Navi RDNA Owners Thread, Tests, Mods, BIOS & Tweaks !

Building a ryzen system first then i can plan a gpu upgrade so im kinda jelous of you guys getting an 5700's.

Waiting for aib cards and drivers to improve isnt bad idea though so i can wait i guess, this 580 is still holding up nicely.

 

Next upgrade for me is 3700X -> set to 4.2GHz 1.3v w/boost up to 4.5GHz
RAM up to 3733MHz CL14 or 15, then i will wait for Biger Navi, mabe some M.2 1TB in the mean time....
I like the HBM

This one (HDR600) is still not avaible in EU
-> https://www.samsung.com/levant/monitors/c27hg70/LC27HG70QQMXZN/

 

I still have mine rx480 and the only games that dosent run that great is the unreal carp engine full of gimpworks, found out that if I turn off TESS it will help with the fps and have no impact on grafics.

 

I was thinking of Vega56/64 found one at 220/280$ but i think i'll skip it and save up for a 5700.

When its come to Polaris its capable and if you have good overclocker to reach 1500mhz its even better. More like gtx1660 performance level.

 

Well I will probably go for vega 56 just because of hbcc, I play at 1440p and some games go over 8g of vram.

Ebay used deals some go for less then 200

 

Well, Navi has some advantages which are generally not shown in benchmarks. Like Unreal Engine 4 that does not exactly like GCN's scheduling. Navi does much better there. But if you can get vega 56 for $200 since it is $200 less than 5700 XT MSRP, it is good buy.
= = = =
I just ordered some parts:
- Patriot SATA SSD 960GB (To replace old 2.5'' HDD => bit of noise reduction.)
- Accelero Xtreme IV
- 2x NOCTUA NF-A9x14 PWM (92mm)
- Cheap Set of additional heatsinks for VRMs/RAM for some ancient graphics card + 2x 80x80mm thermal conductive dual sided tape
- Additional 1.5mm thick 50x50mm thermal pad
= = = =
Side note: I took my card apart. Instead of doing washer mod to increase pressure of GPU to heatsink, I did grind all short legs around GPU by around 0.15mm and long legs by around 0.25mm which was perceived thickness of used thermal pad on GPU. (This way PCB is under much smaller stress. And increased pressure on those 1mm thick thermal pads on VRMs and VRAM.)
I did not have to do it since Stock thermals were not anywhere near as high as shown in GN's video with washers mod. This maneuver took around 2 hours with testing assembly to see how TIM spreads before doing final application.
Thermals did not really improve much. But it is hard to judge since GPU is now like 2C cooler while clocks 50MHz higher.

But I still did not like 86C on Memories under heavy stress. Those 1.5mm pads would help with this even with stock backplate, but it would be only marginal improvement. So I went for quiet and optimal maneuver with Accelero.
I expect dual sided cooling to ensure good memory temperatures.

For now, I am not sure How I'll mount those 2 fans on back radiator of Accelero. I hope some long screws will do. Zip-ties would do too, but it would be bit ugly.
= = = =
Will post photos of leg shortening in evening for those who removed stock heatsink and realized that they they do not have replacement thermal pad.

 

@Fox2232 nice stuff. I see you got all you need. Some photos would be nice. btw, 86c on vram should not be an issue.

 

"But I still did not like 86C on Memories under heavy stress." -> Me ->
I like up to 75Deg.Cels.... (Yes i know it's considered as Fine)

 

You done need 2 fans, use old fans from the old AMD coolers they are great, thats what I have. with the cooler you can go 20c lower on the vrm temps with the fans on the back.

 

I do not have any old fans like that I did not break any cards in last 10+ years. (I only have spare blower.)

 

Its from the cpu coolers they are great. you can even use the ryzen ones

 

Spoiler: I had to take photo of this because this dirt was all over PCB:

Close to impossible to clean with Technical Ethanol.

Spoiler: I reduced height of all screw domes around GPU, VRAM, VRMs:

Those 4 thin closest to GPU by 0.25mm.
Those 4 thick closest to GPU by 0.15mm.
And all others in area by 0.1mm.

Spoiler: Amount of tim before 1st mounting test:

Spoiler: And resulting coverage:

Why I did this? I looked at PCB where those closest 4 domes around GPU land, and there were very thin plastic foil "washers". And on them I saw dents from edges of those thick domes.
This meant that GN's washer mod which enables much higher pressure on GPU area and PCB bending to touch vapor chamber's heatsink puts extreme stress on area between thick and slim domes. I simply did not like it.

I could have lapped contact place on heatsink to be flatter as center is sticking a bit out, but I think my particular surface is much flatter than those tested by GN and others with pressure paper.

 

I've had 2 ATI/AMD cards fail in the last 20 years and both were Sapphire branded cards. I'll stick with MSI...

 

Interesting. With all previous GPUs I had reduced bandwidth for last few data chunks in poclmembench/OCLmembench.
With Navi all results are almost same.

 

-> https://adoredtv.com/amd-radeon-rx-...aphics-card-review-bringing-competition-back/

 

Fitted my EK block thursday

temps are 40/40c idle and 60/75c load (core/junction) and boosts to about 2k (no tweaks just stock)

these drivers really do need fixing/refining before i can put it through its paces as im having a few issues with the drivers with firestrike

The EK block is nice ,probably the best ive had from them

 

He misunderstood 1st thing about power draw and performance per watt.
RX 5700(XT) are around 2070 level and quite above in average over resolutions 1080p/1440p/4K according to Hilbert's review.
But what about normalized performance per watt?

There are few premises:
- Bigger GPUs happen to be more power efficient because they can clock lower to achieve same performance
- Very big chips will be very power efficient because they already hit TDP limits hard and have to downclock even more

So what we have here:
- 2070 has 5% more transistors than 5700 XT
- RX 5700 XT delivers higher performance due to being clocked way away from power efficient zone I shown table before:
- > 1546MHz resulted in 115W vs. 2040MHz resulted in 220W (32% higher clock resulted in 91% higher power draw).
- > Going from 1938MHz down to 1735MHz results in ~185W to ~142W => For 10.5% lower clock (performance), 23% lower power draw. This results in about 16% higher power efficiency at around 2070's performance which still had transistor advantage.

This power efficiency is important thing here. Because I was able to make card to draw almost 300W total for nowhere near adequate performance gain since 2 things are true:
- 7nm enables AMD to clock quite above 2GHz
- Power efficient zone ends at 1750MHz:
- > Going from around 1160MHz to 1354MHz results in increased power draw equal to 0.082W per MHz increment (going from 76W to 92W - high end gaming notebooks)
- > Going from around 1354MHz to 1546MHz results in increased power draw equal to 0.120W per MHz increment
- > Going from around 1546MHz to 1735MHz results in increased power draw equal to 0.143W per MHz increment
- > Going from around 1735MHz to 1938MHz results in increased power draw equal to 0.212W per MHz increment
- > Going from around 1938MHz to 2040MHz results in increased power draw equal to 0.343W per MHz increment
- > Going from around 2040MHz to 2098MHz results in increased power draw equal to 0.603W per MHz increment
- And that's due to possibility to run 1750MHz under 1V. And 1350MHz is almost running at idle voltage of 0.8V. (I did not fine tune this to see what is minimum. I just wanted power draw value while on high clock I wanted to know minimal required voltage at stock thermal solution conditions.)

 

@Fox2232

Yup and the same goes for Vega (w/Chill)
Up to 1500Mhz -> 75-105tW (less than 943mV)
1550MHz -> 90-125tW (~950mV)
1600MHz up to 165tW
1650MHz up to 184tW
Above 1700MHz ~200tW and up to 244tW (no FRT)*
Above 1732MHz up to limit 264tW (no FRT)*

* With Chill it will be a lot lower (~1700MHz and higher)

==
But im happy that AMD/ATI reach out to Jim to explain some things.
Why it not cost 199€ despite that is small chip, now we know.
IMhO after price Fix is now good priced GPU 329€-375€ (now it's a little cheaper)
More ppl can have it, thus we have progress and that's a good Job by ATI.

 

Got the RX5700 installed. Not impressed with it. I miss my RX470.... Seriously considering throwing the RX470 back in until AMD gets the bugs worked out of the drivers for the RX5700.

 

What's not working for you? I mean, I got everything sorted out upon little serial investigation.