The VEGA 56 / 64 Cards Thread! General Discussion

AMD engineer posted a video today:

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Vega Nano spotted in the wild? Buildzoid has commented in the thread so presumably heā€™ll make some sort of content on the photo.

It is not a Vega nano, but rather the small version of vega seen on the XFX variant of the card as well as the above which appears to be from the upcoming Sapphire Pulse Edition Vega.

Both of which still have the massive air cooling on it as its basically impossible to cool vega with a nano sized air cooler (and still sustain performance of any kind).

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I did notice the Sapphire sticker on the board.

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If your willing to buy one, then run water cooling you can still benefit from the short length, but given the current Vega wattage, I donā€™t see a high performance micro sized card coming out on air cooling any time soonā€¦

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I thought the same thing about watercooling when I first saw that. ITX build with a 120mm AIO isnā€™t the craziest idea ever but on the other side if you want to go super tiny you donā€™t want to deal with tubing either. AMD did a pretty good job on the Fury nano but it remains to be seen if they want to deal with that kind of engineering right now. They have other problems, I think.

Given there is huge amounts of empty space on the vega reference pcb (as thereā€™s no GDDR5 chips to find space for), iā€™m not sure why they didnā€™t just make them all nano to start with.

Maybe its because reference = blower cooler (for various reasons related to case airflow, etc.)

partly because they wanted room for the nvmes (pro ssg), partly because they wanted only 1 design thatā€™s robust, and works with that blower cooler needed in the DC.

This. Even the fury / fury X were a bit bigger than a nano.
And vega is at least in the same ballpark in terms of power requirements.

I think this is just the PCB of the Sapphire RX Vega 56 Pulse. Iā€™m pretty sure I have already seen this. AMD made a card with similar design a couple of years ago. This design is one of the best you can get. Since the PCB is so short but the cooler is full sized it can blow straight through it with the front fan. This is an almost perfect cooler design imho.

Can confirm. I have the Fury Nitro from Sapphire which is exactly that combination of short PCB and long cooler. And since I switched out the fans for noctuas, it is a pretty quiet card too.

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Msrp prices from latest lmg video. Pretty enfuriating amd prices, to say the least

Memory prices have increased as well though, which is likely some of the cost increase. That the 1080 isnā€™t seeing a large increase may be telling of how much profit existed in that part already.

Nothing new, AMD cards are just better mining cards.
So they become more expensive. Sure, sucks. But that is capitalism in a nutshell.

Itā€™s a bit silly to compare the launch price to todayā€™s real price.
The 1080 was reduced when the 1070Ti launched as far as I know.
So, yes, the markup on nvidia isnā€™t as bad as on AMD.
But the markup on the 1080 is not $0.

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Demand influences price. You can be sure that if AMD werenā€™t selling every card they can make the prices would drop.

That said i have noticed Vega starting to come back into stock locally where i am (Perth, WA).

Yeah, same here (Germany). GPUs are still pricey but available.

Here, looks like theyā€™re about 15-20% over RRP or thereabouts (annoying, but not totally taking the piss given how bad things HAVE been - secondhand Vega 64 for 60% above RRP locally a few months ago).

Difficult to tell due to fluctuation in exchange rate, and the fact that reference 64s (my comparison point) are not in stock. Only reference 56 or aftermarket 64.

I know Zen is big today, but new news on tiny Vega:

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I really think weā€™ll see a bit of a second-wind with Vega with the non-reference boards and newer software that supports the features like rapid packed math.

Just as an aside, Iā€™ve been running my pair of Vega 64s (a Sapphire and an XFX, both reference) mining on and off lately (when iā€™m not home) and both seem stable at 1100 mhz HBM running 24/7. Even post-crypto crash bringing in about $5-6 AU per day worth of BTC mining Monero via nicehash.

Iā€™ve under-volted core on them both by about -100mV in afterburner and downclocked the core to 1450 on the upper (primary) card to keep the HBM cool (if it gets above 80c HBM clock is dropped and the upper card tends to run around 3-5c hotter than the lower one no doubt due to convection) but so far so good.

The second vega 64 was an impulse buy because i got it at RRP from a vendor when i saw them at 60% above RRP on ebay and gumtree. So far the pair of them have paid half of it off since christmas and i havenā€™t been mining constantly :smiley:

My RX480 (since donated to my GF for gaming - yes when they were selling for about 600 bucks, lol) paid for itself and then my first Vega :smiley:

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I believe that the HBM is a lot more tolerant of higher clocks under a mining load. That said, my 56 on water is flashed and holds 1040MHz on the HBM during gaming and around 1600MHz on the core. Itā€™s not as cool as it could be though, so when I drain the loop someday Iā€™ll repaste and reseat the block with the spring mount from the original cooler. Supposedly that makes the contact better and will help cool the hotspot more.

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