Pascal and was only able to do it with 3840 x 1620 on High settings. The Radeon VII blows that away at max full 4K.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this Radeon 7 card is actually way better than I was expecting. I think Crossfire must have been broken and maybe I was suffering from microstutter or something along those lines.

Because almost across the board, the gameplay experience was smoother and more consistent with the new card. Even games where performance was higher with CF, the feel of the gameplay was improved.

Finally, OpenGL games work again. There was a strange bug with Vega 64 and CF, which caused GL performance to tank (to around 30 fps) if two cards were in the system (even with CF disabled). So now I can enjoy OpenGL again.
 
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Probably reaching power limit (think 330w for vega64, but should be same since it's probably a total PCIE (motherboard + cables) limit). Should be able to keep OCs low on one side (GPU vs Mem) to help the other side stay stable or OC more (ie. 2050/1000 or 1900/1050). I generally play within my Freesync monitor VRR range so put more OC to GPU clocks to help min FPS as I believe higher mem clock generally just helps max FPS.
 
I don't normally like such heavy looking cards, but all that clean, shiny metal does make it look pretty damn appealing. I should leave this thread before it does bad things to my wallet.
 
No, that block has a pump built into it, and I saw no need to pay for that feature considering I have a high end pump/res setup as it is. I grabbed https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0067LY066/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04__o00_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ...I hope it works..I did not have a card in hand yet to check the spacing.

I was looking at the pump / block combo I linked & hoping Alphacool will come out with one of their 2-slot heat sink / backplate combos for the Radeon VII...

Paired with their Solo LT pump / block combo for the CPU & a 30mm thick 240 rad, would make a nice water cooling loop for a Ncase M1...?
 
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I don't normally like such heavy looking cards, but all that clean, shiny metal does make it look pretty damn appealing. I should leave this thread before it does bad things to my wallet.
The card is as heavy as it looks.
 
I'm running it bone stock at the moment - replaced a Titan Xp SLI setup. SLI really wasn't doing much for me anymore and from seat of the pants, the VII is maybe just a little bit slower vs single Titan Xp (also bone stock). So far I'm pretty happy with it - I mean who else can say they have 16GB of VRAM - that's 50% the size of my system ram :-D
 
Chiming in with my profiles that I've posted in the other thread:

  • Highest Stable OC (without thermal throttling, with a non-ear-bleeding fan curve): 1950mhz core/1160 memory @ 1071mv
  • Lowest mv at stock: 1800mhz core/1000 memory @ 973mv
  • Lowest mv with lowered clocks (AKA "the wife pleaser"): 1700mhz core/1000 memory @ 949mv with lowered fan curve
I've yet to crash the card by increasing mv and clocks lock step, have gone all the way to 2100 @ 1093mv which seems entirely stable for a few minutes before throttling/115c junciton comes. I have crashed and gotten artefacts by lowering mv too much for the clock settings, but the core on VII seems to have much longer legs than the cooling is allowing. Sheeee's a runner!
 
For fun, I downclocked the RVII to V64 levels to see how low you can drop voltage and see the power draw. Setting it to 1630 MHz core and 950MHz hbm @910mV sees a power draw well under 150W under load most of the time (and it stays above 1600 pretty much all the time). Made me sad when I looked over at my V64 box. Better avg performance at less than half the power draw.
 
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For fun, I downclocked the RVII to V64 levels to see how low you can drop voltage and see the power draw. Setting it to 1630 MHz core and 950MHz hbm @910mV sees a power draw well under 150W under load (and it stays above 1600 pretty much all the time). Made me sad when I looked over at my V64 box. Better avg performance at less than half the power draw.

That's what a die shrink will do. I'm guessing your VII is probably still performing 15-20% better at 1600mhz than V64 while using half the power.
 
Something went up with Wattman. Or maybe I mis-clicked somewhere and didn't see. Just checking now the voltage was set to like 1.3 or something above the max line.

Not sure how it got that way, but the reason I noticed was that the fan was spinning up really fast and then shutting off repeatedly, which wasn't the case before.

I took the time to re-tweak the OC and I think things are good now. Core at 2000 (1000 min), mem at 1100. Performance is still great, maybe a little better even.
 
Just installed mine tonight. Currently at stock, probably play around with it on the weekend.

Gamed a bit on it and couldn't hear the fans over Nazi killing in Wolfenstein.
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Waterblocks couldn't come soon enough. I'm excited to see how ya'll OC after setting up a loop!
 
Are you guys happy with your purchase overall?

Just curious, with a factory non water cooled Radeon 7 with a closed mid tower, what kind of temps are you seeing while gaming ?

For example, in my Corsair c70 mid tower with my Strix 1080ti, highest temp I’ve seen is 72c while playing PUBG @1440p with ultra settings. Completely factory fan settings/curve
 
I couldn't be more happy with the purchase. This card is awesome for 60Hz 4K gaming (or lower res, higher refresh).

Temps are good. I'm only peaking at 75C on air even with a high overclock (which I'll need to dial down a bit). If you tweak voltage you can probably get lower, I haven't tried.
 
Can't wait for a version of overdriventool or afterburner that supports this card so I can get away from wattman.
 
Played the new Crackdown for a bit. It was almost good at 4K Ultra settings but not quite.

Getting in the 55 fps range, which can be acceptable with FreeSync, but this type of game really needs low latency and smooth framerates.

Managed to tweak things with a mix of settings (mostly High and Ultra with a few Medium) and got to a good place (between 60 - 75 fps).

Game is actually quite good and I forgot how much I liked the first one. At least with this game it's a real open-world, you just jump around the place and find things to do. Pretty fun.

Also had to dial down the OC a bit, I think that is what caused the horror glitch in the above comment. Now I'm at 901 - 1901 core, stock 1000 mem, 10% power limit.

Performance still seems nice, but I will do more testing to see if higher values are necessary.
 
Happy overall with the card(considering I was a able to grab one for $599.99 when Newegg goofed up the pricing on the XFX model)… As for the overclock, I got screwed on the silicon lottery.. Card is a decent UV.. but takes a LOT of voltage to remain stable at 2000MHz if I try to push it. I used superposition and heaven benchmark to test the OC... Been gaming with both settings using different games the past week with both profiles and have yet to have a crash yet..

UV Settings: 1810 core/1200 memory 970mV Power limit 20%

Max OC Settings: 2000 core/1200 memory 1225mV Power limit 20%

I feel like I could maybe go higher with more voltage but the max junction temp instantly goes almost to above 110C.. Would definitely need better cooling but with everyone else getting by with around 1100mV with similar clocks around 2000+ on the GPU, I feel it's just not worth it.. that and the jet engine noise is pretty unbearable.. hahaha...

Then I see a thread on reddit like this link below and it makes me think what can I do to help it out lol...

 
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That guy who water cooled is getting 2122Mhz core, 1265mV, and 1252Mhz stable. Good clocks, but I'd be hesitant running at that high voltage 24/7. It is, as we suspected, looking like watercooling gets you a good amount of headroom.

Also, this is a bit disappointing but not surprising (referring to flashing to an m150)...

Isn't gonna happen. The chips going into the VII are the ones that didn't bin well enough to support the additional off-chip IO load of pcie-4 in conjunction with the higher voltage tolerances required for ECC HBM2 (which also isn't present)

There is a very good reason they have 60 CUs and not 64 CUs.

That aside we still don't have a way to bypass the signed bios check.

So no unlocking of extra CUs :(
 
Are you guys happy with your purchase overall?

Just curious, with a factory non water cooled Radeon 7 with a closed mid tower, what kind of temps are you seeing while gaming ?

For example, in my Corsair c70 mid tower with my Strix 1080ti, highest temp I’ve seen is 72c while playing PUBG @1440p with ultra settings. Completely factory fan settings/curve

Very happy. I'm getting around 76c peak temp when OC'ed (110c peak junction). It overclocks well and is super stable, and is actually fun to tweak (moreso than any card I've owned for years). The more I play with it, the more I'm confused with the complaints on the noise: it's nowhere near as loud as some other cards I've owned. Actually, the more and more I use it the more I agree with [H]'s assessment: it's a very good card, definitely worth the "silver" badge.

Only reason I'm not over the moon is, from a performance perspective, it's only marginally faster than my 1080 ti (not that I was expecting anything different). If I was coming from a lower card e.g. GTX 1080, Vega 64, I'd be more stoked.
 
Probably reaching power limit (think 330w for vega64, but should be same since it's probably a total PCIE (motherboard + cables) limit). Should be able to keep OCs low on one side (GPU vs Mem) to help the other side stay stable or OC more (ie. 2050/1000 or 1900/1050). I generally play within my Freesync monitor VRR range so put more OC to GPU clocks to help min FPS as I believe higher mem clock generally just helps max FPS.

You are incorrect in the thinking that the memory clock just improves max FPS, especially with the VEGA family. The difference in both charts and "smoothness" is insane when taking a VEGA from 800/945mhz HBM to 1100Mhz+...

cybereality , you are correct that this is a much better experience then VEGA Crossfire. I am having an issue with my AMD card...I put it into an old Athlon X4 945 platform I keep around for testing..I wanted to burn the card in OC'd for 24hrs before I took it apart and attempted the Ghetto WC'ing...I installed Windows 10 Pro, and everything was fine (I was using an RX 550 at the time)...Windows asked to reboot, and it would just black screen...

I installed the Radeon vII, system posts fine, but when it goes to boot Windows, just instant black screen again...I never see the loading windows icon etc...I was in bed with a severe migraine for the last 27 hours so I did not have time to mess with it yesterday..I need to make sure these cards are good before I tear my primary loop down.
 
Did you do a DDU safe mode uninstall first? That can certainly help.

Also, does that machine have integrated video? I've seen cases where Windows will default to the motherboard video port, you might want to test with that to get into Windows and adjust settings.
 
You are incorrect in the thinking that the memory clock just improves max FPS, especially with the VEGA family. The difference in both charts and "smoothness" is insane when taking a VEGA from 800/945mhz HBM to 1100Mhz+...

cybereality , you are correct that this is a much better experience then VEGA Crossfire. I am having an issue with my AMD card...I put it into an old Athlon X4 945 platform I keep around for testing..I wanted to burn the card in OC'd for 24hrs before I took it apart and attempted the Ghetto WC'ing...I installed Windows 10 Pro, and everything was fine (I was using an RX 550 at the time)...Windows asked to reboot, and it would just black screen...

I installed the Radeon vII, system posts fine, but when it goes to boot Windows, just instant black screen again...
I never see the loading windows icon etc...I was in bed with a severe migraine for the last 27 hours so I did not have time to mess with it yesterday..I need to make sure these cards are good before I tear my primary loop down.

For clarity... Did the blackscreen problem start BEFORE you installed the Radeon VII (highlighted section above)? Your post sounds like it happened with the RX 550 installed and continued happening with the Radeon VII after the 550 was replaced...
 
Are you guys happy with your purchase overall?

Just curious, with a factory non water cooled Radeon 7 with a closed mid tower, what kind of temps are you seeing while gaming ?

For example, in my Corsair c70 mid tower with my Strix 1080ti, highest temp I’ve seen is 72c while playing PUBG @1440p with ultra settings. Completely factory fan settings/curve

Let me ask you a question about PUBG? See the system in my rig, right now I'm playing on a EVGA GTX 750TI. LOL Right now saving up for a Radeon VII being as my new monitor is a Freesync. How does PUBG look with the Radeon VII?
 
For clarity... Did the blackscreen problem start BEFORE you installed the Radeon VII (highlighted section above)? Your post sounds like it happened with the RX 550 installed and continued happening with the Radeon VII after the 550 was replaced...


I has flashed a non mining bios back to the 550 and when it went to restart it would happen.

I removed the Ssd, tried it in an external USB 3.0 in case the sata controller went wonky with no luck.

I ended up formatting the SSD on my main rig. I reinstalled the 550 and saw the flash had failed (windows was giving a code 43). Reflashed and it works great.

I return the 550 and SSD to the Athlon system, and it posts and starts windows install just fine. I finish, install 19.2.2, and power down. I removed 550 and put RX VII in. Post fine, black screen...Hard power off, same issue.

I try 550 in second slot (set it to primary adapter) with the same results. Normal post and black screen. Remove 550 and try just VII in second slot. Same result.

With my BP soaring at this point due to pain, I remove VII and installed 550 to see a normal boot and return to windows. At this point I have to assume that the old AM3 board is just too old.

I have decided to use this for HTPC duties, break my loop down and remove the vEgas, close the loop, and then do a 24hr stress test on the VII on air to get some data and make sure the card works fine. I will then I stall GPU block and vrm cooling and getto OC'ing.

I am just frustrated since many of you know I suffer from severe chronic pain issues. I spent 30 hours in bed the night before and all day yesterday after PT. Loosing hours today set me back yet again.

What sucks the most is that I have an open PCI-e 16x slot but I cannot get the VII in without scratching that beautiful HSF and hitting my pump....it's just such a tease lol. See below.

IMG_20190221_151049.jpg
 
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