ratirtI thought there are 2 Bios'es and as with the tests and benchmarks each bios used has had a different impact on the volts, power and heat. you have misunderstood me a bit. It's just 2 bios you can use and I was wondering if you tried both and saw same behavior with the frequencies.

Oh ok. Duel bios it has and the secondary is locked and is a low performance bios. Only the primary can be flashed and now I have reverted back to AIr bios and running P7 at 1570 1110 abs 1650 @ 1130v and set memory to 950 like in the LC version and I see good improvements. Instead of 5458 in FS ultra now I get 5870 or so. It’s good.

Hello guys, I would like to reactivate a bit this thread :D

Let's say I have V56 with custom cooler and I want to flash it with V64 BIOS, but not the Black version but LC BIOS. If I have a decent cooler, does this make any difference? Ofc, assuming that I CAN successfully flash V64 LC BIOS to my V56...
What do you think?

Rebe1Hello guys, I would like to reactivate a bit this thread :D

Let's say I have V56 with custom cooler and I want to flash it with V64 BIOS, but not the Black version but LC BIOS. If I have a decent cooler, does this make any difference? Ofc, assuming that I CAN successfully flash V64 LC BIOS to my V56...
What do you think?

Well i'm not an expert here but I have read some threads on different forums about it. Although it's been a while so maybe something has changed. You shouldn't be worry about bricking the card since it has 2 Bios so roll back is possible. I suggest using same vendor of v64 bios to be flashed on your v56. I'd also try looking up in the internet about your particular v56 model and see if anyone done this flashing before and how it went.
From the ASUS strix v64 review the difference is noticeable in terms of temps comparing to air blower style cooler. With the OC it doesn't change much but better cooler designs definitely the card cooler and quiet. V56 with v64 bios performs great and I was thinking about that card as well.

@Up sure thing, ty for suggestions. I am quite confident with flashing (as you said, 2nd "hardcoded" BIOS is a solid backup option), I did so with my 480 4GB from Sapphire. I have been reading through and default boost at V64 LC is too sweet to not just give a try (was is 1750 MHz?). I know that there should be also different BIOS versions with respect to Mem producers (Samsung, Elpida, Hynix). I'm rly looking forward for custom V56 but I believe those cards will be totally overpriced and even harder to get so I started to think about Reference Design + custom AC. If the temps will be fine with standard V64 BIOS I will give a shot with LC version.

The only question for me now is which producer do not have any issues with replacing the original cooler (i.e. warranty wise)? I know this can differ from country to country, even for the same producer? I heard of MSI and "green light for LC" but that was in US, while I will be buying card in Sweden?

Rebe1@Up sure thing, ty for suggestions. I am quite confident with flashing (as you said, 2nd "hardcoded" BIOS is a solid backup option), I did so with my 480 4GB from Sapphire. I have been reading through and default boost at V64 LC is too sweet to not just give a try (was is 1750 MHz?). I know that there should be also different BIOS versions with respect to Mem producers (Samsung, Elpida, Hynix). I'm rly looking forward for custom V56 but I believe those cards will be totally overpriced and even harder to get so I started to think about Reference Design + custom AC. If the temps will be fine with standard V64 BIOS I will give a shot with LC version.

The only question for me now is which producer do not have any issues with replacing the original cooler (i.e. warranty wise)? I know this can differ from country to country, even for the same producer? I heard of MSI and "green light for LC" but that was in US, while I will be buying card in Sweden?

You know. I'm planning to buy V64 and apply LC solution on it. I heard from saikamaldoss (present here in this thread) that he used XSPC cooling solution design for Vega. The problem is it is only available for reference cards and that was also my concern if I end up with Sapphire, Gigabyte or other. There's another thread hear started with LG monitors but it has went a bit for Vega discussion
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/samsung-u28e590d-vs-lg-27ud69p-w.232898/page-2#post-3736969
You can try here also. I'm willing to buy a V64 but I need some confirmation from people who bought the card already and applied some custom LC. Sakamaldoss claims he's managed to get 1730Mhz with no problem with temps oscillating around 55C which is nice. I know that V56 with v64 flashed bios can go even higher because of lower core count. From what I've seen with V56 OC this card is pretty nice overclocker if you flash it with V64 Bios and get decent LC on it.

hello all,

First I'd like to point out that I realize this is an old thread and the last post is like 9 months ago but I'm drained from a day of researching and reading about this issue and educating myself on the card specs and design and so forth and don't feel much like trying to find the appropriate current thread for this topic when this one fits the bill to a T basically. That said I'm not some newb or weekend enthusiast, I'm a disabled vet and un-renewed A+ certified tech who had a shop until my disability and divorce took that from me and so although it may not sound like it when I am typing, I do know what I'm talking about and just suck at putting tech talk into words. That said:

After a ton of reading and research I have found that my MSI rx vega 56 air boost 8g oc has a bios ending in 000000 while my son's exact same card has a different one and my card uses the SK Hynix memory while my son's uses Samsung memory. Normally I would think nothing of that but with all the debate over can we unlock the 8 CU's that a 64 has over the 56 with a bios update started to catch my attention when I read that the whole 56 and 64's having 800MHz memory was due to a fire at one of the Hynix plants in China which caused them to discontinue the HBM2 modules meant to clock at 1000MHz destined for the 64's and AMD having to scramble when they were already having production issues and so 800MHz modules from Samsung became the standard for both cards. That said, the bios for the 000000 has other noticeable things on my 56 like a 1622 core speed, 512GB/s bandwidth, 112 Gpixels and 392 Gtexels while my son's card has the normal spec'd numbers from MSI for this card. I also took notice that this was the first and oldest bios for the 56 and was at a time when the scramble was on to meet quotas for both cards and to have enough for vendors like MSI and ASUS and so forth so they could do their production runs and get cards to market. I also know from my years of owning my own shop before my divorce and military disability took over my life that AMD has regularly repackaged as a lesser product to meet production and to keep customers happy without worrying about the idea of end users finding out and taking advantage of the hidden power they just bought. My theory is that AMD and in my case MSI took 64 cards and repackaged them as 56 cards to meet goals and I base this on the fact that I have the hynix memory on my card and it clocked to 1000MHz no problem and no increased temps as currently my HBM2 temp is 37c and my core speed is currently at 1752 and again temps would say that it's not an issue as it is reading 36c while I'm doing this and watching a video on youtube which yes it isn't much pushing the card but when I was playing shadow of war my max temp was 55c. I'm not the best explainer of things going through my head and never have been the guy to explain things on a technical side and hence why my ex-boss's loved me for talking to customers who needed things in plain English.

My idea and point is we are dealing with a company known to do just this to meet quotas and in the grand scheme of things it does not hurt the bottom line because it's built a huge loyal following looking to see what the next product will be that was repackaged and can be unlocked to gain power for the dollar spent. That in itself is a market just like overclocking is a market and gaming is a market and so forth. So it's not hard to think they may have done this with the vega series to meet production and if your lucky enough to have gotten a card with that 000000 bios, built when it was built and with the hynix memory module vs Samsung you may have a card produced early enough to where this was necessary as a company to stay in business and not affect customer loyalty. So is it at all possible that those rx vega 56 air boost cards are really repackaged 64's with a rewritten bios to lock things and that is why gpu-z was reporting the way it was until they were told to change their software to hide the stream processor count? Does it make sense to anyone that AMD, who is known for doing this very thing, might have sacrificed some 64's in the name of making quotas for the bigger market which is the 56 cards based on the cost of the card alone over the 64, at a time when they were struggling to get 64's on the market anyways due to the whole memory issue, and so to keep the 56 market moving forward they repackaged product? Would it really hurt anything or would it drive customers to suck up 56 cards in hopes of getting lucky and having an unlockable card once word got out? And wouldn't that mean that even if gpu-z is reporting right and the stream processors are locked but present, wouldn't a crafty person be able to rewrite a bios to unlock those cores so they are truly usable.

To me everything is adding up to say just that, that in my research and in my card and what it does vs my son's card when I play with them, i.e. reading that the hynrix modules scheduled for use on the 64's were a 1000MHz module and that when I change mine to that number it takes no problem, with no added heat, and I don't need to bump up voltage or anything else to achieve that, nor do I have to jump voltage to achieve my core speed number of currently 1752, I put in 1750 just like the specs for the 64 say it should be and it jumps to 1752 in wattman and I've tried to change that to 1750 but it just keeps putting it back at 1752 almost like it's meant to be that way. I'm not claiming to be all knowing but things just seem to keep adding up because of the fact I bought 2 cards the day I got mine, one for me and one for my son and my son's card is nothing like my card in any aspect and his does not play as nice as my card either. Both were bought at microcenter in the Twin Cities, his sits in an open faced case, a TT P3 while mine is in a TT tower 900, and my case should have a custom lc loop in it but I haven't got that done yet and so my MSI X399 gaming pro carbon with a 1900x threadripper is on a H80i V2 for the time being which is push/pull inbound to the case and then a 140mm fan in the front that does nothing for cooling the front of the case honestly and sits over a drive bay at the bottom end of the case pulling air past 2 drives and then 4 140s in the rear of the case bringing air into the back with a single 120 expelling air out of the back. My point is that I'm not exactly setup to have the temp's I'm getting and it's just dumb luck and why I'm not pushing things harder until I can get my lc loop done not to mention my house does not have air and it's been super hot the past couple of weeks around here. Everything says that my card temps should be higher given the facts but it's like this card is meant to run as a 64 out of the box but says it's a 56 where it matters most and so those higher clocks aren't driving the temps much higher over stock.

It's just an idea that I've had today while reading and researching and playing some with my card and so I decided to post what I know and hoping to find out if anyone else, if anyone even looks at this thread being its old, but if anyone else feels that it is possible that some of the original rx vega air boost 56's could be repackaged 64's on a rewritten bios and hence why the MSI bios is ending in 000000 when all the other and later MSI cards have a bios ending in a mix of numbers. To me it's like it's meant to tell someone at MSI, like a support tech on a phone, that hey they are dealing with a repackaged card. So there you have it, a theory that I'm curious to find out if anyone else thinks is a possibility. Sorry if it's hard to read or follow along, I am just trying to make sure I include what I felt was the important info along with how I think it could have came to be.

Hi @penguingenius, first of all welcome to techpowerup! My Asus R9 Fury Strix fully unlocked to 64CUS and has been like that and stable since day 1, then I increased the clocks and power limit to absurd values, but that is another story :P

While it is true that you could unlock some Fury cards to full fat Fury X (specially the early batches) I don't think the same holds for Vega 56 and 64... There were reports of the 56 unlocking to 64, but came out not to be true if i recall correctly... But I have not been totally in touch with the latest developments in regarding this mods... There was a guy that was on the forefront of fury bios mods that frequented both techpowerup and overclock.net/ and I'm sure that he is the best to answer your question, but I cannot remember his name... :( Lets hope someone who reads this does ;)

uuuaaaaaaHi @penguingenius, first of all welcome to techpowerup! My Asus R9 Fury Strix fully unlocked to 64CUS and has been like that and stable since day 1, then I increased the clocks and power limit to absurd values, but that is another story :p

While it is true that you could unlock some Fury cards to full fat Fury X (specially the early batches) I don't think the same holds for Vega 56 and 64... There were reports of the 56 unlocking to 64, but came out not to be true if i recall correctly... But I have not been totally in touch with the latest developments in regarding this mods... There was a guy that was on the forefront of fury bios mods that frequented both techpowerup and overclock.net/ and I'm sure that he is the best to answer your question, but I cannot remember his name... :( Lets hope someone who reads this does ;)

I can back up the Fury unlock. I have a Tri-X Fury that fully unlocked(it’s for sale actually) I just bought a Nitro+ Vega 64. I’d planned on a 56 but I caught the 64 on a “deal” and couldn’t resist. The user your mentioned helped me with mine I’ll dig through my messages and come back with a name. But yeah he hasn’t been around in a while.

Unlocking CUs on the 56 is rare almost never happens, there have been a handful instances where 1or 2 have unlocked after a bios flash so if that is your aim in flashing, even though there is no harm in trying. What is going on an what you are seeing is that the voltage limit and by extension power limit, and I also believe thermal limits are all higher on the 64 card allowing more headroom.

Hi again and thanks for the responses I have had as they are appreciated because I don't want to chase a phantom and waste a bunch of time when I could be tweaking other areas of my new build to get the power that is available. I also don't want to come across like a know it all when all I am doing is explaining what is going on in my head...my thought process and how I understand everything and how it could be that my card was destined to be a 64 until a series of events caused it to be a 56...and so if I'm wrong feel free to put me on track, that is why I'm here...I used to be a tech and so I understand more maybe than the average bear would but at the same time I don't know everything and that's why I came here because I like the thread and I liked the conversation and way it was conducted by all who had posted and I figured I can get some good honest answers from the people here. The way I understand from an article I read about the die process and it would make sense because it's the same process AMD uses for processors and why we can end up with unlockable CPU cores from a 4 core phenom II and jump up to an 6 core or 8 core and so forth is because when AMD creates the die, everything is there to make the high end CPU or GPU and when there is either less than perfect die's or some sort of flaw, QA flags it, and now becomes a lesser product. That said, it's no big secret that AMD hasn't been as anal as Intel when it comes to these issues and that's how a lot of us get to unlock cores on CPU's and unlock CU's on GPU's and so forth. That is one way potentially that a 56 card could become a 64 through a bios flash and it makes total sense to me. For what it costs to do the process along with the time involved of course you would set up to produce a product that in a perfect world, would produce everything as 64 and then use the less than perfect ones for a lesser product. The other way I understand things and what I think happened to cards that have the 000000 bios is that there was a ton of turmoil going on at the very time those 56 cards were produced, I mean it's not like today any of the 56 cards are coming out of the factory with a 000000 bios, but when they were, a lot of issues were happening as well as pressure from us the public wanting cards plus vendors putting pressure on AMD to produce die's for their use. If I understood my article right the pressure from vendors was so strong that MSI was threatening to not produce Vega cards and so would make even more sense then that AMD sacrificed perfect die's meant for 64 production in the name of getting vendors going with their designs to keep customers happy in the vendor world. That filters down to us in the end. So in a regular world like we have, normally the die's would have been used for 64's because they were flawless, but because of demand to produce along with all the issues like Hynix's plant fire screwing up the planned 1000MHz memory modules for the 64's and AMD having to figure out a solution for that, AMD decided to let those perfect dies go to vendors so that they could build the 56's and get them to market where normally they would only use the less than perfect die's to build a 56.

Hi Totally.....and yes like I can admit stupidity when I have it LOL and I didn't catch on that GPU-Z had adjusted things like the bandwidth when I plugged in 1000MHz. But there is still I believe something with that 000000 bios...I mean look at every other bios from MSI on the Vega's….it's a series of numbers....I really believe because of years of history being a strong follower of AMD and MSI products that I have a perfectly good 64 die on this card and the Hynix memory module was my first clue because I had just read the article about how they had to revert to 800MHz modules built by Samsung due to the fire at the Hynix facility, but some of the 1000MHz modules were already out there on die's.....and it makes more sense that they would not produce 64's with 1000MHz capability and then all the sudden tell end users and vendors sorry there was a fire at a factory and now all Vega 64's will only have 800MHz modules...that would be bad business....it makes better sense when the solution had to be that both 56 and 64 cards have 800MHz modules and you already have sent dies to the vendors that they had to turn those dies into 56 cards because they were not sure what they were going to do about not having 1000MHz modules anymore and so that would explain the delays in 64 production and why MSI along with other vendors were considering not building Vega's and...I'm getting long winded and trying to say, I can track in my head everything and put the pieces together how it could of and probably did happen....the headroom makes even more sense because my card with the Hynix module clocks very well and is stable on everything but stress testing so far without bumping voltage in wattman….as where my son's card which has a Samsung module....it does not like to be setup like a stock 64 card...it locks up the screen and so forth as soon as you do anything more that web browsing....my card however loves these settings....what is holding it back I do believe is power....the die wants more power and I can't deliver it because of the lock in the bios or because my power supply isn't able to give it but it wants 235W and I can't deliver and so when things like the fan come on because it's getting hot and needs to cool down....the GPU fan eating power that could of went to the die is causing issues.....flickers and voltage snaps through my speakers when the screen flickers and so on....I have a TT tough power gold 850watt power supply and it's being pushed I think as well by this new build and 1000watt would do much better and so some of what happens when the GPU fan comes on could just be that my power supply along with trying to keep up with everything else in the system isn't providing enough power to my card....because I'm not locking up my screen, and my stress test isn't quitting on me or anything like that....my temps are not out of line at 55c either, I just get some flickers on the screen and voltage snaps in the speaker....like scratching noise and then things go back to normal.....sorry I'm not very good again at explaining technical things....I know in my brain what I'm trying to say and can follow along but trying to put things into words....I'm not very good at that...what I'm trying to say is I think I have a true and original 64 production die with a 1000MHz Hynix module on my 56 card and because of everything going on at the time...it became a 56 because you can't put out a few thousand 1000MHz Hynix modules and then come out and say vendors and loyal customers, the rest of what we produce for 64's will only be 800MHz memory modules due to a fire....AMD had to scramble and come up with a solution and had already sent die's meant for 64 production out to MSI and others and now had to figure out what to do and so the solution was to make them into 56 cards while AMD worked with Hynix to figure out if they could produce the 1000MHz at another facility or not....and answer as we know was no they can't and so both cards are made with 800MHz Samsung's. Makes perfect sense to me....lock 8 CU cores through the bios and turn them into 56 cards so that vendors can get production going and everyone is happy and at some point a few people along the way are happy to when they put the pieces together...and I'm going to stick to something is up with the cards that have the 000000 bios...why is it marked like that....doesn't make sense or follow any of their other numbering schemes for the other cards....all the other cards 56 and 64....end in a series of numbers....not 0's and again if the article I read is correct....and my understanding over the years is correct...every single die in a perfect world could be a 64 card, it's only because it can't make the grade that it become lesser than the best, or through happenstance things happen and perfect dies get slated for lesser jobs and that's how I believe my card became a 56 vs a 64 and means that with a proper bios should flash and run as a 64 just fine with 64 CU and then OC it if I feel like....bonus is I have the Hynix module from that time....so where cards with a Samsung module are 800MHz and then you OC....mine would be 1000MHz before I even start playing with it.