Delayed (or no) effect of BIOS switch

[theWaldschrat]

Hi all,

Probably I'm just missing something obvious or my google-foo is failing me, but I seem to be having some weird issues with the BIOS switch on my Sapphire Pulse RX 5600 XT.
Maybe someone could be so nice as to push me in the right direction.

Months ago I installed the card with the BIOS switch set to "Silent". Everything worked as expected.
Then after a couple of days I switched to the performance BIOS, but for some reasons it took a while of fiddling, rebooting, head-scratching and what-not until the card actually used the higher clock speeds. In the end I didn't have the slightest clue what actually fixed it.

Now I switched back to the silent BIOS (to test for some instabilities) and again: The VRAM clock lowered to 1500 MHz as expected, but the card still boosts to 1750 MHz even after multiple reboots, power-downs, driver-reinstalls and what-not.

Anyone can give me a hint here?

By the way, GPU-Z actually displays that the boost clock is 1620 MHz, but I still can see clocks around 1750 MHz in Adrenaline.

 

[Toothless]

Just clearing the obvious, you're shutting it down before switching right?

 

[theWaldschrat]

Shut it down, even cut power. Also VRAM clock changed from the performance value of 1750 MHz to the silent value of 1500 MHz, just the boost clock seems to ignore the setting.
Which is a bit of pain, because it seems the card is not stable at around 1750 MHz. If I lower the boost clock to something around 1600 MHz with Adrenaline, it seems to be stable (still testing, so we'll see).

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Shut it down, even cut power. Also VRAM clock changed from the performance value of 1750 MHz to the silent value of 1500 MHz, just the boost clock seems to ignore the setting.
Which is a bit of pain, because it seems the card is not stable at around 1750 MHz. If I lower the boost clock to something around 1600 MHz with Adrenaline, it seems to be stable (still testing, so we'll see).

Did you reinstall driver's, seems like the driver logs the bios limit's and won't automatically change them, a reinstall would nudge this on.

 

[theWaldschrat]

Did you reinstall driver's, seems like the driver logs the bios limit's and won't automatically change them, a reinstall would nudge this on.

Yes, even with the "reset to defaults" box ticked and multiple reboots.

But my google-foo must have returned somewhat, because I found that "boost clock" doesn't seem to be a hard limit, just a value that's stored in flash memory in the card.
It's then the drivers task to do something about that. And from what I found, AMDs drivers have a limit set for that card of 1780 MHz and it will boost to that clock when it has a chance to (power- and temperature-wise).
The power limit on the other hand is something that's enforced by the BIOS or at least honored by the driver. So the "official" boost clock of 1680 MHz in the silent BIOS just means: "With a power limit of 135 W the GPU should be able to regularly boost to 1680 MHz, but it may boost higher." And the same for the performance BIOS: "With a power limit of 160 W the card should be able to regularly boost to 1750 MHz, but it may boost higher."
Folding@Home workloads seem to be such that the card can actually boost above 1750 MHz even on the silent power limit.
Which is a bit of a pain, because my GPU seems to crash quite regularly when operated around 1750 MHz. Looks like I may have to warranty-return it. Though I will first try to slightly overvolt it at max clocks, maybe that helps.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Yes, even with the "reset to defaults" box ticked and multiple reboots.

But my google-foo must have returned somewhat, because I found that "boost clock" doesn't seem to be a hard limit, just a value that's stored in flash memory in the card.
It's then the drivers task to do something about that. And from what I found, AMDs drivers have a limit set for that card of 1780 MHz and it will boost to that clock when it has a chance to (power- and temperature-wise).
The power limit on the other hand is something that's enforced by the BIOS or at least honored by the driver. So the "official" boost clock of 1680 MHz in the silent BIOS just means: "With a power limit of 135 W the GPU should be able to regularly boost to 1680 MHz, but it may boost higher." And the same for the performance BIOS: "With a power limit of 160 W the card should be able to regularly boost to 1750 MHz, but it may boost higher."
Folding@Home workloads seem to be such that the card can actually boost above 1750 MHz even on the silent power limit.
Which is a bit of a pain, because my GPU seems to crash quite regularly when operated around 1750 MHz. Looks like I may have to warranty-return it. Though I will first try to slightly overvolt it at max clocks, maybe that helps.

I use the power save preset in Wattman, this limits power and inadvertently max clock.
I have issues where my pc overheats if fully crunching and folding, IF the house heating is on(too hot for humans my housemates are penguins) and no windows are open a bit.

Could be worth a try.

 

[theWaldschrat]

I actually did that first and it was also stable, at least for the couple of hours I tested it.
Wattman is a bit annoying, because it always switches back to defaults whenever the system crashes. Which is nice for overclocking, but not exactly helpful when you need the settings to keep the system stable. By the way, is there a way to disable that behavior?
That's why I thought: Let's switch to the silent BIOS, that also limits power and clocks, except, well, it doesn't.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I actually did that first and it was also stable, at least for the couple of hours I tested it.
Wattman is a bit annoying, because it always switches back to defaults whenever the system crashes. Which is nice for overclocking, but not exactly helpful when you need the settings to keep the system stable. By the way, is there a way to disable that behavior?
That's why I thought: Let's switch to the silent BIOS, that also limits power and clocks, except, well, it doesn't.

No way to change that behaviour in Wattman sorry.