AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 is a decent mining card

Posted on Monday, September 04 2017 @ 13:08 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
AMD logo
Another AMD story that generated a bit of buzz this weekend was the claim of a random Reddit user that you can tweak the Radeon RX Vega 64 to mine Ethereum with a hash rate of 43.5MH/s at a power consumption of just 130W for the total card.

That generate quite some excitement and alarm, as a Radeon RX 480 reportedly does just 25MH/s while consuming 160W. The RX Vega 64 at 43.5MH/s with 130W power consumption feat was reportedly achieved by clocking the Radeon RX Vega 64's core at 1000MHz, with the HBM2 clocked at 1100MHz and a -24% power target in the Radeon Settings.

The big caveat was that this user did not measure the power consumption at the wall, instead he relied on software readouts of his power supply. WCCF Tech attempted to replicate the setup and used a Kill A Watt meter to get more reliable readings.

Achieving an Ethereum hash rate of 43.5MH/s was not a problem but the card consumed a lot more power than claimed by the Reddit poster:
We tried to use identical settings to the tester (mining drivers were used): 1000MHz core at 1000mV, 1100MHz Memory, and -25 Power Limit. We were easily able to get the 43.5 mHash/s rate that the tester got but our power specs were a whole different story. While HWInfo was happily reporting a power draw of ~130 Watts, the Kill-A-Watt meter told a different story. Our test bed had an idle power draw of around 138 Watts and forms the base line for our test. The power draw at load however was 386 Watts. This yields a delta of ~248 watts, which is obviously significantly higher than what the reports claim to have achieved with the card.
WCCF Tech concludes you can get a mining hash power efficiency of around 0.175 mHash per Watt with the Radeon RX Vega 64. It's far below the claimed figure of about 0.33 mHash per Watt but still very high and explains why miners would gobble up the Vega in large volumes.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



Loading Comments