Hello all, a couple of questions after updating to Mojave:
-Could anyone provide some advice on how to set VGTab so the Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro+ runs quieter? The fans are loud and the coil whine drives me insane. This is the third card, btw, before you ask whether I've had it replaced...
-I asked the man, the myth the legend (kgp) on the 10.13.6 thread about SpeedStep (EIST) and he told me to turn it off, but in the Mojave guide the setting is still "Enabled". Could someone please tell me which the right setting is? Don't wanna annoy the man again.
Thank you very much and a happy year to you all,
Dan
Almost all Vega core packages are similar. Some are binned better (Vega Frontier Air + Water Cooled get the best binned GPUs) and some are lower tier Vega GPUs (think of the Vega 64 with AMD stock coolers).
The difference lies in how a particular board partner does their BIOS and cooler, in your case the Sapphire.
Since it's a different cooler than the other Vegas, most likely your "Target Speed" is similar to a stock one as seen in the VGTab defaults.
I would advise you just give it a try and then run Valley Benchmark for maybe 20-30 mins and see how fast the fans run and how hot the GPU core gets (85c max thermal for Vega is ok, but better to stay below that).
So try these with VGTab:
Idle Speed:
850
Target Speed:
2000
Minimum Speed:
400
Maximum Speed
3000 (also try 2600 if 3000 is too loud).
Target Temperature:
75 (be wary of this, the default is 70)
Then drop that built kext in your efi/other and reboot and do the test.
It's worth trying lower Maximum Speeds because you have a cooler with 3 big fans on it, so it doesn't really need to hit 4900 or so.
Usually with Triple fan setups anything above 1200RPM will have audible noise.
But also keep in mind you need to be checking the GPU core temp while you're benchmarking. Make sure it stays below 85c anything higher you will start throttling and
it may damage your GPU (if you keep it running) since you're forcing a power table that's not within spec.
If you see temps spike up really quickly to 85c stop the benchmark and either delete the VGTab kext/reboot or try another variation.
Remember, Vega is a ridiculously powerful card (and power hungry by default), however the way AMD designed them made it into a super power hungry card because they were trying to compete with NVIDIA.
I personally undervolt the GPU in Windows and it drops down by at least 70watts while I bump the memory speeds a tiny bit, and I get exactly the same (if not better) performance in video games. So all in all AMD has, by default really bumped the voltage too high out of factory.
With VGTab you're only tweaking the fan speeds but the voltage stays the same.
I would, in your case, flip the small switch thats near the back ports on the card away from it, this will run Vega in "Standard" mode, which means less generated heat/less noise/slower fan speeds (with VGTab).
Hope this helps.