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

[PeterScott]

Hardware Unboxed has a followup video discussing the 30% performance advantage of V56 over 1070 on Dirt 4. Also, why he compared reference V56 to non-FE 1070.

I'm guessing there's going to be a lot more of things like this as the architecture matures and settings are compared.

I like this review for that page that shows all 25 games with the +/- percent.

Like he said, there are big swings depending on the game, and it makes it clear why different reviews are showing different results. It is mostly down to the game selection.

Another bit on info in the Video was that he talked to AIB partners and there are no AIB cards coming anytime soon.

This makes sense, because IMO everything screams borderline paper launch. AMD has been racing to get this card to market, Reviewers only got 2 days with the cards, and likely got some of the first cards of the line, which I expect only started very recently,

 

[tential]

It's perhaps strange if you haven't experienced it but you would understand when you have. I don't have perfect vision and wear glasses when gaming but jaggies are very apparent at 40" 4K whether you approve of it or not. I was on 980ti SLI, went Titan XP SLI and settled after 6 months on1080ti as Arma 3 was slower in SLI than not and I spend 95% of my gaming there. I like my games to look good and keep thinking about getting another 1080ti as GTA5 especially looked a lot better Titan XP/1080ti SLI so another 1080ti would do the trick but having owned that for 6 months it's really not worth £700/$850 to me for 5 hours better GTA5 per month.
People who buy pathetic 27" 4K screens are missing the wow factor of 4K. I know having owned a 27" 4K Samsung that the resolution is so fine on such a small screen that it might well be fine without AA but at 40 inches it's not. Keep telling me what the 'consensus' is by people using 23"-27" 4K because I'm sure they or you who's never experienced it know best

What do you do as an Nvidia user who wants 4k but doesn't want crappy 27 inch screens? This has been a huge issue trying to find a good monitor for me to make the jump. Freesync is why I used amd because 30 inch freesync
Monitor 4k works great.

 

[CatMerc]

R9 Nano - 175W TDP
Vega 56 - 210W TDP

I see 35W. We really shouldn't care about TGP since the board power is at 210W. The 35W has to be dissipated as well.



But on Ethereum you are paying twice the cost for same performance. With Polaris you can get it down to 120W.

I've heard Vega does well on Monero though.

That delta comes from VRM efficiency. 75% efficiency on that 56, while Nano had VRM efficiency in the 82% range. A 150W TGP Nano would be 180W at the original Nano's efficiency.

 

[Jackie60]

I agree it's very hard to find a good VRR 40inch 4K monitor I'm on Phillips BDM 4065 which isn't perfect but is very nice and has decent enough image at 60hz. I honestly have no understanding of why anyone would buy a 27" 4K monitor having experienced it myself, no tangible benefit. You could make 8K 15 inch monitors but the immersion of 4K 40" pisses all over everything else I ever owned on PC. It's the single biggest gaming quality improvement I ever experienced by a country mile. I will go VRR next but size really does matter with monitors and once you go big you need AA. I would rather be back in bed with AMD but they screwed up the last two GPU generations so I can only hope they can force down the 'Great Satan's' prices.

 

[Head1985]

furyx vs Vega at same clock with same memory bandwidth + HBCC test(bellow).Btw vega 64 is 6%faster than furyx at same clock.Its regression from polaris IPC
https://www.computerbase.de/2017-08...itt_vega_64_vs_56_vs_fury_x_bei_gleichem_takt

 

[nathanddrews]

Another bit on info in the Video was that he talked to AIB partners and there are no AIB cards coming anytime soon.

Yeah, that's disheartening. Other than highly optimized drivers, the only other thing that can make Vega successful is good partner cards.

furyx vs Vega at same clock with same memory bandwidth + HBCC test(bellow).Btw vega 64 is 6%faster than furyx at same clock.Its regression from polaris IPC
https://www.computerbase.de/2017-08...itt_vega_64_vs_56_vs_fury_x_bei_gleichem_takt

I place little stock in these sorts of things. It's entirely academic as you certainly can't overclock Fiji or Polaris to match Vega performance - and even if you could somehow, the power consumption would be total insanity.

 

[Arachnotronic]

What do you do as an Nvidia user who wants 4k but doesn't want crappy 27 inch screens? This has been a huge issue trying to find a good monitor for me to make the jump. Freesync is why I used amd because 30 inch freesync
Monitor 4k works great.

XB321HK.

 

[EXCellR8]

I'm thinking AIB cards after Vega 56 next month. ASUS already has a STRIX lined up so we'll likely see a Nitro from Sapphire and a GamingX from MSI, respectively.

XFX is likely to release something totally new to suit the power-hungry chip.

 

[Reinvented]

I'm thinking AIB cards after Vega 56 next month. ASUS already has a STRIX lined up so we'll likely see a Nitro from Sapphire and a GamingX from MSI, respectively.

XFX is likely to release something totally new to suit the power-hungry chip.

I've been super happy with my stuff that I've gotten from XFX. I used to get their stuff, simply because they had lifetime warranty on them.

 

[zinfamous]

It's perhaps strange if you haven't experienced it but you would understand when you have. I don't have perfect vision and wear glasses when gaming but jaggies are very apparent at 40" 4K whether you approve of it or not. I was on 980ti SLI, went Titan XP SLI and settled after 6 months on1080ti as Arma 3 was slower in SLI than not and I spend 95% of my gaming there. I like my games to look good and keep thinking about getting another 1080ti as GTA5 especially looked a lot better Titan XP/1080ti SLI so another 1080ti would do the trick but having owned that for 6 months it's really not worth £700/$850 to me for 5 hours better GTA5 per month.
People who buy pathetic 27" 4K screens are missing the wow factor of 4K. I know having owned a 27" 4K Samsung that the resolution is so fine on such a small screen that it might well be fine without AA but at 40 inches it's not. Keep telling me what the 'consensus' is by people using 23"-27" 4K because I'm sure they or you who's never experienced it know best

right. physical screen size matters, I get that. ...especially if one is sitting a solid 2 glorious feet away from a mammoth 40" + display.

....which reminds me, did your mothers never tell you guys that you were going to burn your eyes out?

 

[beginner99]

Is there really a reason to make a troll post like this?

It's not a troll post. I was dead serious.

Just because Vega is not as good as nVidia's offerings doesn't mean it has no market. They will likely sell every single one that is made.

They will indeed sell every single one they make which will be few and sold under the Radeon Pro Brand mostly.

As an AIB you can easily guess that volume will be low, very low. First because of the competition and secondly because AMD will rather use the fab capacity for Ryzen and the few vega dies for pro cards. So as an AIB you need to think of your ROI which will suck due to low volume and low margin of vega (because of HBM2). Taking custom PCB and slapping on a custom cooler still takes some work, testing and validation. Box art, actually shipping the product. etc. So it really is questionable if money can be made from custom cards.

 

[krumme]

It's not a troll post. I was dead serious.



They will indeed sell every single one they make which will be few and sold under the Radeon Pro Brand mostly.

As an AIB you can easily guess that volume will be low, very low. First because of the competition and secondly because AMD will rather use the fab capacity for Ryzen and the few vega dies for pro cards. So as an AIB you need to think of your ROI which will suck due to low volume and low margin of vega (because of HBM2). Taking custom PCB and slapping on a custom cooler still takes some work, testing and validation. Box art, actually shipping the product. etc. So it really is questionable if money can be made from custom cards.

Agree. And i think we can agree they only bring cards to market if there is money to be made. Then lets see how many different cards is brought to market. Surely asus knows better than us what to expect to sell.

I think we will see a handfull of different rx56 6+8 with cheap vrm circuitry. Theese boards can be made very cheap due to their extreme simplicity. And we will see small ones in a 170w tdp configuration for sff. Not cheap and in smal numbers
But they have their place.

 

[Elixer]

Hmmm...

30:30 - Inital Dualmine - Eth/Sia 34.5mh/1100 Sia - 300w
1:14:30 - Modded Power/GPU/MEM 30% / stock GPU / 1050 Mem = 41.8mh - 355w
1:18:00 - Modded Power/GPU/MEM 30% / stock GPU / 1100 mem = 44.08mh - 370w

 

[ashetos]

I have a 27' 1440p display and I would really appreciate it being sharper. The pixels are too big, small windows lose a lot of detail, nothing like a high ppi laptop.

It sounds ridiculous to hear about crappy 27' 4K displays. If anything, a 27' display should be at least 4K.

 

[krumme]

I have a 27' 1440p display and I would really appreciate it being sharper. The pixels are too big, small windows lose a lot of detail, nothing like a high ppi laptop.

It sounds ridiculous to hear about crappy 27' 4K displays. If anything, a 27' display should be at least 4K.

Each to his own i guess. I work on a 4k 27 and absolutely would not want it less sharp - i agree 27 should at least be 4k, because while you cant see invididual pixels as such it clearly can be sharper, like eg a 1440 5.8 phone. So its a huge improvement from former 1440 27. The difference is really huge for sharpness.
Screen can always be bigger. If i want it big i game on my 110 soon to be 4k also. Or play on my laptop. Surely nothing is crappy.

 

[richaron]

I have a 27' 1440p display and I would really appreciate it being sharper. The pixels are too big, small windows lose a lot of detail, nothing like a high ppi laptop.

It sounds ridiculous to hear about crappy 27' 4K displays. If anything, a 27' display should be at least 4K.

27" QHD, 40" UHD, and 34" Ultrawide QHD (what I use) all have a PPI of ~110. I find this about the best compromise for text/sharp details (which like higher PPI) and gaming performance with current and upcoming GPUs/monitors (which "perform" better with less pixels overall). ~110 PPI becomes "retina" at about a viewing distance of ~31", which is about right for most setups, but I can also notice pixelation with text and "jaggies" in games so I wouldn't want much lower PPI.

Tying back into Vega performance (the topic)... I would say Vega is a "4k" card, but barely. Partially because it's stupid to be OCD about running games at some arbitrary "max settings", and partially because we have variable refresh technology these days which makes lower frame rates more bearable. Unfortunately afaik there are no "4k" adaptive sync monitors with a wide enough range to be supported by Freesync LFC so personally I wouldn't go there. I got a 34" 100Hz 3440x1440 Freesync monitor (requiring almost exactly the same pixels per second as "4k"@60Hz), which seems like a pretty good match for Vega. And QHD displays @144Hz come in at about the same pixels per second again. Any higher PPI on any of these setups would not suit current GPUs and would need top of the line cards from next generation.

 

[Zstream]

....which reminds me, did your mothers never tell you guys that you were going to burn your eyes out?

Every time I played. She would walk by and say "scoot back a few feet, you're going to go blind"

 

[guskline]

It's perhaps strange if you haven't experienced it but you would understand when you have. I don't have perfect vision and wear glasses when gaming but jaggies are very apparent at 40" 4K whether you approve of it or not. I was on 980ti SLI, went Titan XP SLI and settled after 6 months on1080ti as Arma 3 was slower in SLI than not and I spend 95% of my gaming there. I like my games to look good and keep thinking about getting another 1080ti as GTA5 especially looked a lot better Titan XP/1080ti SLI so another 1080ti would do the trick but having owned that for 6 months it's really not worth £700/$850 to me for 5 hours better GTA5 per month.
People who buy pathetic 27" 4K screens are missing the wow factor of 4K. I know having owned a 27" 4K Samsung that the resolution is so fine on such a small screen that it might well be fine without AA but at 40 inches it's not. Keep telling me what the 'consensus' is by people using 23"-27" 4K because I'm sure they or you who's never experienced it know best

Jackie60: I'm on my way back home but while I was away I ordered an Acer E430K monitor so I'll test out your premise in the next 24 hours.

 

[PeterScott]

I have a 27' 1440p display and I would really appreciate it being sharper. The pixels are too big, small windows lose a lot of detail, nothing like a high ppi laptop.

It sounds ridiculous to hear about crappy 27' 4K displays. If anything, a 27' display should be at least 4K.

To each his own. I don't like 27" 1440p monitors because the text is too small, and Windows scaling blows.

I want a 32" 1440p for my next monitor. Just about the correct size for text IMO.

 

[PeterScott]

Bitwit does a Vega 56 manually overclocked rematch with OC 1070:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyOD0_jrY4M&t=317s

Summary: Tie. Rants about price increases making Vega non competitive.

 

[mohit9206]

I don't know about the pricing in other countries but the price of Vega 64 in India is 55000($860) rupees for the Sapphire 64 air cooled model while GTX 1080 is available for 46700($730) for Gigabyte Windforce so only a fool will buy the Vega 64 at these prices.
Like has been said many times in this thread, there's only bad prices not bad cards.
I can see the Vega 56 being priced similarly high making it a terrible buy as well.
There's no saving Vega at these prices.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Hmmm...
30:30 - Inital Dualmine - Eth/Sia 34.5mh/1100 Sia - 300w
1:14:30 - Modded Power/GPU/MEM 30% / stock GPU / 1050 Mem = 41.8mh - 355w
1:18:00 - Modded Power/GPU/MEM 30% / stock GPU / 1100 mem = 44.08mh - 370w

ROFL that is pathetic mining performance. Properly underclocked and undervolted Polaris GPU core consumes 90W (or about 110-115W per card out of the wall) and gets 22-24Mh, and you can get more with custom BIOS. These numbers are a huge regression compared to Polaris. I'd be interested in the power consumption numbers when they underclock/undervolt GPU, however, it appears that Vega indeed sucks at mining, so good news for gamers. The only thing is AMD prices do not make sense. Vega is simply not competitive enough to warrant such high prices. Here's to hoping Vega will go on firesale in 6-12 months just like R9-290 and Fury did.

 

[Tweak155]

ROFL that is pathetic mining performance. Properly underclocked and undervolted Polaris GPU core consumes 90W (or about 110-115W per card out of the wall) and gets 22-24Mh, and you can get more with custom BIOS. These numbers are a huge regression compared to Polaris. I'd be interested in the power consumption numbers when they underclock/undervolt GPU, however, it appears that Vega indeed sucks at mining, so good news for gamers. The only thing is AMD prices do not make sense. Vega is simply not competitive enough to warrant such high prices. Here's to hoping Vega will go on firesale in 6-12 months just like R9-290 and Fury did.

Given that every combo & individual card is sold out at Newegg & Best Buy for the RX, I think the prices make complete sense. At least in the US.

 

[Rasterizer]

Bitwit does a Vega 56 manually overclocked rematch with OC 1070:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyOD0_jrY4M&t=317s

Summary: Tie. Rants about price increases making Vega non competitive.

Vega overclocks seem to do better when increasing power target and memory clocks but not increasing core clocks much. Increasing core clocks on Vega past a certain point on the current drivers starts to cause issues.

Joker Productions tested an undervolt and overclock and had his Vega 56 clearly outperforming an overclocked 1070. I would wait until Gamers Nexus does comprehensive testing of undervolted and OC'd Vega 56 as they appear to have the best grasp at the moment of how to get the most out of Vega 56 overclocking.

 

[PeterScott]

Given that every combo & individual card is sold out at Newegg & Best Buy for the RX, I think the prices make complete sense. At least in the US.

I think this was a borderline paper launch with negligible stock, so "selling out" doesn't really imply much in the way of actual sales numbers.