wow, thank you so much for looking into things. I can't imagine why these stupid Vega cards aren't even beating 590's by much...

i don't know what other things to try to adjust. I am not even worried about the efficiency right now. i have the voltages up so I could have high clocks and stable mining. Just now getting good hashrate.
The only thing i have not tried is installing newer drivers from AMD. Didn't want to abandon known-good drivers for other algos unless i had to.
guess I'll have to experiment with some different drivers. 

thanks again Andrucrypt, you rock
🖖🏼