Pure minimalism: Gigabyte RX Vega56 Gaming OC in review

Unlike Sapphire's heavyweight RX Vega64 Nitro+, the Gigabyte RX Vega56 Gaming OC is more of a grey mouse with a fairly healthy body measure index. Just don't stand out at all costs. And it almost seems as if you even have it consciously ... Board layout Gigabyte is extremely different from AMD's reference layout of the RX Vega, which should also make the use of existing full-cover water coolers impossible. Also at the popular Raijintek Morpheus, end terrain is, if you ... Sometimes you get the feeling that Nvidia's engineers also held one or the other PVT sample of a Custom RX Vega56 in their hands when the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti was launched. Or at least some spy infiltrated. Good, snare... Power consumption at different loads The power consumption in the gaming loop is at the measured approx. 264 watts in balanced mode far above what is still with approx. measured 223 watts in the default BIOS. You're even lying with it ... Overclocking and undervolting The conventional overclocking by means of an even higher power limit and more clock speed can be quickly forgotten. We will see why this is the case in the cooling section. So crowbar is not possible. Anyway... 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 various compromises, which are... Summary The Gigabyte RX Vega56 Gaming OC leaves the impression in many respects of a rather reluctantly completed compulsory exercise, but in which one has concentrated on the most important things, so as not to smother anything. All...

Overclocking and undervolting

The conventional overclocking by means of an even higher power limit and more clock speed can be quickly forgotten. We will see why this is the case in the cooling section. So crowbar is not possible. After all, Gigabyte has already had to follow AMD's guidelines for GPU clock speeds in terms of power limit and voltages. And that is where this implementation reaches its limits. Sure, it would be louder and then cool enough – only who really wants that?

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. Thus, this path is a dead end anyway.

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):

	Initial	Final value
Open Benchtable
GPU Temperatures	44 °C	74-75 °C
GPU clock	1378 MHz	1352 MHz
Ambient temperature	22 °C	22 °C
Closed Case
GPU Temperatures	46°C	74-75 °C
GPU clock	1378 MHz	1344 MHz
Air temperature in the housing	24°C	47°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.

We see that the clock in the gaming loop is around approx. 100 MHz higher than the reference. This increase of an average of just under 10 percent in this very demanding game is bought with a 40 watt higher power consumption, which is already 18%. However, gaming performance only increases by a maximum of 5-7%, which is no longer in any meaningful relationship. The Torture Loop looks similar:

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 have pierced the backplate at the relevant locations for the IR measurements and cut out the pads accordingly. Since these are very small diameters, this does not change the performance.

Gaming

We can see that the map is already reaching its limits in the gaming loop. 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.

When used in closed housings, we then measure higher temperatures for the voltage converters by up to 6°C. Here it is revenge once again that the fans only take into account the GPU temperature. With only a little more bums for the fans you would get back to about. 4-5°C cooler, without the ears falling off.

Stress

The stress test is slightly lower in terms of power consumption compared to normal gaming, so the GPU stays a little cooler.

Even in the closed housing, this time it is only up to two degrees more at the neuralgic points, nothing more. Nevertheless, the plentiful 92°C does not have to be for a part of the voltage converters.