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Pval

macrumors member
Jan 7, 2008
97
66
Holland
I noticed something odd while monitoring my Vega64 LC as I ran the Tomb Raider benchmark; according to ioreg my Fan speed drops when the temperature goes up... Purple = temp, blue = Fan Speed.
So is ioreg reliable?

upload_2018-8-19_14-11-3.png


MHz, RPM & Watt (bold) on the left axis, % and Temp (italic) on the right axis.
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
I noticed something odd while monitoring my Vega64 LC as I ran the Tomb Raider benchmark; according to ioreg my Fan speed drops when the temperature goes up... Purple = temp, blue = Fan Speed.
So is ioreg reliable?

View attachment 776756

MHz, RPM & Watt (bold) on the left axis, % and Temp (italic) on the right axis.

ioreg is very reliable with my RX580.

Your graph suggest that your card’s fan was stuck at 1500 RPM at the beginning. Once you start the benchmark, the GPU under stress, and that actually triggered something and make the fan profile back to normal. The card suddenly realise for that kind of temperatures, no need 1500RPM, therefore, the fan speed drop.

Until the temperature rise to certain level, and the fan need to spin up again. This looks make sense to me actually.

Of course, this explaination only applicable if your card’s fan was incorrectly stuck at 1500 at the beginning. AFAIK, that’s quite common for Vega card.
 
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Pval

macrumors member
Jan 7, 2008
97
66
Holland
True, I see that now, I thought the fan behaviour was fixed in the latest Mojave builds. This is the latest developer beta. I'll run some longer tests :)
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
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True, I see that now, I thought the fan behaviour was fixed in the latest Mojave builds. This is the latest developer beta. I'll run some longer tests :)

Anyway, may I know how you get that graphic? I only know how to use terminal to extract the number on the spot. Don’t know how to plot them.
 

Pval

macrumors member
Jan 7, 2008
97
66
Holland
I run ioreg every second and redirect the output to a file in csv format, which I can then edit in any spreadsheet program and convert into a chart:

# Grab the column headers from ioreg's output:
ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'|cut -d\" -f2|tr '\n' ',' && printf '\n'

# Grab the values every second:
while true
do
ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'|cut -d\" -f3|tr -d '='|tr '\n' ',' && printf '\n'
sleep 1
done​

I should be limiting ioreg's output somehow, but documentation is scarce.
"ioreg -l -n display@0 -r" limits the output somewhat, but ideally I'd only like to see output for 'AMDRadeonX5000_AMDVega10GraphicsAccelerator', I've not figured out howto though.

I tested with the Eulysium sample but I just ran it once, I'll run it continuously in a minute.

Bench order for the following chart: Luxball, Tomb Raider's Benchmark (TRB), Neumann, TRB, Hotel Lobby, TRB, Elysium, Luxball, TRB, Neumann, TRB, Hotel Lobby, Elysium.
Red = Core MHz, Green = Fan Speed.

upload_2018-8-20_11-21-49.png
 
Last edited:

Pval

macrumors member
Jan 7, 2008
97
66
Holland
Alright, ran Eulysium for 30 minutes, no effect on my fan-speed.
Ran Luxball stress-test for 5 minutes and then Neumann for 8 minutes. Temperature went up to 66 degrees Celsius, fan seemed to kick in at 65 degrees, but really kicked in when I quit Luxmark:

upload_2018-8-20_13-7-14.png


Update: 1500 rpm is the default fan speed for the liquid cooled Vega64, still I opened a bug report with Apple as I see the fan speed drop under load, until it hits the target temperature of 65 degrees celsius, then it kicks in, but only to maintain the temperature. Once I quit the stress-test the fan speeds up to 1740 rpm and then slowly drops to the default 1500 rpm again as the temperature drops.
I'm looking at modifying the settings using the Vega Control Table Generator and edit the kext next.
 
Last edited:
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XNorth

macrumors 6502
Feb 23, 2018
300
464
United States
Update to my last post...

I have been trying to replicate the low Vega FE idle fan speed at startup without IINA ( it happened twice). So far no luck.

To keep the fan down while using the cMP, I start a HEVC clip on IIAN, pause it when the fan RPM dips, then minimize IIAN.
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
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Portland, Ore.
I received an update from Apple engineering on the bug report I filed. They were unable to reproduce the fan speed issue. I don't know why. But the interesting part is that they actually are using an RX Vega 56 in a Mac Pro 5,1. They listed the test machine's configuration. Is this the first time we've seen Apple use Vega in the cMP? :)
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
I run ioreg every second and redirect the output to a file in csv format, which I can then edit in any spreadsheet program and convert into a chart:

# Grab the column headers from ioreg's output:
ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'|cut -d\" -f2|tr '\n' ',' && printf '\n'

# Grab the values every second:
while true
do
ioreg -l |grep \"PerformanceStatistics\" | cut -d '{' -f 2 | tr '|' ',' | tr -d '}' | tr ',' '\n'|grep 'Temp\|Fan\|%\|(W)\|Hz'|cut -d\" -f3|tr -d '='|tr '\n' ',' && printf '\n'
sleep 1
done​

I should be limiting ioreg's output somehow, but documentation is scarce.
"ioreg -l -n display@0 -r" limits the output somewhat, but ideally I'd only like to see output for 'AMDRadeonX5000_AMDVega10GraphicsAccelerator', I've not figured out howto though.

I tested with the Eulysium sample but I just ran it once, I'll run it continuously in a minute.

Bench order for the following chart: Luxball, Tomb Raider's Benchmark (TRB), Neumann, TRB, Hotel Lobby, TRB, Elysium, Luxball, TRB, Neumann, TRB, Hotel Lobby, Elysium.
Red = Core MHz, Green = Fan Speed.

View attachment 776877

Thanks for the sharing, I use a much more stupid method, Automator :p
1243MHz GPU monitoring.jpg

No graph or log, but it will self refresh the ioreg for every 2 seconds, good enough to monitor the parameters :D

Anyway, the above test is a Sapphire PULSE RX580 8GB with the WX7100 settings (via VBIOS mod). The card will run stably in macOS at 75C (ambient 34C, no air con) in Unigine Heaven loop, 31% fan (~1400RPM), and only draw ~140W. I am more than happy to let it run just ~7% slower (then default settings) in real world, but draw ~25% less power, and stay much cooler and quieter.
 
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MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
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Portland, Ore.
So I bought the sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 shown here. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074HC93W8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Is it safe to flash it with the bios for the Sapphire Nitro+ RX Vega 64 (model 11275-03) and will it solve my fan issue?

Does your 64 have the fan issue in the latest Mojave beta with latest firmware? If so then before you flash it you could submit a bug report. If Apple doesn’t fix it or if you’re impatient then yes the Nitro+ bios would mostly fix the fan issue. I would probably try the secondary bios for the Nitro+ since the reference card has only 1 fan.
 

Claywd

macrumors newbie
Nov 9, 2012
24
0
Does your 64 have the fan issue in the latest Mojave beta with latest firmware? If so then before you flash it you could submit a bug report. If Apple doesn’t fix it or if you’re impatient then yes the Nitro+ bios would mostly fix the fan issue. I would probably try the secondary bios for the Nitro+ since the reference card has only 1 fan.

I'm not brave enough to put my Mac Pro 5,1 on Mojave at this point. lol I think I might just wait and if it aint fixed by January then I'll flash the bios. Takes apple a few months after a major Mac OS version.

Thanks for that confirmation though! ;)

ps: any idea besides here that I might find the bios version you were talking about?

ps:ps: In case anyone is curious, I run a secondary power supply, 12 Cores, 32GB ram, a modified airport chip, bluray and a whole bunch of other stuff I want to make sure keeps working. I usually wait several months after release before upgrading Mac OS. Been burned too many times, which only hurts more when you don't have a boot screen.
 
Last edited:

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Little bit tweaking of the Sapphire PULSE RX580 8GB ROM.

Voltage pointer to 65283
GPU clock down a little bit to 1340MHz
VRAM clock up to 2250MHz
Automatic memory timing patch applied by the PolarisBiosEditor 1.6.7

End up have a RX580 that run 20% faster than stock setting.
GPU stay at or below 75C (native target temperature) with fans tiny bit below max 2280 RPM.
No thermal / power throttling observed.
RX580-1340.png


No as powerful as Vega, but very good performance to cost ratio now. And of course, the card still can stay within the cMP's power envelope, no Pixlas mod / ePSU required.
 

Squuiid

macrumors 68000
Oct 31, 2006
1,877
1,713
Little bit tweaking of the Sapphire PULSE RX580 8GB ROM.

Voltage pointer to 65283
GPU clock down a little bit to 1340MHz
VRAM clock up to 2250MHz
Automatic memory timing patch applied by the PolarisBiosEditor 1.6.7

End up have a RX580 that run 20% faster than stock setting.
GPU stay at or below 75C (native target temperature) with fans tiny bit below max 2280 RPM.
No thermal / power throttling observed.
View attachment 777489

No as powerful as Vega, but very good performance to cost ratio now. And of course, the card still can stay within the cMP's power envelope, no Pixlas mod / ePSU required.
Wow, that's impressive. Nice work.
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Finally got reply from Apple about video hardware encoding.

Interestingly, they said that shouldn't work. But software encoding should work.

Of course, then I show them no way to export video in QuickTime Player no matter that's hardware encoding or software encoding (regardless "HEVC" box is ticked or not). And now they are working on it.
 

thomasthegps

macrumors regular
Sep 23, 2015
220
145
France
Finally got reply from Apple about video hardware encoding.

Interestingly, they said that shouldn't work. But software encoding should work.

Of course, then I show them no way to export video in QuickTime Player no matter that's hardware encoding or software encoding (regardless "HEVC" box is ticked or not). And now they are working on it.


So they are purposefully disabling HEVC hardware encoding...
 

XNorth

macrumors 6502
Feb 23, 2018
300
464
United States
Apple responded to my high fan speed bug report in Mojave. They asked for a sysdiagnose. Would a sysdiagnose capture the fan speed issue? I'm skeptical. Anyone know how to read a sysdiagnose?
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
2,390
Portland, Ore.
Apple responded to my high fan speed bug report in Mojave. They asked for a sysdiagnose. Would a sysdiagnose capture the fan speed issue? I'm skeptical. Anyone know how to read a sysdiagnose?

I don't know. At least they are willing to work on it. I would provide the sysdiagnose and any information they request.
 
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XNorth

macrumors 6502
Feb 23, 2018
300
464
United States
I don't know. At least they are willing to work on it. I would provide the sysdiagnose and any information they request.

Yep. Just wondering if there is something else I could send them that would be a sure thing. Would be a disappointment if they came back and said sorry we can't find anything wrong. Trust that they are going in the right direction and they will find what they need to address the bug.
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,454
13,601
Yep. Just wondering if there is something else I could send them that would be a sure thing. Would be a disappointment if they came back and said sorry we can't find anything wrong. Trust that they are going in the right direction and they will find what they need to address the bug.

If your have the same problem as mine, fan speed just for a minute or too after wake up/start up, do a sysdiagnose when the fans are running fast.
 

Lenny_

macrumors member
Aug 28, 2018
30
36
Europe
Just recently I got myself a MacPro 4.1 to upgrade it as much as possible. For at least two weeks I was reading every forum and post I could find ... regarding all possible updates.
For a while I was quite uncertain regarding what graphics adapter to use...

This thread here was THE major influence why I decided to try a:
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX Vega 56
I got it today and put it into the computer: it just works! No hassle at all - it just(!) works!! -> awesome!

Thank you guys!!

here are some benchmarks I did run:
Open CL 48 GB.jpeg

lux 48GB 1.jpeg


ps.:
one question though: since I installed the Vega... there is an audio device listed (PCI). It says no driver installed ... does it need any?
 
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hannibal1969

macrumors newbie
Aug 28, 2018
4
2
Hi experts. Today I finally received my Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro+. I was working out of the box. There is however a strange issue. If I play game everything is ok. Also benchmarks runs as expected. When I exit the game or benchmark and the card was under load the fans start spinning to I think maximum level. I have to sleep/ wake or reboot my Mac. Also when I try to capture rpm / temps and load I see only temps displayed. Any idea how to fix this?
 

Squuiid

macrumors 68000
Oct 31, 2006
1,877
1,713
Just recently I got myself a MacPro 4.1 to upgrade it as much as possible. For at least two weeks I was reading every forum and post I could find ... regarding all possible updates.
For a while I was quite uncertain regarding what graphics adapter to use...

This thread here was THE major influence why I decided to try a:
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX Vega 56
I got it today and put it into the computer: it just works! No hassle at all - it just(!) works!! -> awesome!

Thank you guys!!

here are some benchmarks I did run:
View attachment 778356
View attachment 778355

ps.:
one question though: since I installed the Vega... there is an audio device listed (PCI). It says no driver installed ... does it need any?
No fan issues?
 
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