AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8 GB

[W1zzard]

Radeon RX Vega 56 is the second AMD Vega card launched today. It comes at an affordable $399 price point, with a slightly reduced shader count that actually improves things greatly. For example, power efficiency now trades blows with some Pascal cards, which means less heat and noise, too.

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[Frogger]

If I was to buy would be this 1 ....will wait for OC results ...But I think will stay Green for this round...

 

[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.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

So temps look good on the stock driver, but the cooler is also mch louder. Speaks well for third party designs.

What does not speak well is the price. Why does this have a $50 higher MSRP then a 1070 when they are near identical speed wise?

 

[medi01]

Vega 56 looks good, especially with nvidia adaptive sync tax in mind.
Now we need good AIBs at reasonable prices.

Thank god, gibbo's "leak" about mining perf of Vega's was BS.

 

[Nihilus]

Not bad. Slightly better than a 1070 at 2k and right between a 1070 and 1080 at 4k. Civ 6 definitely needs driver support as Vega loses to a Fury X inn that title.

 

[Imsochobo]

So temps look good on the stock driver, but the cooler is also mch louder. Speaks well for third party designs.

What does not speak well is the price. Why does this have a $50 higher MSRP then a 1070 when they are near identical speed wise?

I've seen prices in somewhere in europe so far.
56 is 1080+ prices.
64 is 1080ti prices....


I need Vega! I need something not Nvidia due to linux reasons..
Why is it so hard not to buy Nvidia ?

Do I have to go through yet another 3 years of agonizing workarounds with nvidia cards to do what I want with the performance I need or can I actually buy an amd card ?

hope this changes cause this is hilarious...

 

[ppn]

1070 costs 450-500$ now. 6 months ago it used to be 350$ w/ free 60$ game included.

By now I was expecting to see the 400$ pascal refresh and equivalent to 1080.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I've seen prices in somewhere in europe so far.
56 is 1080+ prices.
64 is 1080ti prices....


I need Vega! I need something not Nvidia due to linux reasons..
Why is it so hard not to buy Nvidia ?

Do I have to go through yet another 3 years of agonizing workarounds with nvidia cards to do what I want with the performance I need or can I actually buy an amd card ?

hope this changes cause this is hilarious...

funny you should say that. I've been pounding my head against a wall trying to get AMD's drivers to work, because they still dont support the 4.10 kernel in ubuntu.

 

[B-Real]

So temps look good on the stock driver, but the cooler is also mch louder. Speaks well for third party designs.

What does not speak well is the price. Why does this have a $50 higher MSRP then a 1070 when they are near identical speed wise?

1. GTX 1070 starts at 440$ atm.
2. Vega56 starts from 400$ hypothetically, though I don't see preorders yet.
3. Think of the price difference between G-Sync and Freesync monitors.

 

[red_stapler]

Is this finally the year when I replace my 7950?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

1. GTX 1070 starts at 440$ atm.
2. Vega56 starts from 400$ hypothetically, though I don't see preorders yet.
3. Think of the price difference between G-Sync and Freesync monitors.

1. My point was that since the 1070 is selling far over MSRP, so will vega, and vega's higher MSRP will result in an even higher final price.
2. so if VEGA is affected the same way pascal is, then vega 56 will be bare minimum $500-$550. Not good when compared to your $450 1070.
3. This point is valid, but I dont buy monitors based on GPU. My monitor still has an easy 8-9 years left in it, so I dont really care about freesync vs gsync. Most people dont replace a monitor until it dies.

 

[Easo]

It miiiight look like it will replace my 290X... Maybe.

 

[B-Real]

1. My point was that since the 1070 is selling far over MSRP, so will vega, and vega's higher MSRP will result in an even higher final price.
2. so if VEGA is affected the same way pascal is, then vega 56 will be bare minimum $500-$550. Not good when compared to your $450 1070.
3. This point is valid, but I dont buy monitors based on GPU. My monitor still has an easy 8-9 years left in it, so I dont really care about freesync vs gsync. Most people dont replace a monitor until it dies.

Well if it's the case and you can only find Vega56 AIBs around 500, the only reason to go that way is really the Sync monitors, of course. Let's hope it will not be the case.

 

[Imsochobo]

funny you should say that. I've been pounding my head against a wall trying to get AMD's drivers to work, because they still dont support the 4.10 kernel in ubuntu.

You use closed drivers?
Why not open source ones which work awesomely ?

I have a 280X I put in sometimes and I run perfectly on 4.11 kernel, 4.15 is when vega with open source out of the box comes.

FYI, open source drivers are better at everything except opencl\vulkan at the moment.

 

[m0nt3]

funny you should say that. I've been pounding my head against a wall trying to get AMD's drivers to work, because they still dont support the 4.10 kernel in ubuntu.

Why are you trying to use to proprietary driver? The OpenSource driver is faster in everything except Vulkan.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

You use closed drivers?
Why not open source ones which work awesomely ?

I have a 280X I put in sometimes and I run perfectly on 4.11 kernel, 4.15 is when vega with open source out of the box comes.

FYI, open source drivers are better at everything except opencl\vulkan at the moment.

Open source driver throws errors in source games when loading textures
open source driver has a tendency to lock up if I have a video playing in one window and a normal website in another
Open source driver has a tenancy to lock up if I am playing any background video while in a game.
Open source driver has rendering errors in medieval II
Open source driver has rendering errors in minecraft
Open source drivers perform slow as balls in borderlands 2 and civ v.

I could go on. open source is most certainly not "better at everything" and are far from "work awesomely". Even a cursory glance at phoronix would show the open source drivers are still hit or miss, and still have plenty of bugs to be fixed.

 

[m0nt3]

Open source driver throws errors in source games when loading textures
open source driver has a tendency to lock up if I have a video playing in one window and a normal website in another
Open source driver has a tenancy to lock up if I am playing any background video while in a game.
Open source driver has rendering errors in medieval II
Open source driver has rendering errors in minecraft
Open source drivers perform slow as balls in borderlands 2 and civ v.

I could go on. open source is most certainly not "better at everything" and are far from "work awesomely". Even a cursory glance at phoronix would show the open source drivers are still hit or miss, and still have plenty of bugs to be fixed.

What video card do you have, I know some 390's have issues. My 480's have not exhibited any of those issues and Borderlands 2 greatly benefits from mesa_glthread=true in the steam launch options for the game, i stay around 70 - 100+ with this option. I know the driver still needs some progress, especially with certain cards, sorry it has not been a good experience for you.

 

[Imsochobo]

Open source driver throws errors in source games when loading textures
open source driver has a tendency to lock up if I have a video playing in one window and a normal website in another
Open source driver has a tenancy to lock up if I am playing any background video while in a game.
Open source driver has rendering errors in medieval II
Open source driver has rendering errors in minecraft
Open source drivers perform slow as balls in borderlands 2 and civ v.

I could go on. open source is most certainly not "better at everything" and are far from "work awesomely". Even a cursory glance at phoronix would show the open source drivers are still hit or miss, and still have plenty of bugs to be fixed.

try the latest and greatest ?
it may be a bit technical but the latest, they have made absolutely huge improvements which have helped me a lot till the point where I don't have any major issues anymore.
and which combo do you run of drivers?
radv, amdgpu-pro,radeonsi

The 280x shows no issues for me so far apart from no hdmi audio.
I haven't tried closed source drivers since 2015.

As far as the GTX970 I have issues with all video playback - laggy.
Resizing windows in unity is not an option, it's not possible as long as one Hw accelerated window is open somewhere even as minimized.
issues with tearing with video playback (fixed with a script)
rendering issues with desktop.
Issues with fan ramp up lock at 100%.
Issues with black screen bootup (no video)
Issues with installer (need to put in the 280X to install for instance ubuntu 16.04 as black screen of death randomly occur often without prop. drivers.)
Issues in games when selecting 4K I get super low performance (Seems to be GTX970 specific as 980, 780, 1060 doesn't do this)

Windows doesn't do anything "wrong" with the GTX970, so it's definitely drivers.

 

[lordofdusk95]

Hmmm this is gonna be my next upgrade. Just upgraded to free sync 4K monitor and my RX 480 sweating like hell XD

 

[dj-electric]

Let this set the tone for whatever is happening with AMD right now:

 

[Imsochobo]

Let this set the tone for whatever is happening with AMD right now:

Crap, just crap.
However their "direction" is the only one they "can" take,
R&D must develop for 2019 tech, and I am sure that in 2019 they will have a really good product with Navi.
Nvidia have a lot of R&D on HBM, and all of the things Vega has and it is because it's the future but at the moment it isn't required/doesn't do shit.
Nvidia also have good dev on the known and tried methods with GDDR5X and so on which we see is working out really well

On top of that having a weak R&D budget doesn't help....
There are good reads on why they didn't make a "big" polaris.
It isn't because the arch. doesn't scale, it's because AMD cannot afford GDDR5X memory controller development alongside HBM dev they clearly need for consoles, laptops and nextgen computing.

I don't think any AMD fanboy can defend this arch and say it's good for 2017 but I can say why it's done, not that it makes the product "better", cause 1070 is a superior product.

 

[Prima.Vera]

AMD, make this card at least 50$ cheaper if you want sales, common!

 

[Tatty_Two]

You possibly won't get one at anywhere near RRP launch prices in any case...... take a look at the mining performance. Looks quite good to me, if they do reach shelves at anywhere near RRP then they may well be a decent bet as 1070's seem to be heavily overinflated over here at the moment.

 

[dj-electric]

Looks quite good to me

Looks awful next to the RX 580. No miner would want that with this power consumption. Am i missing something?