RX 5700 XT Navi Crosses 2.2 GHz Thanks to Custom SoftPowerPlay Table Registry-Mod

[Vayra86]

Ah the Tahiti GPU. Hands down the best GPU AMD/ATI has released.

Yeah, Tahiti was like GCN in a perfect equilibrium between power, capacity (VRAM) and performance. Shame how fast it went downhill after that...

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

According to Anandtech, the 5700 XT will supposedly already boost to whatever the card can manage with no cap. Basically, the silicon lottery is implemented at the card-level. Do you just monitor your boost clocks and consider that your top possible speed? Maybe not, but it's an interesting approach.

Meanwhile clockspeeds are also an interesting story. AMD said that they would no longer be holding back their chips' top boost clocks, and instead let the silicon lottery run its course, allowing the best chips to reach their highest clockspeeds. The end result is that our 5700 XT is allowed to clock up to 2044 MHz, 139MHz better than AMD's official Boost Clock metric guarantees. More to the point, this is a substaintial jump in frequency over both AMD's RX Vega and RX 500 series cards, which would top out around the mid-1500s.

 

[Vayra86]

According to Anandtech, the 5700 XT will supposedly already boost to whatever the card can manage with no cap. Basically, the silicon lottery is implemented at the card-level. Do you just monitor your boost clocks and consider that your top possible speed? Maybe not, but it's an interesting approach.

Its a bit like a poor-man's GPU Boost 3.0 then, just hope you strike gold. Still not quite there. Then again, AMD does guarantee a solid boost clock now, so that's good progress.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Its a bit like a poor-man's GPU Boost 3.0 then, just hope you strike gold. Still not quite there. Then again, AMD does guarantee a solid boost clock now, so that's good progress.

I wonder if we’ll see a lot of open box returns as the hardcore gamers go panning for gold?

 

[Vayra86]

I wonder if we’ll see a lot of open box returns as the hardcore gamers go panning for gold?

Siliconlottery2.0.com

 

[Jism]

I think the "trolling" is missing the context, on Stock a 5700XT might run 8+ years without issues, while @2200 MHz core it "only" manages ~2 years before needing more voltage or failing completely at that clock.
Guess people extrapolate from the success of the HD 6950 and HD 7970.

Bought a Sapphire HD 6950 2GB with the Reference blower for ~ 220€ in 2011 myself, slapped a Peter on it and copper cooling blocks on Vram and VRM as well as to flash it with a modified 6970 bios (Shaders 1408 -> 1536 / 880MHz core / 1250 MHz memory), which all in all was costing less than a Reference HD 6970!
Started OC'ing and ended up with 1 GHz core and 1500 MHz on the memory @ ~ 1.265 V.
I was aware it might only work 1-2 years like that, but with the price/perf ratio I was fine with it. In the end, the card worked without issues until late 2015.

It might have worked longer without the flash and OC, but in reality, if it manages 2-4 years it gets replaced by a newer card anyway in most cases, which means the added degradation doesn't really factor into the use case.

Igor is right in stating, that OC'ing anything reduces its lifespan, but nobody knows by how much. In the video, he states, that 1.25 V might not be for 24/7, but two sentences later he says 1.2 V might very well be. Haven't OC'ed a 5700 XT so I don't know how far you get with 1.2 V, but I guess ~2Ghz 24/7 would still be plenty.

When your overriding the power limit on a smaller node, your allowing more current to be used by the chip. And in combination with a higher voltage, your basicly frying the chip on a very slow proces, and the harder or higher you go, the faster that proces goes. Ryzen 2x00 series have a max recommended 24/7 safe voltage of barely 1.33v. (note: apart from the boost state that could go up to 1.55v in short terms with low current). Anything above is in exchange of the chip life's span. I've seen review websites put 1.4 up to 1.45v in the CPU and expect the chip to last for ages on that voltage. Well the hard reality is that those same ryzen's running on that voltage barely make a 6 months life span before showing signs of serious degradations. I've seen a guy running 24/7 on 1.45v and just after a few months the whole XFR does'nt hold stable at stock anymore.

So yeah, you could override it's power limits and core voltage(s), but nobody knows for how long that is capable or after how many running hours. Nvidia locks in it's chip for a good reason as well, because they proberly seen and tested that those chips on a higher power limit could show degradation on long term. Ofcourse, if i had a card and it would last at most 3 years, i'd go for it knowing i'll upgrade it anyway in the very near future. I've ramped up a AIO watercooler DIY on my RX590, knowing i'll upgrade it anyway once the 5700XT is more widely available hurting it's warranty. There's not much of a OC'ing headroom anyway on chips these days.

AMD is pretty much know for sqeezing out all it can.

 

[SystemMechanic]

So will a 5.1 oveclock on a 9900K, yet it's not stopping people from doing it...

Weak attempt at trolling. Try again next time.

Wut. Intel themselves are releasing a 9900k with 5ghz all core boost out of the box..

 

[jigar2speed]

Igor: But, I must emphasize once again, the high voltages cause even with perfect cooling in the long run a creeping death. And that's why it's not for everyday use. You have to pay attention!

The internet: Cool runnings!

You are literally cautioning us on enthusiast forum where people have done even more crazier things ?

 

[Vayra86]

You are literally cautioning us on enthusiast forum where people have done even more crazier things ?

The same enthusiast forum that still needs to serve fixes for bricked cards on a daily basis, you mean?

Many people are just enthusiastic and lack knowledge; this voltage degradation thing is becoming a more important one as nodes get smaller. I've seen lots of people, enthusiast and knowledgeable or not, advocate that its 'just fine' to pump CPU volts all the way to max rated specs... for 24/7. The argument being that 'temps are low anyway so its fine'. Its really not. Voltage is voltage and it will degrade stuff faster; traces on the board too for example. So yeah, its good to take note of the ifs and buts when you OC. A lot of people just watch a Youtube, copy over some settings and think that's it.

 

[ernorator]

If we get 5700/5700xt 2GHZ Edition it will be fun :d

 

[INSTG8R]

The same enthusiast forum that still needs to serve fixes for bricked cards on a daily basis, you mean?

Many people are just enthusiastic and lack knowledge; this voltage degradation thing is becoming a more important one as nodes get smaller. I've seen lots of people, enthusiast and knowledgeable or not, advocate that its 'just fine' to pump CPU volts all the way to max rated specs... for 24/7. The argument being that 'temps are low anyway so its fine'. Its really not. Voltage is voltage and it will degrade stuff faster; traces on the board too for example. So yeah, its good to take note of the ifs and buts when you OC. A lot of people just watch a Youtube, copy over some settings and think that's it.

Yeah I actually came here back in the day for 9800 Pro to XT flash and was basically @eidairaman1 back then. I don’t envy him at all. I don’t have the patience anymore to handhold card brickers...

 

[windwhirl]

The argument being that 'temps are low anyway so its fine'. Its really not. Voltage is voltage and it will degrade stuff faster; traces on the board too for example.

It always occurred to me that too much voltage could fry electronics, but I never thought about slow, long-term degradation...

 

[Vayra86]

It always occurred to me that too much voltage could fry electronics, but I never thought about slow, long-term degradation...

Its been a thing since forever, but we never paid it much thought because you'd have to get pretty extreme to even feel it within the normal lifecycle of a chip. We were also more liberal with headroom back in the day. Today, we have all sorts of automatic boost techniques, along with a healthy dose of planned obscolesence in the back of any company's mind, and the push for performance is becoming a struggle. There is only one logical conclusion, things get pushed to edge more so degradation is more likely to set in within the product's useful lifecycle. Another factor on top of all that, is that we tend to use our hardware longer because progress is slowing down.

 

[kapone32]

The same enthusiast forum that still needs to serve fixes for bricked cards on a daily basis, you mean?

Many people are just enthusiastic and lack knowledge; this voltage degradation thing is becoming a more important one as nodes get smaller. I've seen lots of people, enthusiast and knowledgeable or not, advocate that its 'just fine' to pump CPU volts all the way to max rated specs... for 24/7. The argument being that 'temps are low anyway so its fine'. Its really not. Voltage is voltage and it will degrade stuff faster; traces on the board too for example. So yeah, its good to take note of the ifs and buts when you OC. A lot of people just watch a Youtube, copy over some settings and think that's it.

Its been a thing since forever, but we never paid it much thought because you'd have to get pretty extreme to even feel it within the normal lifecycle of a chip. We were also more liberal with headroom back in the day. Today, we have all sorts of automatic boost techniques, along with a healthy dose of planned obscolesence in the back of any company's mind, and the push for performance is becoming a struggle. There is only one logical conclusion, things get pushed to edge more so degradation is more likely to set in within the product's useful lifecycle. Another factor on top of all that, is that we tend to use our hardware longer because progress is slowing down.

Hopefully these cards will be as solid as the FX CPUs and Tahiti GPUs. I have a FX 8320 that I OCed to 4.6 GHZ and ran it at that speed for 6 years. It is still going with a 4.4 GHZ OC for a system I built using it. Even though it is not on the thread I notice that Ryzen will OC as follows R7 1700 (3.9 GHZ with no voltage adjustment) R5 2600 (4.2 GHZ with no voltage adjustment) and now my TR4 1900 does 4.1. Those are the highest but who really wants to get an extra 100 MHZ by cooking your CPU at 1.4 or higher, especially with the stock cooler. More in line with this thread I am thinking that the 5700XT will definitely die quickly (you mentioned the size of the die I think) at those voltage settings. I would not attempt an OC on any GPU without a water block (especially the blower cards). That is the thing that people don't seem to understand about going liquid. You can get higher clocks without insane voltage adjustments going that route.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Its been a thing since forever, but we never paid it much thought because you'd have to get pretty extreme to even feel it within the normal lifecycle of a chip. We were also more liberal with headroom back in the day. Today, we have all sorts of automatic boost techniques, along with a healthy dose of planned obscolesence in the back of any company's mind, and the push for performance is becoming a struggle. There is only one logical conclusion, things get pushed to edge more so degradation is more likely to set in within the product's useful lifecycle. Another factor on top of all that, is that we tend to use our hardware longer because progress is slowing down.

GPUs and CPUs have billions of transistors now, all while die size tries to stay within reason. I think we have some fundamental limitations of running these well past spec anymore. More thermal density, more potential for a block of the chip to not cooperate. I think these chips are engineered for a particular target, and if the company is already playing from behind, it is only natural to have them squeeze performance as much as possible while still hitting a production goal. I think the days of commonplace legendary overclocks are behind us.

 

[kapone32]

GPUs and CPUs have billions of transistors now, all while die size tries to stay within reason. I think we have some fundamental limitations of running these well past spec anymore. More thermal density, more potential for a block of the chip to not cooperate. I think these chips are engineered for a particular target, and if the company is already playing from behind, it is only natural to have them squeeze performance as much as possible while still hitting a production goal. I think the days of commonplace legendary overclocks are behind us.

You are absolutely right. the Vega and Navi GPUs were both unlocked for more performance by users and not AMD or any of it's board partners. We longer see 200MHZ OCs on partner cards either.

 

[JB_Gamer]

I've searched for more information, tried to find the homepage for this "Igor'sLab", but I can't find any? Anyone who knows?

 

[Valantar]

I've searched for more information, tried to find the homepage for this "Igor'sLab", but I can't find any? Anyone who knows?

Igor Wallossek works at Tom's Hardware Germany.

Unlike their English-language site, I still count THW DE as a serious and trustworthy site. It's just too bad I can't read German

 

[JB_Gamer]

Igor Wallossek works at Tom's Hardware Germany.

Unlike their English-language site, I still count THW DE as a serious and trustworthy site. It's just too bad I can't read German

Thanks

 

[Ramshot]

Can someone link the files I can't seem to find the links anywhere?
Thanks