Vega 56 Review: Undervolting, BIOS Mods, HBM vs. Core OC

[@GamersNexus]

Hi all! We only have V56 right now, but buying V64. Andrew was off this weekend, so I had to shoot & edit this one myself. I am not as good at the fancy chart effects as he is, but he'll be back in tomorrow for the other videos! Full article is here: www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3020-amd-rx-vega-56-review-undervoltage-hbm-vs-core

[@Judge_OnYouTube]

Man, thanks to you and your team for putting out this much content! Deeply appreciate the work and level of detail you put in! It helps us as buyers make well informed decisions.

[@jackblack1306]

You guys are amazing and underappreciated. Keep it up.

[@martigrey5872]

Gamers Nexus Why can't you overclock Vega 56? In other tests (computerbase.de for example) got 14% performance with 950mhz for the HBM and 1.720 for core.

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

TPU also couldn't get VEGA to OC: www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_56/35.html At all infact

[@romxxii]

Why didn't you get review samples on time? AMD still sore about your Ryzen reviews?

[@DrathVader]

"- Steve, why don't you manipulate the space-time continuum?" "- We're working on it"

[@GamersNexus]

DrathVader That reminds me, I need to set a new Patreon goal. Acquire time machine...

[@jawr1215]

Gamers Nexus "What do we want?!" "Time travel!" "When do we want it?!" "That's irrelevant!"

[@georgemorley1029]

GetTheCheeseToSickbay Three logicians walk into a pub. Barman says "do you all want drinks then?" First logician says "I don't know". Second logician says "I don't know". Third logician says "Yes".

[@yosyp5905]

*10 mins reviews* "Here you had the complete review!" *GN's 25 mins reviews* "there's plenty more to be done" Glad I've found this channel

[@GamersNexus]

Yosyp There's always more with hardware!

[@JarrodsTech]

Insane amount of technical details for the little time you had, well done!

[@GamersNexus]

Jarrod'sTech Thanks!

[@RoroTheDeer]

This is why I love GN. Everyone else's videos are 10 mins max and then GN's is 25 and covers the topics we actually want to hear about, not just gaming benchmarks. Keep it up, you guys!

[@GamersNexus]

Glad someone enjoys all those power and thermal charts! But, uh, is it OK if sleep happens before the "keep it up" part?

[@JarrodsTech]

Compromise and keep up the sleep.

[@RodrigoSantos-qh7se]

Both Steves delivered! @GamersNexus and @HardwareUnboxed

[@coopermathews9288]

Rodrigo Santos yes love hardware unboxed

[@Sireristof1332]

The technical fokus on this channel is what keeps me here, don't ever become the generic reviewer pls

[@catalin-viorelbriceag1097]

I wonder why the hell did AMD shove so much voltage into these GPUs. The power consumption is insane! Any Vega GPU can be safely undervolted AND overclocked AND still be stable in any application.

[@TroidHunter]

Polaris is the same, so i'm not sure.

[@TroidHunter]

You might think that, but some partner variants of the 480 benefitted from undervolting much the same way that the reference design did. The power limits were too low to support the clock and voltage much of the time. I know that was definitely an issue with my XFX RS 480 8GB, but when i changed to the strix model I didn't encounter the same issue.

[@bongdelonge8668]

It seems excessive for sure, but I think that's because not all silicon chips are equal. They run higher voltages to make sure all cards are stable across the board, same with Intel and Nvidia, although their overvolts aren't as extreme.

[@Neil3D]

When there are outlets like this, and probably others just as capable of this quality of content, it infuriates me to my core that OEMs continue to send samples to (not naming any names) polished turd 'tech' channels, who have absolutely nothing to offer to the conversation other than flashing a product in front of the eyes of dreamers. This is quality usable and valuable information, just reading off a spec sheet and then blindly playing some random games is criminal when you see how much work goes into this channel.

[@GamersNexus]

TFI Thanks, TFI!

[@Neil3D]

Can't emboss logos/images I'm afraid, they're not vector based so the detail in the picture can't be used as profiles. Could possibly do it with third party software image manipulation but it would be a right chore! I'll have a think about it though, cheers!

[@Neil3D]

Yea that was also me! That was my sheet metal laser etching video, the Corsair logo is basically just some simple shapes, so I think I ran it through one of those raster to vector online converters and used the converted lines. That's easy enough but a more complex image with art and colours, not so easy!

[@jonasgrenne2569]

The more my interest and knowledge for computer hardware grows, the more focus I get on this particular channel. You do twice the work and go way more into details than the other channels. Frankly, I don't know how you manage to get so much more info while still keeping up with the other channels that only skim the surface. If you want pure facts with thorough investigation, you follow gamers nexus. I hope this channel grows exponentially. The glory of Steve's hair is just the cherry on top

[@Gamer-df9xt]

I want to say thank you to Gamers Nexus. Your videos are the best when it comes to the details of products. You don't click bait, no stupid jokes, you keep it professional. Out of all the tech channels I watch you are the best!

[@RyanThompsonrthomp]

Holy shit thank you for staying up for us. Your initial finding are so damn vital.

[@honse246]

What kind of gpu has dual bios, but doesn't allow bios modification ?????

[@Skiiney]

So V56 undervolted with the hbm2 oc+50% power offset is around 210W ? Not that bad tbh

[@1toncheese]

its 210W + about 30W for board power draw through the PCIE slot.

[@bothellkenmore]

Pretty much my take as well. I'll reserve judgement until there's a decent sample of AIB's.

[@Skiiney]

still 240W isnt THAT BAD ... consider you could probably undervolt even further, silicon lottery... my 280x toxic draws about the same...

[@christiann6350]

Hell of a lot better than my R9 390. It is a power hog.

[@ShqdowAngel]

Considering the limited time and the amounts of tests you did. 10/10

[@methanoid]

Great vid. Watched many of your vids but how different your review was (such as including undervolting) was what made me subscribe. Good job!!

[@gothikia]

Fantastic review and thanks for the information on the bios lock. Hopefully this is something that we don't have to worry about on partner cards. Looking forward to more!

[@mofomartianp]

Most informative tech channel on youtube. You guys have been on point from day one.

[@RepsUp100]

This is the only review I was waiting for

[@A7XKoRnRocks1]

This and Digital Foundry.

[@SuperSkillzSlick]

Solid review as per usual. Can't wait for the rest of your videos of VEGA.

[@DanielMendozaDev]

Those undervolting results are quite impressive considering the gains you got for playing with the card for such a short time. Power consumption is still quite bad out of the box but it seems like performance can go way higher with some moderate OC (anyone hoping for 1700MHz on core?). This was a great review man, but take a little rest if you have the change: we'll be here to watch your videos and comment on your findings.

[@Beehj84]

Best Vega 56 review so far, period. Fantastic work guys. Shared with my tech/gaming groups.

[@bugraozkan8137]

To be honest, this is the best review I have ever watched on this card. Thanks Steve!

[@tsalapbeew]

No worries Steve, your review, even without the oced or undervolted versions on games, are still more informative and in-depth compared to the other reviews out there so far! I highly appreciate your and your crew's work. I am amazed of the quality of this vid and it does not matter if the other tests are to follow. Keep up the good work!!!

[@coolperson4283]

Thanks for the detailed review covering so much details including gaming benches. Really appreciate all the hard work that you put in this review.

[@BRUXXUS]

Thank you for doing this! I know what it's like having to put off sleep to meet crazy deadlines so I figured I'd show my appreciation for the hard work and fantastic content you provide. :)

[@sheikhtashdeedahmed]

Thank you so much Steve and Team! Lots of Love!

[@sergiojacas8268]

Great work on the review. Extremely in depth, coming from a very different angle than other review sites. Some of the other quality sites are a bit stuck in a rut of reviewing. You like to push the boundaries on every review, I am always surprised by what you come up with, keep on challenging the status quo.

[@dannygc1205]

the fact you included undervolted results, makes me love you so much, thanks

[@Nekrosmas]

Good job Steve! Always nice to see your fair (and unique) reviews :)

[@DaBombDiggidy88]

Thanks for keeping the tech review scene about the tech and not the hype.

[@dazouri3249]

Steve Great stuff! Thanks for the effort you put into this. You're looking at all of this stuff differently than anyone else does. No enthusiast should be unsubscribed from this channel. This is the data that matters. All the rest tell me things I can see for myself by playing the games. You're explaining WHY we see the results we do, and WHAT we can do to improve it. BRAVO!!! Daz

[@RadoVod]

Steve, sometimes you blow every other reviewer out of the water when it comes to the thoroughness of hardware. Undervolting and numbers for these along with power draw, temperatures and noise. Only thing I miss is more games, but that's about it. I think you really improved a hell of a lot over the last time both when it comes to the analysis of numbers and informative content on this channel. Here, have my sub back.

[@GamersNexus]

EwoksOwnDeathstar It's a long road and there's an impossible amount to know, but we are working every day to try and improve in every way. We hear you on the games. Will try to add one more, at least. We were already down to the wire on this one, but maybe with more time!

[@zeronine-eightyfour]

THanks for the in depth review at such short notice! It has to be said!

[@petersnizek4700]

best review so far. Really enjoyed watching it. Thanks! Looking forward to Part II. :-)

[@swiftlaker6]

Awesome work, I love how in-depth and informed your reviews are

[@ichiban844]

really cool review!

[@phatpanda3805]

i love this Chan, honestly i wait for Steve's reviews the most out of everyone's. By far the most comprehensive & detailed.

[@Noztra22]

Wow! you made this in 27 hours? i can't even OC my card in a weekend! mate you and your team are awesome!

[@NightRogue77]

Your channel is so boss man you blow my mind lol. I've learned more watching your vids alone than I could reading for 5 hours. Ku-dos

[@NightRogue77]

Also I don't understand why you don't get samples man that crap is a travesty

[@HimTortons]

Steve, awesome review and you don't need justify anything about it. You only had 27 hours and you still made a 25 minute review. Im really looking forward to to the rest of the conclusions with the undervolted benchmarks!

[@GamersNexus]

HimTortons You know, that's an interesting way to look at things - one minute of content for every hour of work, and probably pretty close to accurate!

[@HimTortons]

Gamers Nexus Yeah, thats true and its insane. And once again I want you to know, that its much appreciated!

[@gscheben123]

GN: Thanks again for a great review. Your effort is always appreciated. Look forward to more when you get the time. Cheers.

[@Hankextreme]

the only professional pc tech channel. Hope you guys succeed but not change a bit! Looking at you, Linus.

[@DavidTheReaper]

Amazing job man!. My favorite channel, by far.

[@CaptianFlan]

Steve, at 3:20 you mention a power table hack for Vega FE. Where can I learn more about that? Tried googling with no luck.

[@jimsinnovations2737]

maybe look for it in mining articles im sure you could use it for gaming too if u know what your doing i have it just havent tried it yet

[@dmytrotkachoyv]

That OG oscilloscope though.

[@GamersNexus]

Gretsky Nut You're the only person to notice!

[@bothellkenmore]

I kept staring at that because my Dad was an electrical engineer and brought one home from work to fix an OG TV set. This was a loooong time ago.

[@Rocky-bz8wr]

Gamers Nexus I noticed the oscilloscope as well because in one of my past jobs I had to use one of them on a daily basis. I truely do not miss having to pack it around...lol

[@chukku2175]

Thanks a lot for the hard work, you put into this. Even if you didn´t have much time, this video actually provides more interesting information than a lot reviews from other sources. The Undervoltage hints at some serious OC Potential for this card.. sad to see, that the 300W Hardlimit prevents it. Let´s hope that the custom design will have better BIOS(ses?).

[@slikrx]

Great job! Too bad about the whole locked BIOS, but thanks for pointing this out and keeping is posted.

[@Tearjargon]

Good stuff from GN as always.

[@irishgiant5150]

Great work, looking forward to the rest of your content and getting past the janky drivers.

[@Bajamafam]

thank god a real review, thank you nexus

[@ProblematicHuman]

Awesome job Can't wait for more

[@VetteTTV12]

Seriously amazing video, you're the best tech channel out there.

[@achkr597]

You should change the channel name from Gamer's Nexus to Science Nexus. This is R&D level stuff! DAMN!! Are you human?!!

[@MrSnowmobiling]

Thanks for your review Steve! I look forward to more videos about this and Vega 64 similar to what you did with Vega FE. It looks like undervolting the card gets it under control power wise and isn't a 300W heater.

[@donjames5761]

thank you steve i can always count on you for honesty

[@Rocky-bz8wr]

Great Video as always. For the amount of time you had you got a lot of information packed into the video Thank you. The overclocking part of RX Vega will be interesting to see what can be done and how far it will go. It is also very interesting that under volting got a bit higher core clocks. It is also apparent that the RX Vega 56 is memory bandwidth starved since over clocking the memory got a good gain in performance it also will be the same with the RX Vega 64 I feel HBM memory tech may be holding back AMD's performance a bit but that is just my own thoughts on it all. I could be off base here.

[@Slyizable]

Still an awesome review. I'm really looking forward to build in my Vega 56.

[@alexanderarias8519]

Man power and thermals are overlooked in many ways with reviews glad to see extensive charts on these figures its an eyeopener for sure. I am definitely going to buy an AIB Vega 56 as soon as they drop one!

[@PCPAyLOAD]

Burning the midnight oil for us Steve. Thanks to you and your team for all of your hard work!!

[@dawhitewolf]

Will you be doing hybrid mod for this one? Lack of bios modifications is real dealbreaker. Hopefully somehow board partners will *FIX* it. Considering the time you got for reviewing the card, 10/10 for content. All the information that gamers are intrested in is present. Thank you for such indepth review. Heading towards article now.

[@mrcrunch8000]

It's a shame AMD keeps going with HBM. Vega doesn't seem to be providing performance that needs memory faster than gddr5x. If this released almost a year ago using gddr5x at a cheaper price due to the savings on vram they would have hit it out the park and probably beat nvidia in sales in that segment. You would also get a decent power savings going to gddr5x which seems to be welcome. I'm sure it will get better with time but volta also comes in time.

[@darrenraphael]

Michael Hatch They can't use gddr5x because it has higher power consumption than hbm. The last time they tried using ggdr5 with gcn was the r9 390x which had a really high power range.

[@smokeydops]

thanks for all the detail GN

[@Najvalsa]

Putting out this much information in the time you had.. Champions.

[@mjlyco9752]

The community appreciates your hard work.

[@conandude76]

Both reviewers I take seriously did vega 56. One shows it beating the galax factory oc'd 1070 on almost all games, and the other shows the ref 1070 crapping on the vega 56 in the same games. Hmm. Wonder if it's a res thing. Seems like Paul's HW was showing vega as beating a third party 1070 at 440p, but not so much at 1080 or 4k. Maybe that has something to do with it. great vid as always steve!!

[@inkrot]

I appreciate this channel so much.

[@Marc-pu1wm]

Hey, your channel is awesome!! I watch it all the time. You guys do very great in-depth work on this stuff but I'm curious...When's the last time you tested the 1080??? Those numbers look a little old, I could be wrong because I don't have the reference card on your list, but a couple months back when you guys were heavy into the 1080ti, Nvidia released a shitload of 1080 updates and I personally was seeing about 15-25fps increases in several games...I recall an overnight huge increase in 4k Doom Vulkan performance a little while back. Anyway, just saying it may be worth it to go back and look at those numbers, my guess is they haven't been updated since the launch of the card. Again, of course, I could always be wrong. Keep up the cool shit guys.

[@noenken]

"But STEEe3E3eEEVE, why can't you manipulate time and space?!?!?" Dude, you guys are crazy! Thank you so much for all the work.

[@Moshe_Dayan44]

Thanks for the comprehensive overview of Vega! I'm pretty pumped to find out how well Vega's 'rapid packed math' boosts gaming performance over Pascal. If it really does double FP output (2xFP16 vs. 1xFP32), that should really boost AMD's performance/watt figures. As soon as any benchmarks/games (maybe a preview of Wolfenstein II: New Colossus) software becomes available, it would be great to see a video covering this.

[@tuhin619]

Great initial review covering all the aspects. I request you to change graph presentation, numbers overlap each other and are not clearly visible.

[@papa_xan]

10:53 "Accurate misreporting", is that like fake news?

[@Vaasref]

No it's just electronic sarcasm. Thermocouples are really sarcastics.

[@AcidVFR400R]

Why are fury x benchmarks not listed with all this ? Isnt this the card that it replaces .....

[@andrewskaterrr]

Always watch GN first, it's good for ya

[@justinsaned8865]

Gamers Nexus the only channel that tested the shit we want to know and gives us the best idea of what this card might have to offer when all the kinks are ironed out and 3rd party cards come out. Good stuff!

[@LordSaliss]

Thank you for the best video about Vega of all the reviewers.

[@riffsnreviews]

Steve, why don't you manipulate the space time continuum and make so that there's enough time to do everything in the 27 hours that you've had the card ?

[@F2FTech]

Finally! A real review 🤘

[@RyanJones-lv9dj]

+Gamers Nexus Will you guys be doing any more MC note block adaptations of Star Craft music? Definitely my favorite video of yours.

[@halistinejenkins5289]

love you, love your hair, love buildzoid, kinda love his hair, and love your channel.....that being said, i wish you could cut back on some of the technical stuff and include more game benchmarks in the video. i know you have more at the site.

[@JohnDCrafton]

Steve, if AMD doesn't give you enough time to review properly, that's on them, not on you. Please don't work yourself to death trying to get these reviews out "on time."

[@romxxii]

He's competing against other outlets which got all the samples they needed to produce reviews for both the 56 and 64. Linus even got a copy of the hybrid version.

[@JohnDCrafton]

If you look at the reviews most of those other guys are doing (like Linus, since you mentioned him) you'll see Steve's reviews are on a whole other level, so they're really not competing. Like I said, it's AMD's fault, and Steve shouldn't be trying to kill himself just to make up for AMD's mistakes and meet the embargo date.

[@mindtrappergr2]

Yeah, I don't think companies are that happy to have such detailed reviews coming out so soon. Especially for the 56 card, which still has two weeks to hit the stores. Unless they have a clear and undisputed winner of a card, which AMD currently does not.

[@patrickm.4754]

But it's on him when he'd pissed them off so much so, that they didn't bother sending him v64.

[@GamersNexus]

Patrick Tritip Actually, we made our point and they heard it. They sent V56 after we did. They asked if we'd like V64, but told them to only send V56 as we were against an impossible time window already.

[@Phambleton]

I wish people would give AMD a try, but instead all I can see in the comment section is a dismissive tone towards the Vega release such as "It didn't even beat the 1070, FAIL" even though this was only in a few games. I don't think Vega is a disaster as the Vega 64 gained around 52% in performance over the R9 Fury X, which is incredible considering - and Nvidia also shared a similar value from their 980 Ti to 1080 Ti upgrade, being 56%. Rather than jumping to conclusions, why can't we just see what it does and work out whether it has value for money? Keep in mind that the GTX 1070 has had a year to mature, so it's not exactly ideal to compare this to a brand new product as of now. In a few months I'd like to see a revisit on Vega benchmarks and see if my argument is correct.

[@TheOnlyUmagon]

I love this guy. I'm surprised he doesn't have at least a million subs

[@tommymetz5563]

Holy Shit! It's the long haired version of Misha Charoudin! Great video. Very informative.

[@ShaneHerald]

awesome work!

[@SuperSSSSooonniicccc]

Also, referring to your Undervolting Chart, that Undervolting result looks like a lot of overdampening... I know that in my EE classes we tried to fix this by lowering the PWM + Error Offset, and trying to keep the offset over an underdamping result to keep the ramp up cycle consistent. So then our motors wouldn't jerk back in forth. With this long intro out of the way, my question is this. If you further lowered the voltage on this Vega 56 card, would you be able to remove this overdampening? Would the sudden change matter at all to any program out there? Like program performance at initial system boot? Let me know if you can and thanks for the review!

[@GamersNexus]

マルス Changing it while stuff is crunching is possible, but the GPU doesn't much like it if you go too low. Great question on overdamping. I am not sure, but we have some more headroom to undervolt and try.

[@telepresencebot2]

Did you try disabling secure boot in mother board bios? I understand this isn't a good long term idea, but for science!

[@diogonunes7844]

Steve why dont you manipulate the space-time continuum and make it so theres enough time to do everything in 27 hours that you´ve had the card?

[@brunnen153]

That actually looks pretty decent. I'm somewhat interested in getting one right now.

[@imrickjames7012]

august 28 m8

[@Obi_4xe]

@Gamersnexus will you be Crossfire testing the RX and FE versions of Vega?

[@camtech1190]

5:38 that statement helped me push my Vega 56 to 1730mhz

[@BitsBeTrippin]

Were doing a livestream today on Vega 64 covering mining performance. Bottom line, looking like this one will be no good on the mining scene.

[@Berecutecu]

What is a good guide to oc and undervolt this card? Where to start?

[@ZadesLegacy]

RX Vega 64 is already out of stock pretty much everywhere. This is as of 2:20pm August 14th. I just want the 56 but if this is any indication as to how that going to go well I might as well wait for Navi lol. Meanwhile I will stay here with my amazing XFX R7 260x Double Dissipation model XD.

[@BrianMcKee]

So this card has potential undervolted and with a higher power target. Sounds good! Given the price of gsync I think you can forgive the higher powerdraw.

[@ccmaster86]

I wonder how the HBCC will be utilized in future games. The only use case I could imagine would be that you could load an entire games textures into memory instead of swapping. Which would be pretty cool. Just don't think there are games that can use the other tech that's in Vega besides just the Stream Processors.

[@gbnq2513]

Any chance you can do a Vega 56 and the different AA settings review? Most reviewers only do max settings (which include MSAA x 8). But saw one reviewer do Dirt 4 with Vega 56 using CMAA, beating 1080 easy and actually beating a 1080 ti with minimums. So what is going on? Does the Vega 56 cope better when different AA is used? Plus with higher resolutions, who does MSAA x 8 anyways? Is that not overkill? So where does performance stand when you play with the AA settings. And can you subjectively see any difference anyways between methods on the higher resolutions?

[@AronOtterbo]

Steve, you really should grow a beard. Then this would be the best channel on all of youtube.

[@jaimealoro]

Since when do you have the old 56K modem sound as the outro?

[@valvedray]

thank you for your review, I am writing this as I'm watching. Has the DSBR been tested with the review or the release drivers?

[@robbejansens1678]

Werent people able to flash a vega 64 bios onto a 54 and unlock the locked shaders and the hbm voltage

[@0FFICERPROBLEM]

Apparently that's possible if you get Samsung memory on the card.

[@Sylonce]

Can we get 720p NOT 60FPS, I already asked for this in the past and was answered that it was still compiling but it never showed up on the video quality options, is it possible you can only offer 1 type of fps/reso or can you offer both 60fps and regular because the bandwidth is not the same!