GPUs Hardware Reviews

Hot delicacies for vegans: Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC in review

If we were asked for a slightly better equipped RX Vega64 and if the range of such cards were more diversified, we would probably call the Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC. Where and how exactly the map is positioned, today's test ... Board layout Like Gigabyte and Sapphire, Asus is extremely different from AMD's reference layout, which should make the use of existing full-cover water coolers impossible. Asus relies on 6 phases with Doubling, so that in... With a current BIOS and the newer drivers, the peculiarities of the benchmark results, as we were able to see during the review of the Sapphire RX Vega64 Nitro+, finally disappear completely and the maps now do exactly what you can from... The overall picture does not change much, even if the Vega cards break in a little more in a few games. But then it almost doesn't matter if reference or board partner card. Shared suffering is half suffering, although it is never a real d... Power consumption at different loads The power consumption in the gaming loop is at the measured approx. 275 watts in Balanced Mode about 5 watts below what could be measured at the reference in the default BIOS. This is all the more astonishing because ... Overclocking and undervolting The conventional overclocking by means of an even higher power limit and more clock counteracts the current cooling concept, because the rather quiet cooler gets along quite well with what it has to dismount ex works. More on the other hand... Cooling system and backplate Of course, the generated waste heat is directly related to the recorded power, for which the cooling solution is responsible for optimum dissipation. And this is precisely where we are faced with minor problems, which we are... How and where can we classify the Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC now? The map is in itself quite a solid story, apart from the hot tension converters. The quality of the workmanship is neat and the component selection is ...

Overclocking and undervolting

The conventional overclocking by means of an even higher power limit and more clock counteracts the current cooling concept, because the rather quiet cooler gets along quite well with what it has to dismount ex works. More, on the other hand, is already quite loud. In our articles "Overclocked and boiled: AMD Radeon RX Vega64 water-cooled" and "AMD Radeon RX Vega64 without temperature limit with interesting findings" has already been explained extensively.

On the other hand, a healthy sub-voltage can achieve much better results. Especially the use of the program OverdriveNTool can produce real miracles here. More or less, because as always it depends on the respective chip quality (and the driver version). However, since these very individual results cannot be flattened, each user would have to test it for himself. Whether the effort is worth it, however, is up to everyone. A good guide for this can be found, e.g. in this tutorial.

Temperatures and clock rates

Why we limit ourselves to the output of the values reported as GPU temperature is because the telemetry of our test sample also uses this value. What it is all about with the sometimes significantly higher hotspot temperature, you can read here again: "AMD Radeon RX Vega64 without temperature limit with interesting findings". We were able to log values up to 15 degrees higher on the map, but they seemed a bit borderline in their height if you take advantage of all the possibilities of the map.

We now tabulate the achieved start and end values for temperatures and GPU clock (boost), but also point out that these clock rates can be much higher in loops with significantly lower load. In some scenes of Wolfenstein 2 (indoor), the map reaches 1.6 GHz, only to break in the open terrain again.

  Initial Value
Final Value
Open Test Bench
GPU Temperature
36°C 75°C
GPU Clock Rate 1408 MHz 1360 MHz
Ambient Temperature 22°C 22°C
Closed Case
GPU Temperature
39°C 76°C
GPU Clock Rate 1403 MHz 1358 MHz
Air Temperature in Case 24°C 49°C

Overview Graphs: Temperatures vs. Clock

For better illustrations now again the respective courses considering our timeline of a total of 15 minutes each for the warm-up time. Interesting is the visible difference of the heating between the open structure and the closed housing, to which we will (must) come back again.

We see that the clock in the gaming loop is around approx. 100 MHz higher than the reference. This increase of an average of over 10 percent in this very demanding game ends in an increase in gaming performance of a maximum of 5-7%. You don't actually win a lot. The Torture Loop doesn't look much different:

Thermal analysis of the back of the board

Finally, we consider the thermal analysis of the respective load states. In order to remain as practical as possible, we removed the backplate, which is not cooling anyway, for the IR measurements and screwed the stabilization frame of the front side with our own special nuts again. Comparative before/after tests have not revealed any differences in temperature and cooling performance.

Gaming

We can see that the card is already reaching its limits in the gaming loop with Witcher 3. As long as you operate it vertically and in an open structure, everything still seems to be in the green area, but that can change quickly if you install it. Interestingly, the range of the two separately arranged and cooled voltage converters (VRM2) is significantly cooler.

When used in closed housings, we then measure higher temperatures of up to 4°C for the voltage converters. Here it is revenge once again that the fans only take into account the GPU temperature. With a little more speeds for the fans and, above all, a passive cooling of the back of the board, such large-scale hotspots could easily have been avoided.

Stress

The stress test is now one tick higher in terms of power consumption compared to normal gaming, which can also be seen in the temperatures. In the end, this is probably also due to the more constant loads, which are generally more difficult to cool down.

Also in the closed housing it is three to four degrees Celsius more at the neuralgic points this time.

And what do we conclude from this? With a PCB so nicely tidy on the back of the board, you shouldn't have saved the few cents for a good pad.

We really do not like the heat development in the voltage converter range, especially since the heat moves over time to below the package and heats it up from below. Passive cooling by means of a thermal pad and backplate would have been strongly recommended.

This is also the reason why we have refrained from significantly increasing the power limit and maximum overclocking. Because it not only gets hot, but also accordingly loud when you do the whole thing in a closed housing.

Danke für die Spende



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About the author

Igor Wallossek

Editor-in-chief and name-giver of igor'sLAB as the content successor of Tom's Hardware Germany, whose license was returned in June 2019 in order to better meet the qualitative demands of web content and challenges of new media such as YouTube with its own channel.

Computer nerd since 1983, audio freak since 1979 and pretty much open to anything with a plug or battery for over 50 years.

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