AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 8 GB

[W1zzard]

Our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 review confirms that the company achieved major performance improvements over their last-generation Polaris and Fiji cards: Vega is faster than the GTX 1080. We tested six different performance configurations of the Vega 64, with surprising results.

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[qubit]

So another meh graphics card from AMD that only matches the performance of the year old GTX 1080 with lots of power draw and noise, especially irritating coil whine. I'll pass. Also, dunno why they bother with that expensive HBM, when GDDR5X does just fine.

Let's hope AMD can finally leapfrog NVIDIA sometime not too long in the future and give us some competition.

 

[Frogger]

About as expected. THks for the fine read W1zz

 

[Ruru]

Better than I expected. But when the drivers get better..

 

[opojare]

I rate this 3/8.

 

[jabbadap]

Damn those game to game positions are all over the place. Some games even RX Vega⁵⁶ beats gtx1080 and another ones RX Vega⁶⁴ loses even gtx1070. All in all good review as always

 

[lemkeant]

Thanks W1zzard, great review

 

[hapkiman]

Nice review. Vega is not the impressive product that Ryzen is, that's for sure. AMD just can't seem to figure out this power consumption issue. Terrible on these cards.

 

[B-Real]

Thanks for the reviews!

The Vega56 beats the 1070 with cooler reference models (with higher noise) despite the +70W power consumption. Paired with a Sync monitor, it is a better choice. The Vega64 also nearly reaches the 1080. Of course the 1080Ti remains unchallenged, but not most consumers don't buy in that price range. Not to mention the drivers coming later for HBCC and so. If you are going for Sync monitors, if Nvidia doesn't drop prices, both the 1070 and 1080 have competitors.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Better than I expected. But when the drivers get better..

it wont matter, because by then volta will be out.

AMD finewine cant fix a bad arch. VEGA, for all it can do, seems to be more of a maxwell competitor then a pascal competitor efficiency wise. Drivers may result in vega consistently beating the 1080 by a bit instead of being all over the place, but it doesnt cover the fact that AMD has still failed to learn from the lessons Fury X provided.

Thanks for the reviews!

The Vega56 beats the 1070 with cooler reference models (with higher noise) despite the +70W power consumption. Paired with a Sync monitor, it is a better choice. The Vega64 also nearly reaches the 1080. Of course the 1080Ti remains unchallenged, but not most consumers don't buy in that price range. Not to mention the drivers coming later for HBCC and so. If you are going for Sync monitors, if Nvidia doesn't drop prices, both the 1070 and 1080 have competitors.

depends on what you mean by better. It beats the 1070 in some games, looses a bit in others, they are very similar performance wise. But vega's MSRP is $50 more, and miners are going to drive that up.

And given how well AMDs big GPU oced in the past, I wouldnt expect vega 56 to keep up with the 1070 OC to OC.

 

[birdie]

The hype train has crashed spectacularly.

I'm not surprised at all but I'm extremely dumbfounded as to why AMD tried to mock Volta while Vega RX 64 cannot even reach the performance level of the 18 months old GTX 1080. And its mining performance is not what AMD fans have been expecting - a pair of RX470 will be a lot faster and cheaper (and have a better ROI).

In short, Vega has turned out to be a huge dud.

We all wanted a healthy competition but NVIDIA now has to compete only against itself. Darn.

Let's just close this page of Radeon Graphics and expect AMD to step up its game with Navi.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

The hype train has crashed spectacularly.

I'm not surprised at all but I'm extremely dumbfounded as to why AMD tried to mock Volta while Vega RX 64 cannot even reach the performance level of the 18 months old GTX 1080. And its mining performance is not what AMD fans have been expecting - a pair of RX470 will be a lot faster and cheaper (and have a better ROI).

In short, Vega has turned out to be a huge dud.

We all wanted a healthy competition but NVIDIA now has to compete only against itself. Darn.

Let's just close this page of Radeon Graphics and expect AMD to step up its game with Navi.

isnt that a good thing? It means AMD fans will actually be able to buy vega, as opposed to miners buying up all of them.

 

[birdie]

isnt that a good thing? It means AMD fans will actually be able to buy vega, as opposed to miners buying up all of them.

That could have been a good thing if GTX 1070/1080 hadn't existed. You must be an extremely devoted AMD fan to choose RX 56/64 over GTX 1070/1080.

However Steam Graphics Survey clearly shows that actual AMD fans do ... not exist. Most people play on either NVIDIA's GPUs or use AMD's GPUs to mine.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Hard to find a compelling reason to pick this over the GTX 1080, packed math support may pay dividends down the line, but with Volta on the horizon threatening to bring even more performance per watt gains over Pascal it's gonna be an uphill fight regardless.

Vega 56 does seem the better balanced product.

 

[B-Real]

depends on what you mean by better. It beats the 1070 in some games, looses a bit in others, they are very similar performance wise. But vega's MSRP is $50 more, and miners are going to drive that up.

And given how well AMDs big GPU oced in the past, I wouldnt expect vega 56 to keep up with the 1070 OC to OC.

Well overall, the Vega56 is faster than the 1070 a bit. But if you consider the Vega cards will keep getting better with drivers, and the drivers supporting HBCC are yet to come, you can easily say that Vega56 is faster than the 1070. And if you give credit for the Freesync monitors being a hell cheaper than the G-Sync ones, it is obviously a better choice now. Yepp, the 1070 was obviously better than a Fury or Fury X, but now a Vega56 seems obviously better than the 1070.
And for the price, it is true that Vega MSRP is 50$ more, but right now, the 1070 starts from 440$. IF not bothered by the miners, Vega56 AIBs should start around 430-450$.

 

[Nihilus]

Very nice review, but I don't understand the 'Highly Recommended' part. Zero reason to get this over a GTX 1080: Same Performance, louder, hotter, more power consumption, and likely VERY limited O/C. The Vega 56 performed much better.

 

[KainXS]

I wouldn't call Vega64 a dud, I'd call it sub-par and would definitely not buy it. The Vega56 is not that too bad but between a 1070 and Vega 56 today, I would buy a 980Ti and overclock it and maybe pick a 56 if I couldn't find a Ti. Hype pretty much ruined the launch but AMD's Poor Volta nonsense didn't help either, it should go down as how to not market a card.

 

[B-Real]

I wouldn't call Vega64 a dud, I'd call it sub-par and would definitely not buy it. The Vega56 is not that too bad but between a 1070 and Vega 56 today, I would buy a 980Ti and overclock it and maybe pick a 56 if I couldn't find a Ti. Hype pretty much ruined the launch but AMD's Poor Volta nonsense didn't help either, it should go down as how to not market a card.

Well we should wait for that HBCC fps increases, but yeah, absolutely, that was a failed marketing.

 

[birdie]

But if you consider the Vega cards will keep getting better with drivers, and the drivers supporting HBCC are yet to come, you can easily say that Vega56 is faster than the 1070.

"Fine wine" is such a lame myth people need to get sober and realize that the mythical performance increase over time will be minimal and will not allow AMD GPUs to move a tier higher.

AMD claimed its new AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition would net between 4-8% performance increases depending on the game. We can say this is pretty much on the money, at 5-6% in the games we tested AMD’s claims seem valid. That means both the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and AMD Radeon RX 480 have received a cumulative performance upgrade via drivers, but it is quite small in the grand scheme of performance.

Think of it this way, at 60 FPS a 5% advantage is only maybe 3 FPS? Free performance is great, we’ll take all we can get, but anything under 10% is impossible to notice in the real-world while gaming. This goes to show a couple of important facts. Drivers are not going to be the miracle answer to a video card’s performance over time. When a video card is launched, that launch performance is probably within 10% of where it is going to end up in terms of cumulative performance updates, at least as far as AMD GPUs go.

This is good because on the one hand you are getting most of the potential out of the video card from the start. On the other hand, if you aren’t happy with that performance, then there isn’t much hope (at least as far as our testing has proven) that the performance profile of the video card will vastly improve over time.

Is this Fine Wine? That of course is very subjective and up to your interpretation.

 

[medi01]

Vega RX 64 cannot even reach the performance level of the 18 months old GTX 1080

Oh, please, get back to earth.

 

[medi01]

Hard to find a compelling reason to pick this over the GTX 1080

No $200 adaptive sync tax, solid lead in most moder games.
Averages are misleading, thanks to games like Civ 4 or Fallout.

 

[Vya Domus]

it wont matter, because by then volta will be out.

AMD finewine cant fix a bad arch. VEGA, for all it can do, seems to be more of a maxwell competitor then a pascal competitor efficiency wise. Drivers may result in vega consistently beating the 1080 by a bit instead of being all over the place, but it doesnt cover the fact that AMD has still failed to learn from the lessons Fury X provided.

The hype train has crashed spectacularly.

I'm not surprised at all but I'm extremely dumbfounded as to why AMD tried to mock Volta while Vega RX 64 cannot even reach the performance level of the 18 months old GTX 1080. And its mining performance is not what AMD fans have been expecting - a pair of RX470 will be a lot faster and cheaper (and have a better ROI).

It was obvious that Vega was not intended the ultimate gaming card many moths ago when it was clear that it would not compete with Pascal time-window wise.

In short, Vega has turned out to be a huge dud.

We all wanted a healthy competition but NVIDIA now has to compete only against itself. Darn.

Let's just close this page of Radeon Graphics and expect AMD to step up its game with Navi.

A dud ? Bad architecture ? Not at all , everyone is missing the point. Is it unimpressive in gaming ? Yes it is as of now , but as much as you all don't like this gaming is an afterthought these days for silicon manufactures. Vega is not the gaming card people wanted , but it's the compute card AMD needs. Look at it this way : currently the only card that even gets close to Vega 64 in FP16 and compute in general is the Tesla P100 , a 5000$ card. Yeah , it is certainly not a dud in this aspect and it has Volta in the sights. Vega is for the datacenters not for gaming rigs. Disappointing for a market , a god send for another.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Well overall, the Vega56 is faster than the 1070 a bit. But if you consider the Vega cards will keep getting better with drivers, and the drivers supporting HBCC are yet to come, you can easily say that Vega56 is faster than the 1070. And if you give credit for the Freesync monitors being a hell cheaper than the G-Sync ones, it is obviously a better choice now. Yepp, the 1070 was obviously better than a Fury or Fury X, but now a Vega56 seems obviously better than the 1070.
And for the price, it is true that Vega MSRP is 50$ more, but right now, the 1070 starts from 440$. IF not bothered by the miners, Vega56 AIBs should start around 430-450$.

HBCC, TBR, DX12, Vulkan, mantle, windows 10, crossfire, there is always something people think will make AMD super fast.

AMD finally optimizing their drivers may, at best, offer 10%. And given it is AMD, that is going to be really hit or miss depending on title. Drivers wont fix an outdated arch.

A dud ? Bad architecture ? Not at all , everyone is missing the point. Is it unimpressive in gaming ? Yes it is as of now , but as much as you all don't like this gaming is an afterthought these days for silicon manufactures. Vega is not the gaming card people wanted , but it's the compute card AMD needs. Look at it this way : currently the only card that even gets close to Vega 64 in FP16 and compute in general is the Tesla P100 , a 5000$ card. Yeah , it is certainly not a dud in this aspect and it has Volta in the sights. Vega is for the datacenters not for gaming rigs. Disappointing for a market , a god send for another.

If it is the compute card AMD needs, why are they trying to sell it as a gaming card, and not a fire pro card?

 

[ERazer]

as expected, if your AMD fan and been waiting sure go ahead buy one but most of us will be waiting what volta got to offer.

 

[Vya Domus]

If it is the compute card AMD needs, why are they trying to sell it as a gaming card, and not a fire pro card?

It's a purely formal matter , for gaming all they have to do is make it clear that they are not out of the game. That's all Vega is , a reminder they are still active in the high end gaming market. Trust me Vega is for the datacenter.