Flashing an RX Vega 56 with a Vega 64 BIOS will not unlock additional shaders
Flashing an RX Vega 56 with a Vega 64 BIOS will not unlock additional shaders
Over the past few days, there have been several reports from RX Vega 56 users that they have been able to unlock additional shaders on their GPUs by flashing onto it an RX Vega 64 BIOS, with other reports stating that their RX Vega 56 has shipped with over 56 active CUs out of the box.
These reports have led many to call AMD’s RX Vega 56 binning inconsistent, saying that some users are getting more CUs (and more performance) for free while others are advocating the use of BIOS flashing tools to “unlock” additional stream processors on their GPU.
Both of these reports are false, with these incorrect GPU core/Stream processor counts being read by the program resulting in a data readout that is giving users incorrect data. This has been confirmed to be a “under-the-hood” bug in version v2.3.0 of GPU-Z, which is currently being fixed by Techpowerup.
This means that “shader unlocking” is not possible on AMD’s RX Vega GPUs, and that those who are reporting that their GPU has over 56 active CUs are simply mistaken. The extra performance that they are experiencing is due to core clock speed increases, increased HBM2 memory speeds and higher power limits.
(An example of a buggy GPU-Z reading for an RX Vega 64)
This bug will be addressed in a future version of GPU-Z.
Update – GPU-Z v2.4.0 has been released, which contains a fix for this issue.
You can join the discussion on GPU-Z’s shader reading bug for AMD’s RX Vega 56 on the OC3D Forums.