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.
Lets hope someone who reads this does 
