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

[Gideon]

Some buyers remorse:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6ugqql/i_bought_vega_64_mrsp_and_regret_it/

 

[zinfamous]

Regardless of whether or not its the best gaming card, the primary revenue stream for the RTG is gaming. Same goes for nVIDIA as the majority of their revenue and profits come from the gaming market. Its their core and primary business in terms of video cards. So saying things like "its not meant to be" is a poor attempt at masking their failure. If for all intent and purpose that was their goal, to go for a more compute orientated card and go after those markets, then they've essentially risked their primary business doing so.

From my industrial experience (I know its anecdotal but Im thinking alot of users will share the same sentiment), only a few very specific type of work loads in a prosumer environment (engineering for instance) actually benefit from having a workstation or compute GPU to do the work. Most of the performance comes down to the CPU/Memory and the hard disk..

VEGA has failed to meet performance targets. Its missed the power targets. Its not even that great in terms of compute mainly due to lacking the sofare toolchains and libraries. And its late.

And can we not start one of those "the human eye can only see X FPS so A cards are not required" arguments.. and no your general adobe experience outside very specific work types will not be greatly enhanced by using VEGA as opposed to a GTX1080. Actually Id rather have the 1080 because with VEGA your going to consume more power even for 2D tasks.

Su already explained, a few times, that RTG focus has been aimed at compute for some time, and the much, much, much larger outside of gaming. "RTGs primary revenue stream has been gaming" doesn't mean that is their strategy going forward, especially if they are aiming for a more profitable piece of the pie.

Assuming this actually works out for them--maybe by the time of a mature Navi this will be more apparent--AMD could be poised to have a solid lineup of premium consumer GPUs for compute and all applications that aren't games, that can also game pretty damn well. But this FE/RX branding doesn't seem to point towards that strategy, but they do have the dual FE/gaming driver package for the FE, right? That could be a preliminary sign of where they intend to release their product stack going forward. A single use high-performance chip that is optimized for various use cases with an on-the-fly driver switch.

Do you know what Vega's performance targets were? Does anyone know this outside of AMD and RTG? We need to know those targets before we can claim that it failed to meet them. I'm not downplaying the fact that this release is disappointing for many, many reasons, but too many consumers are injecting assumptions into this project where no one really has the info.

 

[krumme]

That makes no sense, the other way around is a lot more of an issue: being locked in when upgrading your GPU.
It would be much easier for me to go back to Nvidia if they stopped being jackasses and just supported the VESA adaptive sync standard.

I really want to get an AMD GPU but it's absurd right now. Polaris is out of stock and highly inflated. Vega 64 is selling for €650 while GTX1080 is €500-€550, though I'm not interested in their shitty reference blower anyway.
So unless I'm seeing AIB Vega 56 under €500 in the next 1-2 months what choice do I really have?

Yeaa its a mess.
The complain about 100 usd is just over the top. Not to defend the crazy vega prices but 100 usd even times 3 get you nowhere vs cost for gsynch. Add historically have amd prices been very compettitive for the perf.
The idea of an amd card beeing more expensive vs nvidia is just totally new and i guess thats why we complain.
This is just fe tax. And they can do it because of freesynch but also because there is probably a lot of perf potential hidden in vega.

 

[PeterScott]

Yeaa its a mess.
The complain about 100 usd is just over the top. Not to defend the crazy vega prices but 100 usd even times 3 get you nowhere vs cost for gsynch. Add historically have amd prices been very compettitive for the perf.
The idea of an amd card beeing more expensive vs nvidia is just totally new and i guess thats why we complain.
This is just fe tax. And they can do it because of freesynch but also because there is probably a lot of perf potential hidden in vega.

You don't need G-Sync or Freesync. Before 2015 Freesync didn't even exist.

I am not buying into the marketing that all of sudden, I must have this new feature and need to buy a new monitor.

Save even more money, and just use your current monitor.

 

[Gideon]

Save even more money, and just use your current monitor.

Couldn't agree more. Gsync is ridiculously expensive right now and Freesync 2 is also around the corner, unless one also wants to update monitors yearly, imo it's best to hold on a bit (at least that's what i will do), unless your current monitor truly is ancient.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Some buyers remorse:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6ugqql/i_bought_vega_64_mrsp_and_regret_it/

That's amusing. The reviews were out though, all he had to do was skim through benchmarks or at the very least read conclusion page. As I and many others have said, I truly do not know who's buying these cards at inflated MSRP.

 

[zinfamous]

Couldn't agree more. Gsync is ridiculously expensive right now and Freesync 2 is also around the corner, unless one also wants to update monitors yearly, imo it's best to hold on a bit (at least that's what i will do), unless your current monitor truly is ancient.

well Freesync 2 is already here (in the displays, anyway)
http://www.samsung.com/us/computing...ming-monitor-with-quantum-dot-lc32hg70qqnxza/

But for me I wouldn't upgrade just for one of these features, but if I want to upgrade my monitor anyway (say going from 1080 to 2K or 4K), then I doubt I would buy a monitor without the feature.

 

[Mercennarius]

Honestly hope AMD gets enough negative feedback on this price increase that they scale back the base MSRPs to $399/$499 again.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Honestly hope AMD gets enough negative feedback on this price increase that they scale back the base MSRPs to $399/$499 again.

I wonder how much room they have to lower the price though. It'd be pretty bad for AMD if they started churning out these cards hoping to ride the miner wave, and when no miner would touch them ended up with huge stock of cards that they would have to sell at a loss...

 

[Magic Hate Ball]

well Freesync 2 is already here (in the displays, anyway)
http://www.samsung.com/us/computing...ming-monitor-with-quantum-dot-lc32hg70qqnxza/

But for me I wouldn't upgrade just for one of these features, but if I want to upgrade my monitor anyway (say going from 1080 to 2K or 4K), then I doubt I would buy a monitor without the feature.

As an owner of the C32HG70, it's a pretty beast, but the Freesync range is nowhere near as good as the Nixeus EDG 27.

 

[richierich1212]

The funny thing is people are complaining about the $100 increase yet i highly doubt most people were even looking to purchase Vega even when it was $100 less. The limited supplies are still selling out. Hardcore fanboys? Miners?

 

[CatMerc]

I wouldn't do without Freesync anymore. Yes it didn't exist before 2015 and yes I gamed before then, but it's one of those things you just can't do without once you get used to it.

Presented with an RX 580 system with a FreeSync monitor, or a GTX 1070 system with a normal monitor, I would rather take the 580 system. Same applies to RX Vega vs 1080 Ti.

Now if you're willing to pay the G-Sync tax you're getting access to the best GPU's, but that's a gamble I took a long time ago that didn't pay off. I expected RX Vega to be at least close to 1080 Ti as Fury X was to 980 Ti, but hindsight 20/20.

 

[Paul98]

So do we have any MSAA benchmarks?

 

[Tweak155]

Also there are some cases where the monitor you really want does not have a GSync variant (at least in my case). I am currently considering that new Samsung 49" FreeSync2 behemoth, looks like fun to me!

 

[Stormflux]

Then go buy that gsynch monitor. Why not?
Add 200 to 800 usd each time you change your monitor.
Select your monitor from 20% of the models on the market.
Seems to me like lifelong tax on stupid people

And the high end G-Sync monitors have a stupid panel lottery roulette going on because of the poor QA when using the AUOptronics panel.

I've been looking at it again since Vega launched. I've decided to wait with my FuryX and Freesync monitor.... My last hope for this stupid vendor lock is that both companies support the standard Adaptive Sync HDMI 2.1 spec on TV's and Monitors coming out next year. As CatMerc said, it is that good. If Volta support HDMI 2.1, then it'll easily get my money at this rate.

 

[Rifter]

.
Seems to me like lifelong tax on stupid people

This would only be the case if AMD had a viable high end card, right now they do not, and considering they will not for 18+ months until Navi(and thats assuming they dont screw navi up as bad as vega)

Right now if you want top tier graphics power your only reasonable options are 1080/1080Ti.

IMO its better to pay the $200 Gysnc tax than spend $100-$200 over MSRP on Vega considering you can get a 1080 cheaper, that performs better, has no AA issues, and uses alot less power to boot.

I would have loved to go Vega and Freesync but AMD is not giving me a GPU option thats viable, and honestly after this botched launch im loosing hope that they ever will, Nvida has offered Reliable performance for the past 5 years, being locked into Gync is not such a bad thing when you are locked into the company thats actually releasing top tier gaming cards reliably, that perform better than their competition at considerably less power usage.

Whats is a tax on stupid people is buying vega for current prices.

 

[Mercennarius]

If it wasn't for FreeSync Monitors and their much lower price point, Vega would really be hurting at it's $499/$599 price point...AMD needs to be competitive in price/performance on the GPUs alone and not rely on monitor pricing to persuade buyers.

 

[Tweak155]

If it wasn't for FreeSync Monitors and their much lower price point, Vega would really be hurting at it's $499/$599 price point...AMD needs to be competitive in price/performance on the GPUs alone and not rely on monitor pricing to persuade buyers.

I agree this is a bad strategy and it was the first thing I thought when I heard about the bundles. They then made it worse limiting it to a badly spec'ed monitor. Still, my decision as to what to buy will be swayed by prices & performance of what is available when I'm ready. I'm hoping Vega takes a dive in the next few months or NVidia releases something along the lines of a 1070 Ti.

 

[Rifter]

I agree this is a bad strategy and it was the first thing I thought when I heard about the bundles. They then made it worse limiting it to a badly spec'ed monitor. Still, my decision as to what to buy will be swayed by prices & performance of what is available when I'm ready. I'm hoping Vega takes a dive in the next few months or NVidia releases something along the lines of a 1070 Ti.

If they dont get prices under control by xmas they are screwed, They only have till Volta launches to fix pricing, they wont stand a chance competing with 2060/2070's they need to sell cards now not wait till later.

 

[Bouowmx]

ASUS sent a sample of ROG Radeon RX Vega 64 STRIX to Computer Base and Hardware Info. Summary on Videocardz.

ASUS ROG STRIX variant has same frequency as liquid reference variant, and additionally, a higher power limit. As expected, compared to the air reference variant, frequency, performance, and power is up, while sound is down.

 

[Tweak155]

If they dont get prices under control by xmas they are screwed, They only have till Volta launches to fix pricing, they wont stand a chance competing with 2060/2070's they need to sell cards now not wait till later.

Yes I agree, but as it currently sits they ARE selling out, so it will at least be a few weeks until we might see something I'm guessing.

 

[amenx]

First AIB review I believe, for the Asus RX Vega 64 Strix Gaming:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/109078-asus-radeon-rx-vega-64-strix-gaming/

 

[Mercennarius]

First AIB review I believe, for the Asus RX Vega 64 Strix Gaming:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/109078-asus-radeon-rx-vega-64-strix-gaming/

So roughly about a 5% increase overall with better cooling. The last sentence hit the nail on the head not just for the Asus variant but for any air cooled Vega 64:

Good enough to charge £500 for the privilege? Yes, but not a whole lot more.

 

[AtenRa]

hmmm posted already

 

[Phynaz]

First AIB review I believe, for the Asus RX Vega 64 Strix Gaming:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/109078-asus-radeon-rx-vega-64-strix-gaming/

Jeez, overclocking the Asus adds another 140W+ 121W of power consumption. 450W 430W of board power to beat a stock GTX 1080.

Edit: I hate math.