AMD Radeon RX Vega 56/64 BIOS Mods & Results

[kithylin]

21 minutes ago, HeyItsChris said:

@kithylinThe SPPT I sent is already dialed in.  Have fun, let me know what u find.

I played with it earlier just trying to load it up and see what it could do. I played half-life 2 (normal version) with vsync off and forced the game to 8x supersampling AA in the AMD control panel just to force an artificial load on it and got it up to 1851 Mhz core clock stable on stock air cooling. It averaged around 63-65c core temps, looks like Sapphire's cooler design is awesome. My little test system right now is just having it paired with a I5-3570K, which yes I know is a huge bottleneck, I'll pair it with a faster computer later to really stretch it's legs. This is just for testing. 

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-3570K Processor,Dell Inc. 0YXT71

WWW.3DMARK.COM

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Intel Core i5-3570K Processor, AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 x 1, 16384 MB, 64-bit Windows 10}

 

[HeyItsChris]

Wow, 1851mhz is insane!  Throw up some screenshots of the hotspot temperature in game.

[kithylin]

6 hours ago, HeyItsChris said:

Wow, 1851mhz is insane!  Throw up some screenshots of the hotspot temperature in game.

Well I have it set there in MSI Afterburner but for some reason it actually runs like 1755 or 1775 in games that I saw and it doesn't even do that in 3dmark, I suspect because the system is bottlenecked a lot. It is odd how setting it that high in afterburner doesn't let it actually go that high, at least not yet in the games I tried. I'll try some more games on it later today when I have more time.

[kithylin]

Here's some screenshots for you. GPU-Z to record hot spot and MSI Afterburner logging, sampling rate 200ms.

 

[HeyItsChris]

@kithylinAmazing results, I even upped the vcore to 1.250v from 1.2v, amazing you can achieve those numbers on that 270w tdp & what not.  Did you adjust the fan or is it auto?  Thanks.

 

Hwinfo64 screenshot of gpu section would be nice.

[kithylin]

2 hours ago, HeyItsChris said:

@kithylinAmazing results, I even upped the vcore to 1.250v from 1.2v, amazing you can achieve those numbers on that 270w tdp & what not.  Did you adjust the fan or is it auto?  Thanks.

 

Hwinfo64 screenshot of gpu section would be nice.

I'll try to get that for you later, maybe tomorrow. The vcore seems to only ever go to 1.500v according to GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner logging though. I've tried increasing the slider in MSI-AB but it just crashes. I was going to ask about that power usage. One of the "tricks" with Nvidia cards was to bypass the shunt resistors which would have the cards showing that they were using (random for example) 80 watts when they were really using like 200 watts as a way to bypass power limits on Nvidia. Did you do a similar trick here for Vega64? Did you change something so it reports like -40% less power than it's actually using? Or is it actually only using 270 watts when the software says it's using 270 watts, even with your modded registry file? 

[HeyItsChris]

@kithylinCool, I'm guessing you meant 1.15V, right?

By the way, I set the power limit as it stands, 200% I think & 250W 250W or something like that.  No need to physically mod anything, its all in the vbios bro, so easy.

[kithylin]

1 hour ago, HeyItsChris said:

@kithylinCool, I'm guessing you meant 1.15V, right?

By the way, I set the power limit as it stands, 200% I think & 250W 250W or something like that.  No need to physically mod anything, its all in the vbios bro, so easy.

Yes I meant 1.15v, typo on my part. Apologies. I thought the original bios from Sapphire was limiting it to 300W? That's what Techpowerup says for the bios for this card, and it was stick at 299W on factory default clocks out of the box. I'm confused a bit how it can suddenly overclock so much higher but (apparently?) use less power than it did stock? That doesn't seem to compute in my mind. I did see it occasionally scoot over to 315W a few times but I would of expected it to be a lot higher?

[HeyItsChris]

That's amazing results @kithylin If there is anything else you need, let me know.  According to what I did with the 200%, so that would permit you to push it to, what if 100% would be 500W, then 200% would be capable of 750W, but I did apply the safe throttling limiters on all sensors @ 84C with a 88C shutdown in case the fans fail. 

[kithylin]

My Vega64 is great now. I just have one last comment. And.. a little off topic here. I know this is a Vega64 thread but you seem to know an awful lot about AMD cards. I own a Sapphire Vapor-X OC R9 290X 8GB card (the special ones with the 20-phase VRM) that's water cooled under a custom water block in a different computer. I have cooked up my own custom bios and programmed it into that thing and get it running stable for a few years with things like 1.400v voltage on the core, 1600 mhz clock speed and such. But for some reason that I don't understand the custom bios on that card is only applied when I use a specific range of drivers (spanning about 8 months) combined with Windows 7. If I use it in Windows 10 with later drivers then literally everything I put into the custom bios is completely ignored and it just runs at stock speeds. Do you happen to know what that would be, or perhaps maybe cook up a custom registry file for me for that card too?

 

Since it's essentially restricted to Windows 7 only right now due to issues described above it functions as my "retro computer" at the moment. I occasionally use it to play older games or games that won't work correctly under Windows 10.

 

EDIT: Yes it's high voltage and yes it uses a lot of power but it's still a fun card. I've had it with the custom bios, water block, and that voltage and overclock since 2016 (I bought it new in 2015 and used it air cooled at first for a while until blocks came out for it) I still game on it occasionally. It's been fine all this time with no issues.

Edited April 8 by kithylin

[HeyItsChris]

@kithylinSweet.  Thanks.  Yeah I can help.  I have a Gigabyte R9 290 4GB that I play on too sometimes, its bios modded in Windows 11.  Anyway yeah I can help, send the bios over, install this os & let's roll, broski. 

 

By the way, for anything Non-Vega or even Vega, let's move these discussions over to this thread : 

 

[Alastair]

On 05/06/2024 at 03:05, damric said:

I don't have any Vegas anynore, butI know a few guys here still have some  and might be interested.

 

I know I promised @Alastair some modded tables but I could not find my old ones.

 

Are yours modded with power AND current?

 

Those cards do love to be under water.

 

I had my 64 unlocked to something like 600W and amps. I would pull almost 500W at 1800MHz. I could never figure out how to add more voltage via software.

 

Be sure to submit to hwbot. I think I saw you joined the team.

Sorry I am late to the party. Unfortunately, my Vega died. I think old age just got to her. She was getting on in 2024 and one day she just would not switch on anymore. It was a shame because that card still had a little bit of fight left in it in 2025 especially with the way the industry is now. Long live my old Vega 64. I now recently got my hands on a 7900XTX and will be messing with that. But this time I did not leave my overclocking shenanigans to the mercy of the companies. Instead ive hooked mine up to an EVC2 so there will be no software limiting what I can do anymore! Long Live Vega! Long Live GCN! 

[pio]

On 07/04/2025 at 19:50, kithylin said:

My Vega64 is great now. I just have one last comment. And.. a little off topic here. I know this is a Vega64 thread but you seem to know an awful lot about AMD cards. I own a Sapphire Vapor-X OC R9 290X 8GB card (the special ones with the 20-phase VRM) that's water cooled under a custom water block in a different computer. I have cooked up my own custom bios and programmed it into that thing and get it running stable for a few years with things like 1.400v voltage on the core, 1600 mhz clock speed and such. But for some reason that I don't understand the custom bios on that card is only applied when I use a specific range of drivers (spanning about 8 months) combined with Windows 7. If I use it in Windows 10 with later drivers then literally everything I put into the custom bios is completely ignored and it just runs at stock speeds. Do you happen to know what that would be, or perhaps maybe cook up a custom registry file for me for that card too?

 

Since it's essentially restricted to Windows 7 only right now due to issues described above it functions as my "retro computer" at the moment. I occasionally use it to play older games or games that won't work correctly under Windows 10.

 

EDIT: Yes it's high voltage and yes it uses a lot of power but it's still a fun card. I've had it with the custom bios, water block, and that voltage and overclock since 2016 (I bought it new in 2015 and used it air cooled at first for a while until blocks came out for it) I still game on it occasionally. It's been fine all this time with no issues.

Don't worry bro, Management approves of discussing modding old tech as well as new.   Glad Chris was able to help get your card up and running even better than before!  Awesome job guys!