After playing around with my 5700 XT I noticed that I was having trouble getting the card to use the correct clocks in certain games. Battlefield 5 seems to give others issues as well from what I've read. Someone on reddit posted a video that I too was able to confirm. It seems that if you carefully move the frequency slider you will see clock rates regress the higher you go. It's hard to explain so watching the video is helpful. The poster seems to think that wattman itself is just reporting it. And it's not clear if this is software or hardware issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/dcz9k6/5700_xt_not_game_boosting_as_it_should_in_games/ @Hilbert Hagedoorn Is this worth looking into?
I wish I ordered the 2070 Super now. I'm pulling my hair out. In over 20 years of PC gaming, I have never had such instability. Is Navi really black screening because of drivers or is there a fundamental fault in the card?
It fluctuates a bit, more so in lower settings and DX9 seems more adversely affected than others although D3D11 hits a few snags as well. Reverse can be true too where it boosts at least in short bursts for higher than it should though the parameters in Wattman is just a reference and expected curve and if there's headroom for the GPU and it's various sensors it can pull higher which makes undervolting and temperature limits more difficult to dial in if it exceeds stable settings. D3D12 and Vulkan can leverage more of the GPU likely via a mix of extensions, AMD's little service library and additions for games using newer builds of this and whatever the newer code in Navi can pull and how much it pushes from what looks like the legacy functionality to the newer Next Gen path though this I know next to nothing about beyond a few examples from AMD's blogs and Github pages so far. Limitations to CPU, RAM and HDD (SSD ideally.) likely also constrains the GPU somewhat but it's doing pretty good when it's operating under peak conditions though since boost here and the way it's not actually specific power states but a entirely dynamic graph and expected performance versus real performance particularly if the GPU can scale higher affects things a bit though the software needs work I'm assuming seeing users report how performance can fall almost down to nothing or even below idle speeds causing even if it's just a second or so serious stuttering and framerate drops. (At a guess it either detects little to no activity and goes down way too quickly in clock speeds or it hits a idle or wait stage and the GPU does the same clocking down even if it's just for a few frames before going back up again but the users gets a more problematic experience so some tuning might help.) EDIT: Profiling on the Vega though I don't know how it would show on Navi also shows many games hitting moments where the GPU is idle or waiting so if Navi has similar issues either from game, drivers or general (OS itself.) or hardware (CPU or RAM limits, HDD or SSD holding back.) these same dips and the difference in not having defined power states might be part of it but that's just a theory and nothing confirmed. Bit of a delay before it clocks down would do maybe a few frames or so but it might be a different method entirely. Ryzen on the CPU side does much the same too when fluctuating depending on workload and other factors so I'm pretty sure software can adjust the behavior and fine tune it plus programmable GPU's and driver code and solving it in newer drivers rather than requiring bios updates or such should be possible whatever method AMD has to improve this. First GPU using this system too (Well technically VII was partway there.) so that's going to be a bit of a rougher time as well with it until these early issues are sorted, still maintaining that the GPU hardware is excellent at least for gaming and such and RDNA 2 will probably take it further but while I adopted a bit early it's tough to recommend the card unless the user is aware there are and will be problems for at least a while longer. Goes for NVIDIA as well as AMD though going with RDNA here and other changes and code adjustments and differences makes this GPU slightly more prone to early weirdness until the software situation is improved which I hope will be done in time for the November or December launch of the lower-end Navi cards and the big feature driver probably having some work needed to be resolved of it's own as usual hah. (Yeah not a huge fan of bundling a ton of features in a single driver and changing behavior on newer and older GPU's but eh it works, mostly. Might need a few fixes later on.) EDIT: No idea what reviewers see when benchmarking these GPU's, first paragraph is my own observation of around two weeks now and regular gaming and OS usage and reading up on expected issues and then experiencing a few of these. Nobody really benches D3D9 games either and benchmarks can also differ in behavior from the game itself and then OS over the course of a few days over a couple of intensive hours of testing so I'm not expecting reviews and tests to pick up on these sorts of things unless specifically tested against these reports or issues plus each GPU is a bit different and silicon lottery and scaling and all kinds of stuff and changes from 19.7.x to 19.9.x also making some differences for better or worse and then it varies from user to user also complicating testing and problem solving. EDIT: That said though many early reviews and then reviews of custom models so 19.7.x to 19.8.x at least for the driver side did mention issues with said drivers at least when it came to overclocking. EDIT: Although with mixed results here too, lots of reviews mentioning 950 Mhz on memory being limiting but actual results are very prone to stability and performance issues and regressions even if it seems stable, also in my own case when pushing above 900 Mhz it takes 2 - 3 days and then display corruption appears which on reboot and then lowering it down a bit doesn't happen again and it doesn't happen in games immediately either so actual stable results and how the driver tries to correct or throttle for stability after 19.8.1 I think it was correcting that or well trying to improve the reported crashes with overclocks to memory so that's a thing too. But this is more about the GPU core voltage and clock speed going up and down around but not entirely as the graph dictates and it can exceed it though that's by design. Especially if lowered a bit as hitting stocks of 1.260 something voltage and 2.1 Ghz is unlikely and down to 1.9 Ghz and maybe 1.1 or 1.150 for voltage and now it can hover around 1900 but also up to 2000 if there's room for it. (Depending on how the card takes these values and scales, differs for each GPU I would imagine.) EDIT: And yeah both GPU and VRAM values and stable settings vary heavily from card to card both reference and non reference so just because these voltage values or clock states might be a common referred good setup for overclocking or undervolting doesn't mean it's guaranteed though I suppose that's nothing new but it can take a bit of testing and careful comparison of framerate and stability and such to dial in optimal settings and for now these fluctuations just happen which also needs to be accounted for. (Particularly stuttering and framerate drops when it just tanks for whatever reason either low down by a few hundred Mhz or really low down to almost or lower than idle speeds.)
That's also a thing isn't it, Vega, Polaris and probably Fury and earlier all behaving a bit differently in newer drivers particularly after 18.12.2 or where Adrenaline 2019 came out but then adjusted further a few times though I only know from my own experiences with the prior Vega card and reading up on how the overclock features and functionality changed several times since release and especially in Adrenaline 2019 and the later 19.6.1 driver I think it also was. Plenty of reports on Polaris irregularities though from locked settings or speeds to other general Wattman issues, software there is a bit of a mess really covering for all sorts of cards across both newer and older Overdrive API's and hardware functionality leading to some very mixed results and it's only with Navi here and probably the VII that the actual setup screen and settings really show any noticeable differences whereas the earlier cards also had some differences in what the respective values actually corresponded with and changed. Not sure if trying to use TriXX or Afterburner might be able to lock in a set lower value or if the driver API and restrictions or limitations hinder things a bit, guess it varies depending on how you're going about this plus the various soft-mod registry tables or outright bios editing but that's also going to be a bit different in how that behaves and it can be unstable if the settings aren't tested fully. (Well it's overclocking but generally Wattman and AMD's OverDrive limits have been fairly conservative to limit problems.)
"VT-x" is the Intel's virtualization technique, AMD calls it "SVM" at the moment usually. Also go & ensure that "AMD I/O Virtualization Technology (IOMMU)" is also disabled.!
