AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and 56 Reviews [*UPDATED* Aug 28]

[Phynaz]

Heh, there has never been a 1070 at $349 that is worth a damn cooling wise. Maybe some sale deals if you count game deals. And as you say, due to mining prices (last year it was just supply/demand) you're lucky to find a 1070 for $400.

Gigabyte Gaming Windforce was $350 in June.

 

[tential]

I have it the same way.
What i will do for my rx64 is trade some temp and perf for far better efficiency.
Surely this vega looks very bad and deserve some flak. But if we go back to the 780ti launch things were not so so bad but nearly. The 780ti was clearly much faster than the 290x that sounded like a jetplane and sucked up power.
We tend to forget how bad the refefence 290x looked here.
Go back and look at the discussion we had back then. The 290x was hammered.
Time were very good for the 290x. Very. We know that.
I dont think vega will fare nearly as good but there is clear facts for perf that defenitively points the right direction. And its near future imo. And power can as i showed with tpu rx 56 review pretty much be solved. The bashing of this gpu is a bit over the top.
I think the problem will be availability and thereby price. The problems goes far beyond the arch.
If its priced over their counterparts it clearly doesnt make sense.
But so what. Then you just get a gpu with another name.

Its an utterly useless gpu for mobile but its amd problem. Mm2 and hbm2 the same.

I seem some people will better support amd. It makes no sense. In reality its supporting mubadala. An incompetent investment fund. Buy the gpu that solves your need.

The difference was the day the 290x came out we knew it was better and had throttling issues and was STILL competitive.

That's why we sorely miss Russian sensation on here. He told me to not wait for Vega and get a gtx 1070. I really miss his insight throughout this launch. We should bring him back and just chain him to a keyboard.
Edit:
To be clear, Russian's logic was purely rational in that mining was profitable and you could easily make enough profit combined with resale value to more than cover your costs. It's those types of mathematical breakdowns we need back.

 

[Trumpstyle]

Something fishy is going on about the price for vega 64. Here in Sweden the radeon 64 just got a price increased of 100$+tax.
https://www.komplett.se/kampanj/41018/amd-vega (it was 5090sek this morning, now it's 6090Sek)

I'm reading something similiar happening in UK. Where vega 64 got 100 pund price increase shortly after launch.

 

[tamz_msc]

Something fishy is going on about the price for vega 64. Here in Sweden the radeon 64 just got a price increased of 100$+tax.
https://www.komplett.se/kampanj/41018/amd-vega (it was 5090sek this morning, now it's 6090Sek)

I'm reading something similiar happening in UK. Where vega 64 got 100 pund price increase shortly after launch.

It's happening everywhere. Here in India the price set by distributors means that the cards are retailing at the corresponding "packs" rather than MSRP. Apparently AMD told them to sell at these prices.

 

[PeterScott]

Something fishy is going on about the price for vega 64. Here in Sweden the radeon 64 just got a price increased of 100$+tax.
https://www.komplett.se/kampanj/41018/amd-vega (it was 5090sek this morning, now it's 6090Sek)

I'm reading something similiar happening in UK. Where vega 64 got 100 pund price increase shortly after launch.

This apparently happened everywhere. Essentially it was just like that Videocardz story that said AMD was jacking up all the prices getting rid of the $499 (adjust for local currency) bottom model.

 

[Rifter]

The difference was the day the 290x came out we knew it was better and had throttling issues and was STILL competitive.

That's why we sorely miss Russian sensation on here. He told me to not wait for Vega and get a gtx 1070. I really miss his insight throughout this launch. We should bring him back and just chain him to a keyboard.

what ever happened to russian? i miss his posts too.

 

[Glo.]

If thats true, and prices rise 100 $/pounds, then vega is DOA. Period.

The rise of prices will be logical if Primitive Shaders activation in drivers, and proper drivers will bring significant increase in performance. Otherwise it would be absolutely stupid move by AMD. NOBODY is that incompetent.

The fact that they are willing to raise the price some time after the launch after the release suggest that currently we get unfinished product at a discount, if this theory is true.

However, Gibbo was wrong before about mining performance of Vega. On the other hand, if Primitive Shaders feature is bringing large uplift in performance that would justify the price hike - then maybe Mining performance is still crippled by drivers?

Theoretically this makes sense.

 

[Rifter]

The rise of prices will be logical if Primitive Shaders activation in drivers, and proper drivers will bring significant increase in performance. Otherwise it would be absolutely stupid move by AMD. NOBODY is that incompetent.

The fact that they are willing to raise the price some time after the launch after the release suggest that currently we get unfinished product at a discount, if this theory is true.

However, Gibbo was wrong before about mining performance of Vega. On the other hand, if Primitive Shaders feature is bringing large uplift in performance that would justify the price hike - then maybe Mining performance is still crippled by drivers?

Theoretically this makes sense.

Then they had better get those drivers with increased performance out this afternoon. Read the above few posts about this price hike already happening.

 

[Glo.]

Then they had better get those drivers with increased performance out this afternoon. Read the above few posts about this price hike already happening.

Yep, I posted it before seeing them.

At this moment the decision making by AMD management is... weird. At least.

 

[tential]

Gibbo say todays launch price is smoke and mirrors
https://www.techpowerup.com/236177/amds-rx-vega-launch-prices-might-be-just-smoke-and-mirrors

This was posted earlier and we've been discussing it or trying to. Thanks for posting again though hopefully we'll all get on the same page.

Maybe quote the most relevant text and bold it since many wont click the link?

 

[Phynaz]

Since when is power not a factor?

When it doesn't suite the narrative of course...

Nano at $550 was a better product vs the GTX 980Ti. $100 cheaper for almost the same perf, more efficient with higher perf/watt and half card size.

Im not saying that power consumption is not a concern in general, for example everyone will agree here that its better to have the RX 480 at 150W TDP vs R9 390 at 250W TDP at the same performance

GPU power consumption alone is one thing, but Total System power consumption under gaming is what we care about.

I dont care if CPU A uses more power than CPU B if the entire system A draws less energy at the wall than System B

im waiting to see if ZEN will have better perf/watt than Intel CPUs.

 

[krumme]

The difference was the day the 290x came out we knew it was better and had throttling issues and was STILL competitive.

That's why we sorely miss Russian sensation on here. He told me to not wait for Vega and get a gtx 1070. I really miss his insight throughout this launch. We should bring him back and just chain him to a keyboard.

In context of longevity imo:
At that time the bf3 was carying the lead engine.
Here the 290x edged out the 780 in 1440 as i remember.
Still the 780ti was clearly 11% faster or so. Again 1440.
Today the lead engine and game is id with doom
Here the rx64 edge out the 1080
Again 1080ti is fastest.
More than 11%. Yes. But not 30.
And yes vega is half a year late to this party.
But its not the end of days. It is a fairly similar situation.

Go back and read.
I remember one person writing post after post with negativity especially about the noise of the 290x. Man. We dont need the same post that says the same.
I mean now we have all said its noisy and powerhungry about 4 times each. Some 40 times. Yeaa. Some have practiced for a month while talking to 1 person writing about the super drivers to come.
I think its time to move on. We have been there.

 

[krumme]

Something fishy is going on about the price for vega 64. Here in Sweden the radeon 64 just got a price increased of 100$+tax.
https://www.komplett.se/kampanj/41018/amd-vega (it was 5090sek this morning, now it's 6090Sek)

I'm reading something similiar happening in UK. Where vega 64 got 100 pund price increase shortly after launch.

Yep i got my card from komplett at 3999 dkk
You slow heads. Why didnt you move. Same for ocuk.
Now its gone. Lol.
Wtf did you expect. That more arma 3 and gta5 bm would save you another 100 usd? Lol. The rest of the world is not stupid and knows where its going performance wise. Man up. The time for dirt cheap amd cards is over. Get used to it.

 

[raghu78]

The rise of prices will be logical if Primitive Shaders activation in drivers, and proper drivers will bring significant increase in performance. Otherwise it would be absolutely stupid move by AMD. NOBODY is that incompetent.

The fact that they are willing to raise the price some time after the launch after the release suggest that currently we get unfinished product at a discount, if this theory is true.

However, Gibbo was wrong before about mining performance of Vega. On the other hand, if Primitive Shaders feature is bringing large uplift in performance that would justify the price hike - then maybe Mining performance is still crippled by drivers?

Theoretically this makes sense.

Never underestimate AMD.

 

[tential]

Yep i got my card from komplett at 3999 dkk
You slow heads. Why didnt you move. Same for ocuk.
Now its gone. Lol.
Wtf did you expect. That more arma 3 and gta5 bm would save you another 100 usd? Lol. The rest of the world is not stupid and knows where its going performance wise. Man up. The time for dirt cheap amd cards is over. Get used to it.

The time for super cheap amd cards is a cycle... It's not over it'll be back 15 months from now.

$279 Vega 64 and $229 Vega 56.

Or whatever just like with what happened to Fiji. Amds best cycle is their sell off cycle/stock clearing. That's the best time to buy for amd.

 

[krumme]

The time for super cheap amd cards is a cycle... It's not over it'll be back 15 months from now.

$279 Vega 64 and $229 Vega 56.

Or whatever just like with what happened to Fiji. Amds best cycle is their sell off cycle/stock clearing. That's the best time to buy for amd.

I think thats a tad optimistic but thats just me and my guesses about bom and boring things like marginal revenue. But great times if it happens. I wouldnt say no to that as a gamer. We need lower prices for sure.
Unfortunately i think what is needed to go there is more perf mm2 from amd. I dont care if it comes as driver or new arch.

 

[krumme]

Never underestimate AMD.

If there is demand then they should raise prices. Why not?

 

[AtenRa]

When it doesn't suite the narrative of course...

edit: since when competitive is only about power consumption ??

It was you that made power consumption the only metric of competitiveness but forgot to actually make it a personal preference when in fact we were talking about VEGA 56 being competitive against GTX1070 in general.
By your own metric, I could make it personal and say that VEGA 56 is even better than GTX1080 because I only play DOOM

from your own link
http://techreport.com/review/32391/amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-and-rx-vega-56-graphics-cards-reviewed/3

 

[PhonakV30]

When it doesn't suite the narrative of course...

hmm not sure what he says.

 

[Fallen Kell]

The 1070,1080 and 1080Ti have the same fps, so it's quite likely to be a CPU bottleneck and not geometry performance.

At which point you then have to ask why are the AMD cards getting CPU constrained ~15 frames per second below where the Nvidia cards get CPU constrained? If it truly was CPU constraint, you would expect the cards with enough performance to all be bottlenecking at about the same rate (within 1-2 frames per second), as it isn't the graphics slowing things down but the CPU (the only exception be be that the AMD drivers are so bad that they require the CPU to perform so much extra work that it bottlenecks the CPU lower, at which point in time AMD cards have another bottleneck that AMD engineers did not care enough about to fix in hardware, and instead decided to try and get away with it in software).

 

[PeterScott]

It was you that made power consumption the only metric of competitiveness but forgot to actually make it a personal preference when in fact we were talking about VEGA 56 being competitive against GTX1070 in general.
By your own metric, I could make it personal and say that VEGA 56 is even better than GTX1080 because I only play DOOM

from your own link
http://techreport.com/review/32391/amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-and-rx-vega-56-graphics-cards-reviewed/3

You could have a future on AMD's marketing team.

 

[EXCellR8]

anyone got any info on whether or not we'll be able to use Afterburner with Vega? last Radeon software required a new beta in order to OC. before that happened I tried using wattman but it was super buggy and my settings were never retained upon rebooting the computer. I also got lots of fun little checkerboard artifacts with the latest drivers. i don't like that software much btw.

 

[AtenRa]

You could have a future on AMD's marketing team.

You should change your Avatar picture because unlike the owl, it seems you only read what you want and discard the rest

 

[itsmydamnation]

My total system load Using a Gigabyte GTX 1070 doesn't exceed 260W, right in the sweet spot of a 450W PSU.

So yes, I am in the GTX 1070 market.

I'm am not - along with many others - in the Vega market because it is a ridiculous power hog. It's 88 degrees here right now, who wants another 100W of hot air blowing at them?

So there you go. Is Vega 56 competitive? Yes, for some fans. Is Vega 56 very competitive? Absolutely not once all the downsides are taken into consideration.

Man VEGA is bad enough it doesn't need this is just terrible logic also added to it. If power consumption is your concern you can run the power saving TDP config, reduce your load by 100 odd watts while only decreasing performance as few percent. At that point its still 56 vs 1070 and 64 vs 1080. Yes pascal still has around 50 watt advantage but lets be honest here, the usage cases where 50watt power consumption difference matters are orders of magnitude fewer then 140-180 watt power consumption difference.

Also i like the hyperbole of throwing in the temperature, since when does that matter? You can either dissipate the energy or not.

 

[PeterScott]

You should change your Avatar picture because unlike the owl, it seems you only read what you want and discard the rest

I read everything and discarded nothing. I only responded to what I saw as the most ironic element, as you chose Doom as your target game, which has been the favorite demo game for AMD RTG marketing.

I didn't get into your Strawman about power being the only criteria, because I already covered that in a previous post.