EKWB publish test results showing their performance and efficiency gains on Vega 64
EKWB, the manufacturer of high-end water blocks and associated equipment for CPUs and GPUs, wanted to showcase the performance increase that users could get on an RX Vega 64, based on switching from the stock air cooler to one of their water cooling systems.
Just by moving from air cooling to water cooling, they found that the sustained GPU frequency went up from 1360 MHz to 1440 MHz. This clock speed increase provided an extra nine percent in performance while also reducing the GPU temperature from a toasty 83 C down to only 34 C. When EKWB tried leaving the power limit at default while also undervolting the core and memory, they found that performance decreased below stock air cooling levels. However, when they combined this with increasing the allowed power limit, the performance stepped up significantly. Maximum performance on their graphics card came from a -0.1 V core and -0.1 V memory undervolt paired with a +50 percent power limit. The sustained GPU frequency increased to 1604 (air-cooled was 1360), and this translated to a performance increase of 18 percent.
The most interesting scenario was when they tested the system with the lowest core voltage and memory voltage they could achieve on their card while leaving the power limit at its highest. Power usage under load dropped by a significant 34 W while performance only decreased by one percent against the highest result they had achieved. Unfortunately, EKWB didn’t show any performance results for the HBM, but they did recommend overclocking memory to around 1050 to 1100 MHz which coincides with anecdotal experience of owners of RX Vega 64 claiming that HBM overclocking gave the greatest performance increase.
It isn’t a new concept to use water cooling, undervolting, increasing power limits, or a combination of all three to lower temperatures and improve performance. But the test results from EKWB provide another dataset for owners of the card to compare against when tweaking their own Vega 64s.