RDNA2 RX6000 Series Owners Thread, Tests, Mods, BIOS & Tweaks !

So, I had absolutely zero stability issues with my GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2080 on this exact system so I know that my hardware is good. I have put it through the paces of memtest86+, HCI memtest, Prime95 blend for 24 hours, realbench for 12 hours etc... and have had zero errors with my hardware other than with this GPU until I retweaked my system and am confident that the only issue I am having that is out of the ordinary is Forza Horizon 4 can't go 4k over HDMI but every other game can. Other than that I am rock solid. I have a 2018 Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 1200W 80 Plus Platinum TPG-1200F1FAP (note: this is not the iRGB plus model nore is it the newer ARGB model) and it has given me zero problems so far. My unit was reviewed favorably across the board so I really don't think it would be my PSU. I do prefer Corsair for PSUs but I got this current PSU for free and decided to use it as all the reviews were really good. I had a 110% stable core system that had no issues running two nVidia cards fine but it seems that these 6800 XT cards are a bit more finnicky, stress the system more overall, and have smaller voltage fluctuation tollerances but like I said before after tweaking things I can game all day every day without incident as long as my VRAM is not overclocked though with raising the SoC (A) to 60 maybe I can get away with it now.

When I first got this card I read so many threads of people (specifially with the MSI Gaming X Trio going through mutliple power supplies trying to fix their black screen issues and not a single person benefitted from switching out PSUs. Most people said don't waste your time switching out your PSU as these cards just have problems and AMD is going to have address them with driver and VBIOS updates which they have already said they are working on. I am just happy I was able to understand my system well enough to be able to tweak a few voltages here and there and I went from having black screens every time I tried to play a game to zero black screens other than forza @ 4k on the tv, haha. I just play it at 1440p on my tv and it looks amazing so I don't care.

I am now trying to figure out a better cooling solution to get that hot air away from the GPU as fast as possible to deal with the high junction temps. I think I might frankenstein it and take the top shroud and fans completely off and add my own case fans to it that can cover a lot more area and push way more CFM at significantly lower noise levels. It is just so crazy how the junction temp is +30C over the edge temp.

Anyways, thanks for the discussion.

 

I have Corsair 850w Gold and zero stability issues with my system with 9900K and RX 6900 XT, before I had RTX 2080 Ti and had to change my 750w PSU to 850W cuz I had stability issues in some games (like 3 or 4 of them, the rest was fine), yet after changing PSU I have zero issues, so it was a PSU issue for me after all.
GPU's like 2080 Ti and up needs strong and stable PSU, especially if you have power hungry CPU and/or you're OC'ing your rig.

Now I'm waiting on my new rig with Corsair 1000w platinum, cuz 6900 XT with 10850K both OC'ed can have pretty big voltage spikes, better safe than sorry.

 

So the bios mod I've maxed the card out. Essentially allowing the full 525 watts for total board power draw on 3x8 pins. The 6800 has I believe only 2x8 pins so remeber I'm leveraging another 150 watts of power on the extra x8 pin power connector.

 

Edit: thought you meant the 6900 xt : P

 

I decided to opt out of last MHz race.
In my testing, temperature is most important part. Ramping fans to 100% enabled me to run 2.4~2.6GHz at 1090mV while it mostly stayed around 2.45GHz due to 300~305W wall for GPU.
But when limiting actual clock to 2.2GHz (2.266GHz settings), GPU eats ~220W. Yet 2.2GHz needs 1115mV due to higher temperature as I try to keep card reasonably quiet.
I personally do not think that gaining 11% higher clock at 38% higher power draw is worth it for me.

And I do run VRAM @2100MHz (Fast settings 2112MHz).

 

I did some tests with the new setting of 2745MHz@1020mV on my 6800XT. VRAM at 2110MHz. This setting is really stable with 99.3% Firestrike Stress test score.

I increased the power targets. MPT settings of 295W, 360A TDC and SoC TDC 63A, power limit in Radeon at 15%.

Here are my scores.
It is really unbelievable. I was never able to get my 6800XT stable for such high results before. It used to be unstable above 2715MHz setting before.
The new driver 21.3.1 is amazing and enabled me to OC higher with 6800XT.

I also did two sessions of Cyberpunk with these settings. One session 3 hours and other 2 hours and the average in game frequency was 2699MHz with GPU core power consumption in game of average ~282W (total ~335W). I will create another post with results from that.

 

I played on Saturday night Cyberpunk for 3 hours with the settings mention in the previous post of 2745MHz@1020mV.
The average values for different items I recorded over the 3 hours run are as follows. HWINFO was used to log these data:
- Average frequency 2699.6MHz
- Average GPU core power consumption 281.4W (total GPU power of ~335W)
- Average VRAM frequency 2098.5MHz
- Average Framerate 91.7

Here is the frequency distribution:
Frequency sometimes hit 2716MHz, but mostly was in range of 2699MHz with only 9 values recorded below 2690MHz.




Frame rate distribution:
Frame rate dip below 70 was recorded only 32 times during this run from a total of 4711 data points.
Frame rate in range of 100-125 was recorded 840 times.
There were some idle time where I paused the play a few minutes. A short break.
There the frame rate hit 140 but I removed those from evaluation not to influence the average and increase it unfairly.




GPU Core power consumption distribution:
The power consumption on average of 281W on core for this demanding game is really good with the high OCing that I have here.
The peaks for GPU core power are most of time lower than 295W with only a very few time during 3 hours a data point hitting 325W as can be seen from the distribution curve.

I don't have the equipment to record short time power spikes. HWINFO would not be able to record spikes in ms time stamps and I don't have oscilloscope or other load analysis equipment to do that like Igor is doing in his reviews.

 

By the way the only game that I found that consumes power like crazy is Control at maximum game settings without Raytracing.
I tested it for first time yesterday and that is the only game where my 2745MHz@1020mV OC was not good and led to game crashes. I believe my power target of 332W for GPU core was not enough to run this game that high on clock.
In this game I had to back it up to 2675MHz@985mV. Still at the lower frequency the game was pushing 332W on the GPU core.
332W is the maximum that I set for core GPU power and it was hitting that value whenever the character started walking.

I have MPT at 289W (add to that 15% power limit in Radeon SW) and had it set to 295W only for some benchmarks but not for daily use as I have reference card which only has 10-phase VRM. The custom cards has 289W by default but they have 14-phase VRM.
10-phases should be also good enough for such power target as I anyway have a decent coolig with a waterblock contacting VRM.
Except for Control other games I tested anyways don't need much higher than 332W power target. They consume in range of 250- 295W for 2745MHz@1020mV setting and they were able to achieve around 2.7GHz clock.

 

I've gone the way of making my 6800 xt to run at 2600mhz at 1000mV. Stable and works fine. Tho weirdly enough my ram is stuck at 2150... Dunno why.

 

@Turbogear
Control is an NV sponsored title (and to add insult to the injury -- NV has been sticking its fingers in Controls development A LOT) thus I would assume this is the worst case scenario of a game that is badly optimized for AMD cards. To my surprise it still runs fairly well with DXR on (even on a stock 6800xt, not to mention a mildly OCed 6900xt)...

 

I agree that this is many times the case when NVIDIA sponsers a tittle.
With OC to 2675MHz@985mV it worked quite well.
The frame rate was in range of 90-100.
I only played first 20minutes of th game though.
I have not tried DXR yesterday on it.
I will give it a try tonight.

 

The 6900xt is the first aircooled gpu i have had in years and do not like the hot spot getting into 90c with out going bananas with the fan curve. I want to watercool this gpu like i did all the others i had and was wanting to try either a normal EK block or try something new like a Bykski waterblock. Anyone have either ?

 

I own the EK-Quantum Vector for my 6800XT.
EK Water block for RX 6800 and RX 6900 RDNA2 GPUs – EK Webshop (ekwb.com)

It is compatible for both 6800XT and 6900XT.
I am really satisfied with this but this is very expensive for 219.9€.
I bought it at the time when they did not announce classic line which cost now 149.9€.
I did not know at that time that they will also release the classic series.

The maximum Junction temperature never go higher than 72°C under torture test and I am Ocing my card quite a bit.
In games junction temperature is below 67°C.
In three hours of continuous Cyberpunk playing it was moving in range from 38°C-67°C and that was with card OCed to setting 2745MHz@1020mv (in game frequency average of 2699MHz).

Note that in Germany we have still cold weather with heater running with room temperature around 22°C.

I have though quite a capable loop with three rads and very good air circulation in a Cosmos C700p full tower as shown in the picture below.

Here are some photo of my card from the water build build.

 

@Turbogear At least waterblocks don't raise in prices like cards

 

Finally Broke 11k PR and 21K in Time Spy. Just had to Overclock my 3800XT to feed it more
https://www.3dmark.com/pr/959660
https://www.3dmark.com/spy/19272297

 

I have the ekwb aio for the 6900 reference.
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-reaction-aio-rx-6800-6900-d-rgb-p240-amd-radeon-edition

It's the same EK Quantum Vector water block. I was having the same high junction temps would reach 100C if I tried overclocking. Once I put the water block on it has never gone over 71C at junction.

 

Wow 21K in Time Spy for 6900XT is among the highest scores I have seen for this card.

On the other hand looking at your 6900XT results, I am amazed how good my 6800XT performs.

In Time Spy only 2% slower but 5% in Port Royal.
It seems you can run memory at higher clock than mine. My memory becomes unstable after 2120MHz.
The memory speed helps with Port Royal test.

As Ocing 3800XT helps, I wonder if 5900X will increase performance of a 6800XT over 5800X?

What are the setting that you are using?
What is power target in MPT?

 

My 3800XT is overclocked to 4.6 for benchmarking but its not stable for some tests (Crappy MB and RAM). But 4.5 for everyday use.


MPT setting are nothing crazy. Only adjusted Power limit to 280 (322 with 15% powerlimit). Nothing else touched.


This is my Radeon settings (Taken while playing Dirt 5)

 

I would like to congratulate you for having such a good 6900XT sample.
There are not many out there that can perform that well without needing a Nuclear Power Plant to power them.

If you give yours some more power, I am sure you can almost break best card records.

I tested two 6900XT Red Devil and 6900XT Saphire Toxic and for both I needed to set 384W and 384A TDC to get Time Spy Score in range of 20600. It was not possible to undervolt them as far as you can on your sample.
I returned both of them being disappointed as my 6800XT can reach already 20600 with much lower power requirement.

 

So, maybe I'm a little paranoid but something really weird happened with Cyberpunk. I swapped to Radeon Boost in Wattman and suddenly it was like my entire game broke. Graphical tearing, was really, really bad. I can only sum it up to being once again Cyberpunk being a flawed, broken, unstable, bug ridden monstrosity. So I uninstalled the game, reinstalled fresh drivers, and same graphical error.

I go into the driver, disable Radeon Boost and well it works fine. Also worked fine if I swapped resolutions. Anyways, I redo my MPT settings and I suddenly notice only ONE bios being listed on my Red Devil! What gives? I turn off the PC, swap the bios switch and everything is perfectly normal. What gives? Just a software glitch? Something with MPT? I've had zero issues since but it was literally the only issue I've encountered at all since owning an AMD GPU was that one weird graphical tear.

Aside from that, literally everything has been absolutely flawless (aside from of course Cyberpunk crashing to desktop cause it is still a bug ridden monstrosity that I still love to play).