Good afternoon,
Wednesday, August 16th BBT Carter took to YouTube in a livestream and walked everyone through a series of test with the new AMD RX Vega 64. The version the BBT team purchased was the Sapphire RX Vega 64 8GB HBM2 standard card. This was picked up at a local distributor for 675.00 USD (about 275 markup to original MSRP 499.99 price target). Our goal was simple, take the RX Vega through the paces and validate its true performance given the new AMD Blockchain Beta Driver (link below) and see if the card really could live up to the hype and now 'debunked' false reporting on the internet.
Rant
Before we get into the detailed punch list of status, figures and results, let's understand the situation surrounding this card. First of all, not much was really known of potential performance. There were many articles that were taking the physical properties (speed/memory type/bus speed) and making theoretical assumptions given the technology on what potentially it could output, however not much was released to the public prior to launch. AMD put a very tight embargo on the information and while they gave many popular YouTube channels and Internet Blogs their very own versions of laser etched Both launch versions of Threadripper,Two X399 Motherboards, Memory, CPU Cooler, PSU and both RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 versions, they put a tight lockdown on the result data until the day of the launch we're not talking like 11:59PM the night before, however 9AM the day of launch.
Now the question is why 9am? While we haven't seen a statement of why regarding the time, given the hype behind both the Threadripper and RX Vega (threadripper by and large delivering on those promises), releasing the information (reviews) and the proverbial consumption of that information would be so tight, the initial inventory in stores were bound to get sold out immediately, i.e. consumers yielded on information and purchased anyway. Was this a fast one from AMD? Obviously they knew the power usage and subpar performance, but it does make us question the embargo of information ironically holding back facts to just before purchasing from a retail outlet opens to sell said product.
Rant off
Now on to the numbers! Given the scenario above, BBT took the challenge of doing a multiple perturbation approach to see how the card, given the beta drivers and just after launch would function with existing mining software on Windows 10 Pro 64bit; Lastly no undervolting was done in these trials as the software available currently was not reading accurate nor working correcting with undervolting. In our follow up review once we get RX Vega 56 we will re-approach this test to include undervolting.
Our testing and results is as follow:
Settings:
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit ; patched to v1703
AMD Radeon Blockchain Compute Driver Version 17.30.1029
MSI Afterburner 4.4.0 Beta 16
Machine Specs (System Idle 115w)
o AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950x @ 4.0ghz
o ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme X399 Motherboard
o 64GB Trident Z PC3200 DDR4
o Sapphire RX Vega 64 8GB HBM2
o Samsung 960 Pro 512gb nVME
o Samsung 960 EVO 1TB nVME
o EVGA Supernova G2 1300w PSUMining Software – BBT MultiMiner 5.4
o Ethereum and Ethereum Dual Mining via Claymore 9.8
o Zcash and Hush mining via Claymore AMD Equilhash 12.6
o Siacoin GoMiner 1.0
o Digibyte SGMiner 5.6.1 Nicehash edition
o XMR (did not work)
o Lbry Credit (did not work)
Trials
Bone Stock
Ethereum
Ubiq
Zcash
Hush
Ethereum & Sia
Ethereum & Decred
Ethereum & Pascal
Digibyte - Grost algo
Siacoin Only
** Ethereum Only** Range test (OC)
** Ethereum + Sia** Range test (OC)
** Ethereum + Dcr** Range test (OC)
Pascalcoin Only (OC)
Zcash and Hush with GPU/MEM and PL increased
============================================================================================
Now with the common theme showing huge power requirements on the OC ... I decided to drop the Power Limit significantly, which limits the overhead of power available to the card (essentially starving it). Here are those results:
Ethereum Only Massive Power limit drop and some GPU reduction
Hows that with a single trial of Dual Mining?
Etherum + Sia* with big reduction of Power Limit
Obviously more testing needs to occur, but this is the first of many trials we are performing with RX Vega 64. Please contribute your findings and we can see how things change with other not mentioned settings.
If you would like to see the representation of these figures, watch the livestream that covers all of these numbers LIVE and in front of you!
Affiliate Links to parts used in the machine!
BBT Render Machine
CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950x - http://amzn.to/2wzuMoW
WC: Corsair H110i - http://amzn.to/2fxYYN4
MB: ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme - http://amzn.to/2vK5vdX
RAM: TridentZ 64GB G.Skill DDR4 Trident Z 3600 - http://amzn.to/2hPdeln
OS DRIVE: Samsung 960 PRO 512GB PCIe NVMe - http://amzn.to/2uLNGXE
SCRATCH DISK: Samsung 960 EVO 1TB PCIe NVMe - http://amzn.to/2vJOpgu
GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 1080Ti SC Edition - http://amzn.to/2fxfzk7
PSU: eVGA Supernova P2 1200w - http://amzn.to/2fxhqW9
DOWNLOADS MENTIONED IN LIVESTREAM:
VERSION 5.4 of the Multi Miner ** updated 8/2/17
Full Setup
Mega Download:
https://mega.nz/#!YeYjHBoA!AonuOPfgnKeURWYKzw95ZFi6ufyvG0jmqXPw_3DzkFc
Uploadfiles.io Download:
https://ufile.io/1vaxa
Batch Script Only
Mega Download:
https://mega.nz/#!YfIUmIQQ!ZFmUNH7A2Hqr-X20z8v55vHDia-Fz97_j0JQIAKZ_m4
Uploadfiles.io Download:
https://ufile.io/fva6n
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