SAPPHIRE Launches Their RX Vega Nitro+ Series of graphics Cards

[lexluthermiester]

The cheapest Vega 56 @OCUK is 580 GBP at the moment (and it's pre-order). Nitro+ one is 630 GBP (and available).
These are the prices we should compare and, no offense, watercooling doesn't look very sensible (unless you're really devoted to the idea).

Just found one for 542GBP, but that's TOOS. https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-RX-Vega-Afterburner-Overclocking/dp/B0756Z47NX

That's a ridiculous price I paid £380 @ OcUK for my Sapphire Vega 56 which I am using with a modified G10 bracket.

Where-ever you got yours, either it was "hot", or you got ridiculously lucky with a steal of a deal.

 

[Megatron]

I got mine from the same place as the post I quoted (£799 one). OcUK = overclockers.co.uk, FYI. I purchased mine within 4min of the vega 56 launch (which was 2pm on August 29th IIRC). This meant I got the £100 AMD subsidy for launch. The deal came back a week later and then the price went £100 more. So yes I did buy it at the right time. Unfortunately I have not mined at all, or I'd have paid for the card now.

no offense, watercooling doesn't look very sensible (unless you're really devoted to the idea).

Its actually a great idea. Yes I did put alot of effort into making the bracket and filling heatsinks but its well worth it. Especially when you consider the price difference between air and watercooled off the shelf Vegas. I only put a lazy 800>950Mhz memory overclock and +50% power limit on it so far. The card does have an issue with the google toolbar where it likes to go corrupt text and reboot, this is why I've not tested it further.

On a side not I'm really liking the new MSI afterburner update. I've got readout for power usage and its all colour coded (although I learned that AMD does not measure and report power accurately from on board the GPU.

 

[Dux]

Not really, since power efficiency is derivative of performance they just need to close the efficiency gap, and they'd achieve both goals. V64 vs. a Titan V it's a 38% gap where vs. the 1080 ti it is 53%. If anything it's NVidia who is moving backwards.

Titan V is not a graphics card meant or optimized for gaming. GTX 1000 series almost doubled the gaming performance over GTX 900 cards. I am sure GTX 2080 will greatly surpass Titan V it in gaming performance. Not to mention GTX 2080Ti. Vega cards came out over a year after Pascal, were built on a finer manufacturing process, and STILL AMD can't match Nvidia level of performance and power efficiency. Time gap between releases, power & performance differences despite this big time gap....all that makes Vega architecture absolute garbage. If you have the money to buy either GTX 1080 Or VEga 64, and you go for Vega 64...something is very wrong with you.

 

[lexluthermiester]

all that makes Vega architecture absolute garbage.

That is an opinion not based on objective reasoning. If games were unplayable, or the cards had quality control problems[manufacturing defects] than you might be able to say that. However, those problems do not exist. Vega does cryptocurrency very well, better than NVidia cards depending on the mining config used. The Titan V, I suspect, will come in very handy with cryptocurrency mining once optimized. Where gaming is concerned, Vega is able to run games stable and at speeds comparable to Geforce offerings in similar price ranges.

Your statement is so extreme that it can not be taken seriously. Perhaps in future you might be concerned with making more objective statements without sounding like a fanboy.

 

[Dux]

That is an opinion not based on objective reasoning. If games were unplayable, or the cards had quality control problems[manufacturing defects] than you might be able to say that. However, those problems do not exist. Vega does cryptocurrency very well, better than NVidia cards depending on the mining config used. The Titan V, I suspect, will come in very handy with cryptocurrency mining once optimized. Where gaming is concerned, Vega is able to run games stable and at speeds comparable to Geforce offerings in similar price ranges.

Your statement is so extreme that it can not be taken seriously. Perhaps in future you might be concerned with making more objective statements without sounding like a fanboy.

Not a fanboy. I had my share of AMD and Nvidia cards. But when it comes to gaming performance, if you buy AMD card, then you are an AMD fanboy. Because AMD has absolutely nothing to compete with Nvidia right now. Not in price, performance and OH BOY definitely not in power consumption. Not to mention Volta gaming optimized cards are around the corner.

 

[notb]

Where gaming is concerned, Vega is able to run games stable and at speeds comparable to Geforce offerings in similar price ranges.
Your statement is so extreme that it can not be taken seriously. Perhaps in future you might be concerned with making more objective statements without sounding like a fanboy.

But @DuxCro is right. Why can't you just agree?

Three basic extensive properties describe a GPU: price, power consumption and performance (since the 4th one - size - is standarized). A company can manipulate 2 of them at the cost of the 3rd one.
Power consumption is possibly the least important to the customers (hardest to evaluate), so this is what AMD sacrificed.
If you look at just two (performance and price), Vega might look as a decent competition for Pascal. But if you look at three, it doesn't.
So if you have no bias or additional arguments (e.g. you want FreeSync), NV is the better (objective) choice - i.e. there's really no reason why anyone should go AMD for gaming.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Not a fanboy. I had my share of AMD and Nvidia cards. But when it comes to gaming performance, if you buy AMD card, then you are an AMD fanboy. Because AMD has absolutely nothing to compete with Nvidia right now. Not in price, performance and OH BOY definitely not in power consumption. Not to mention Volta gaming optimized cards are around the corner.

I'm a system builder and know my parts. If you take the bang for buck equation, Vega is good purchase. The drivers are easy to install and use. The performance is good for the money paid. So when my clients tell me they prefer AMD, I can confidently recommend a Vega card. Not saying that the 10XX series of Geforce isn't great because it is. It's just not the only game in town. And the benchmarks bare that out.

But @DuxCro is right. Why can't you just agree?

Because I've personally seen the benchmarks? Vega performs well. That's a fact. Geforce might be better, but the upper range cards are much more expensive as well. I know, I have one.

Three basic extensive properties describe a GPU: price, power consumption and performance (since the 4th one - size - is standardized). A company can manipulate 2 of them at the cost of the 3rd one. Power consumption is possibly the least important to the customers (hardest to evaluate), so this is what AMD sacrificed.

Seems a fair assessment.

If you look at just two (performance and price), Vega might look as a decent competition for Pascal. But if you look at three, it doesn't.

You kinda made my point for me, gamers who have limited budgets don't care as much about power usage.

So if you have no bias or additional arguments (e.g. you want FreeSync), NV is the better (objective) choice - i.e. there's really no reason why anyone should go AMD for gaming.

That's an opinion that you just contradicted yourself with. Gamers care about frame-rates and value. Vega offers both. That's all I'm saying. At no point did I ever say, or imply, that Vega was beating Geforce in overall performance, only that Vega does have something to offer gamers, anyone doing GPGPU based compute work and is a good value for the money spent. Vega is NOT garbage.
EDIT; Vega also does very well in GPU assisted video editing, something else I've personally seen.

 

[notb]

I'm a system builder and know my parts. If you take the bang for buck equation, Vega is good purchase. The drivers are easy to install and use. The performance is good for the money paid. So when my clients tell me they prefer AMD, I can confidently recommend a Vega card. Not saying that the 10XX series of Geforce isn't great because it is. It's just not the only game in town. And the benchmarks bare that out.

It doesn't matter what they prefer. We're not talking about whether buyers make sensible, optimal decisions or not. We know they're often wrong.
But granted you want to make an optimal decision, i.e. just get the best GPU for gaming you can get in a particular segment (even if it's leading by 1%), is there any reason to take Vega (apart from the already mentioned FreeSync)?

Because I've personally seen the benchmarks? Vega performs well. That's a fact. Geforce might be better, but the upper range cards are much more expensive as well. I know, I have one.

No one said Vega doesn't perform well. But even in this post you've said that GFX "is" / "might be" better. So why choose Vega? This is the only question we're asking.

As for the price: since Vega architecture turned out pretty mining-friendly, RX Vega 56's I see at the moment (with zero availability...) are actually more expensive than 1080 Ti (available).

You kinda made my point for me, gamers who have limited budgets don't care as much about power usage.

I know they don't. But they should. And you're the one building PCs, so it's your task to inform them. Noise and - with less significance - heat are the main reasons why people become unhappy with their PCs later on.

You might remember we slightly mocked your 30 years of PC building experience not so long ago. This is exactly what we meant. For 25 of those 30 years PCs were rather loud and unpleasant. It's not true anymore. With properly chosen GPU you can make gaming comfortable for the gamer and for people around him.
Vega, especially in with the blower fan, is a card for people that live alone or keep their PC in the basement.

 

[lexluthermiester]

is there any reason to take Vega

So why choose Vega?

Bang for buck = performance for price. How are you missing that?

RX Vega 56's I see at the moment (with zero availability...)

And it's just after Christmas, imagine that. Oh, wait...

are actually more expensive than 1080 Ti (available).

In Europe that might be true, but Stateside, one can go down to a retail store like BestBuy and get either one for a reasonable price. Just looked it up and called my local BestBuy to verify. My local distributor also has them at their normal wholesale prices.

You might remember we slightly mocked your 30 years of PC building experience not so long ago. This is exactly what we meant.

LOL! And what a grand display that was..

For 25 of those 30 years PCs were rather loud and unpleasant. It's not true anymore.

Doesn't have to be, no.

With properly chosen GPU you can make gaming comfortable for the gamer and for people around him.

You're making assumptions again. Do you think fan noise bothers gamers that much? Most of them wear headphones and thus won't even hear said noise. Even for those that don't, fan noise is an acceptable condition for performance. And unless your liquid cooling, Geforce cards ramp up the noise as well under load. So your point wasn't much of one.

Vega, especially in with the blower fan, is a card for people that live alone or keep their PC in the basement.

The Founders Edition cards do the exact same thing. And could you be more condescending to the gaming community?

Come on, you're grasping a straws and you know it.

 

[Totally]

Titan V is not a graphics card meant or optimized for gaming. GTX 1000 series almost doubled the gaming performance over GTX 900 cards. I am sure GTX 2080 will greatly surpass Titan V it in gaming performance. Not to mention GTX 2080Ti. Vega cards came out over a year after Pascal, were built on a finer manufacturing process, and STILL AMD can't match Nvidia level of performance and power efficiency. Time gap between releases, power & performance differences despite this big time gap....all that makes Vega architecture absolute garbage. If you have the money to buy either GTX 1080 Or VEga 64, and you go for Vega 64...something is very wrong with you.

Sorry but prior data points indicate a that the Titan V is their 11-series flagship, and with gaming focused drivers will only perform 3-4% faster realistically. Also the 10 series did not double performance over the 9 series it was roughly a 24-36% jump nowhere near double the performance. Sorry when looking at the facts and not through rose tinted glasses while on holiday in Nvidialand. They're trending worse power/perf efficiency vs AMD with every release.

 

[notb]

Bang for buck = performance for price. How are you missing that?

According to TPU review of RX Vega 56, it offers more or less the "bang for buck" of 1070:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_56/33.html

So once again: Vega is not awful. But in things that it is bad, it's just bad. And it things that are OK, it just doesn't stand out. Now, if RX Vega was 10-20% cheaper with the same performance, things would be totally different.

And it's just after Christmas, imagine that. Oh, wait...

Now it's just after Christmas, a week ago it was just before and earlier it was Black Friday. In few days we'll have Orthodox Christmas. Then it will be Luther's day. Then Valentines Day. I can see the banner in the store: RX Vega - the card that becomes red and hot when loaded - perfect gift for your loved one. Did I mention the blower thing...?

In Europe that might be true, but Stateside, one can go down to a retail store like BestBuy and get either one for a reasonable price. Just looked it up and called my local BestBuy to verify. My local distributor also has them at their normal wholesale prices.

So either I don't understand how BestBuy website works or you there some new math in US lately. Just check if these are the numbers you're seeing:
$710: Vega @ BestBuy
$500: 1070 @ BestBuy
When TPU did their review, they assumed $350 vs $400, so +14%. The numbers above mean +42%. There goes the "bang for buck"... unless you can somehow buy Vega 56 for $550.

You're making assumptions again. Do you think fan noise bothers gamers that much? Most of them wear headphones and thus won't even hear said noise. Even for those that don't, fan noise is an acceptable condition for performance. And unless your liquid cooling, Geforce cards ramp up the noise as well under load. So your point wasn't much of one.

I covered this already. Yes, the person playing can wear headphones. What about flatmates? Vega must be a hit with small children and non-gaming partners. :-D
Plus, I guess even hardcore gamers sometimes use their PCs for browsing, watching movies or just leave them idle. I think they might like the passive cooling mode that became pretty pedestrian in 2017, but not in the Vega-land.

The Founders Edition cards do the exact same thing. And could you be more condescending to the gaming community?

I really hope that when writing "people that live alone or keep their PC in the basement" I was not describing "the gaming community". At least not a big part of it.

Come on, you're grasping a straws and you know it.

I'm not. I'm encouraging you to show serious, quantitative and objective arguments that make RX Vega a better gaming card than the competing Pascal model. Or for you to simply admit that you prefer AMD as a brand. Nothing more.

 

[64K]

Sorry but prior data points indicate a that the Titan V is their 11-series flagship, and with gaming focused drivers will only perform 3-4% faster realistically. Also the 10 series did not double performance over the 9 series it was roughly a 24-36% jump nowhere near double the performance. Sorry when looking at the facts and not through rose tinted glasses while on holiday in Nvidialand. They're trending worse power/perf efficiency vs AMD with every release.

Titan V isn't a Flagship gaming GPU. It's not even intended for gaming like past Titans were. Titan V is a cheap alternative for a $10,000 Tesla card and is intended for AI, not gaming. Read up on Tensor Cores and what they are intended for. You will not see Titan V on Nvidia's GeForce site like past Titans for a reason. We have become accustomed to thinking that Titans are high end gaming GPUs with additional VRAM because they were up until the Titan V. At this time we have no idea what the successor to the 1080 Ti or Titan Xp will be as far as performance in gaming over high end Pascals but I doubt they will have Tensor Cores because they aren't needed for gaming at all.

 

[Totally]

Titan V isn't a Flagship gaming GPU. It's not even intended for gaming like past Titans were. Titan V is a cheap alternative for a $10,000 Tesla card and is intended for AI, not gaming. Read up on Tensor Cores and what they are intended for. You will not see Titan V on Nvidia's GeForce site like past Titans for a reason. We have become accustomed to thinking that Titans are high end gaming GPUs with additional VRAM because they were up until the Titan V. At this time we have no idea what the successor to the 1080 Ti or Titan Xp will be as far as performance in gaming over high end Pascals but I doubt they will have Tensor Cores because they aren't needed for gaming at all.

I'm just going by what the company has done in the past and they have demonstrated clear tick/tock pattern, so on their next release a 25% increase over their previous flagship can be expected not the claim of double which was thrown out earlier even though false. The Titan V just coincidentally happened to fall in line with that so I made that assumption, sticking to it otherwise.

 

[Dux]

Sorry but prior data points indicate a that the Titan V is their 11-series flagship, and with gaming focused drivers will only perform 3-4% faster realistically. Also the 10 series did not double performance over the 9 series it was roughly a 24-36% jump nowhere near double the performance. Sorry when looking at the facts and not through rose tinted glasses while on holiday in Nvidialand. They're trending worse power/perf efficiency vs AMD with every release.

It is double performance. GTX 1070 gives you performance as 2 x 970 in sli. 1080 double the performance of gtx 980. Check some reviews. GTX 970 SLI vs 1070 etc. You'll see you know nothing. I was an AMD user before. But you should really go for Nvidia. You'll realize what a crap AMD is.

 

[Totally]

It is double performance. GTX 1070 gives you performance as 2 x 970 in sli. 1080 double the performance of gtx 980. Check some reviews. GTX 970 SLI vs 1070 etc. You'll see you know nothing. I was an AMD user before. But you should really go for Nvidia. You'll realize what a crap AMD is.

Are you serious? sli doesn't even scale perfectly so that is not double anything, and a 1080 is only 36% faster than a 980 again not double. Those numbers are pulled from the reviews here on TPU, so I'll have to ask you to cough up where you are pulling your numbers from?

 

[lexluthermiester]

I covered this already. Yes, the person playing can wear headphones. What about flatmates? Vega must be a hit with small children and non-gaming partners. :-D

And the Geforce FE cards get just as noisy, and so therefore must be as equally unpopular with the groups you singled out. That point is only valid in the context of noisy video cards in general, not Vega specifically.

I'm not.

You really are.

I'm encouraging you to show serious, quantitative and objective arguments that make RX Vega a better gaming card than the competing Pascal model. Or for you to simply admit that you prefer AMD as a brand. Nothing more.

I've done that, no and no. I prefer NVidia cards currently, as evidenced by the choice of cards in my personal systems.

This debate started with the rather clueless " Vega is garbage " statement. And while I prefer Geforce over Radeon, I am not so delusional as to call a product that performs well on many levels "garbage". Stating such doesn't make me a fanboy, nor does it mean that I prefer AMD. It means that that am one of the few people in the world that looks at things objectively and comes to conclusions based on merit and fact, instead of "feelings" of idiotic "brand loyalty" or personal pride. Anyone who doesn't/can't understand that is the one whom has the problem.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

And the Geforce FE cards get just as noisy, and so therefore must be as equally unpopular with the groups you singled out. That point is only valid in the context of noisy video cards in general, not Vega specifically.

You really are.

I've done that, no and no. I prefer NVidia cards currently, as evidenced by the choice of cards in my personal systems.

This debate started with the rather clueless " Vega is garbage " statement. And while I prefer Geforce over Radeon, I am not so delusional as to call a product that performs well on many levels "garbage". Stating such doesn't make me a fanboy, nor does it mean that I prefer AMD. It means that that am one of the few people in the world that looks at things objectively and comes to conclusions based on merit and fact, instead of "feelings" of idiotic "brand loyalty" or personal pride. Anyone who doesn't/can't understand that is the one whom has the problem.

OK, lets look at the 'facts' on VEGA:

-Availability is practically non existent, with what few cards that are available going for hundreds of dollars above MSRP. This is resulting in vega 56 cards, which compete with 1070 performance wise, selling for almost 1080ti money.
-Power consumption is very poor compared to pascal, abysmal for vega 64.
-Overclocking headroom is very poor
-Third party cards have taken more then a quarter and are still not available to purchase
As a result of lack of coolers and high power usage, cards run hot
-Performance of vega 56 is competitive with 1070, vega 64 is close to 1080.

So, objectively, VEGA fails abysmally on price, availability, power consumption, heat, and cooler variety. The ONLY way it is remotely competitive is absolute performance, but given it falls so far behind on all other fronts, it is hardly a "competitive" chip. A chip that fails at every metric except outright performance many will consider 'garbage'. especially when you also consider how late to the game VEGA was, over a year after pascal came out, and the fact that pascal, despite being locked down, has *more* OC headroom then VEGA does. .

At MSRP, Vega 56 is a good card. At the 'promotional' bait and switch price, Vega 64 is a good card. But neither card has been commonly available anywhere near this price, and that situation will continue for the foreseeable future. By the time AMD has fixed this problem (if they even bother) volta will be out, and AMD will be 1+ generations behind yet again. Calling the GPUs themselves garbage is debatable, especially given vega 56, but calling the arch in general garbage seems to perfectly fit its situation.

 

[lexluthermiester]

OK, lets look at the 'facts' on VEGA:

-Availability is practically non existent, with what few cards that are available going for hundreds of dollars above MSRP. This is resulting in vega 56 cards, which compete with 1070 performance wise, selling for almost 1080ti money.
-Power consumption is very poor compared to pascal, abysmal for vega 64.
-Overclocking headroom is very poor
-Third party cards have taken more then a quarter and are still not available to purchase
As a result of lack of coolers and high power usage, cards run hot
-Performance of vega 56 is competitive with 1070, vega 64 is close to 1080.

So, objectively, VEGA fails abysmally on price, availability, power consumption, heat, and cooler variety. The ONLY way it is remotely competitive is absolute performance, but given it falls so far behind on all other fronts, it is hardly a "competitive" chip. A chip that fails at every metric except outright performance many will consider 'garbage'. especially when you also consider how late to the game VEGA was, over a year after pascal came out, and the fact that pascal, despite being locked down, has *more* OC headroom then VEGA does. .

At MSRP, Vega 56 is a good card. At the 'promotional' bait and switch price, Vega 64 is a good card. But neither card has been commonly available anywhere near this price, and that situation will continue for the foreseeable future. By the time AMD has fixed this problem (if they even bother) volta will be out, and AMD will be 1+ generations behind yet again. Calling the GPUs themselves garbage is debatable, especially given vega 56, but calling the arch in general garbage seems to perfectly fit its situation.

Ok.

 

[Captain_Tom]

If it's above £600 it's terrible. Here's hoping RTG can make the next iteration of their gfx cards with a cheaper BOM. Vega has sorely disappointed.

The reason these are so expensive is that the reference cards are selling out $100 over MSRP, and these cards are selling out at $650-$700. Sapphire would charge $550 for their Nitro 64 if they actually needed to.

As for "Vega a disappointment", only if you are a casual gamer. Vega is amazing for mining/compute tasks, and if you know how to use the (included and simple) wattman - you can match a 1080 Ti for substantially less money. But if you think the 1080 Ti is some revelation compared to Vega, have fun paying $800 for it lol.