AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 hits the market and reviews flood the web

Posted on Monday, August 14 2017 @ 22:29 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
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AMD's consumer-class Vega finally arrives after more than a year of teasing, previewing, and hyping. According to AMD, the Radeon RX Vega 64 should be available today for $499 while the Radeon RX Vega 56 will follow on August 28 for $399. In reality, cards are already out of stock and most cost at least $599.99.
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced that its Radeon™ RX Vega graphics cards are available at e-tail outlets around the world starting today, giving 4 million gamers access to the best enthusiast-class gaming experiences possible.

For gamers who already have an enthusiast-class PC and monitor and are looking to up-level their graphics capabilities with groundbreaking technology, Radeon RX Vega 64 air-cooled cards are available today priced at $499 USD SEP. Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics cards are expected to be available August 28th, priced at $399 USD SEP, representing the most affordable way to get into enthusiast-class gaming on “Vega” architecture.

For gamers who have longed to enjoy enthusiast-class gaming, Radeon Packs are also available now for a limited time in select regions, with the Radeon Black Pack featuring the Radeon RX Vega 64 air-cooled card priced at $599 USD SEP, and the Radeon Aqua Pack featuring the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition – the most powerful of the Radeon RX Vega graphics cards – priced at $699 USD SEP. Radeon Packs offer “must-have” technologies to power extraordinary enthusiast experiences: a discount of up to $200 from participating retailers on the purchase of select Radeon™ FreeSync™-capable monitors for buttery smooth frame rates, a $100 discount from participating retailers on the purchase of select Ryzen™ 7 1800X processor + X370 motherboard combos for the ultimate in multi-threaded performance, and two acclaimed games in soon-to-be-released Wolfenstein® II: The New Colossus™ and Prey® (an estimated $120 USD retail value) to jump right into AAA gaming.

Radeon RX Vega graphics cards are the most advanced consumer graphics cards in the world, built on the “Vega” GPU architecture. Previously reserved for high-end graphics products, Radeon RX Vega graphics cards employ pioneering graphics technology in High Bandwidth Cache composed of 8GB of leading-edge HBM2 memory. Architected for a better enthusiast-class gaming experience, Radeon RX Vega graphics cards feature bleeding-edge capabilities like Rapid Packed Math, the High Bandwidth Cache Controller and new Geometry and Pixel Engines to better harness low-level APIs and excel in DirectX® 12 and Vulkan® games. As developers roll out games in the coming weeks and months that take full advantage of these extraordinary technologies, Radeon RX Vega graphics cards will unleash their full potential, enabling higher frame rates and image quality settings for even more immersive gaming.

Radeon RX Vega graphics cards boast exceptional premium design, with start-of-the-art materials, customizable GPU tach meter and iconic LED illumination. The graphics cards support leading display technologies including Radeon™ FreeSync technology for smooth, vibrant HDR gaming. And Radeon Software brings the graphics cards to life, enabling the ultimate in performance, features and stability to ensure an exceptional out-of-box experience that will keep getting better with future software updates.

For more information on where to buy Radeon Packs and Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, visit http://radeon.com/RXVega.
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64

So how does Vega perform? It appears the Frontier Edition was a pretty good indication of the Radeon RX Vega's gaming performance after all. There have been no magical improvements in gaming performance and everything indicates something went horribly wrong with Vega.

Let's take a look at a couple of reviews to get a better grip of Vega. AnandTech concludes that Vega's architecture contains a lot to like but in terms of performance or power consumption AMD is unable to take on NVIDIA. Vega 10 is a very large and power hungry chip that struggles to compete with the over 1-year old GP104 GPU from NVIDIA. AnandTech concludes the power efficiency gap between AMD and NVIDIA has grown since 2015, and by quite a lot. The site writes RX Vega has a place on the market but only as a "bargain option". The Radeon RX Vega 64 is a very power hungry (and loud) card that needs up to 150W more power to deliver the same level of performance as NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080:
Unfortunately for AMD, their GTX 1080-like performance doesn’t come cheap from a power perspective. The Vega 64 has a board power rating of 295W, and it lives up to that rating. Relative to the GeForce GTX 1080, we’ve seen power measurements at the wall anywhere between 110W and 150W higher than the GeForce GTX 1080, all for the same performance.
The Radeon RX Vega 56 looks a bit better as it can score more wins versus the GeForce GTX 1070, but a lot will depend on the actual retail pricing.

For a second opinion we head to The Tech Report. The site found that RX Vega 64 trails the GeForce GTX 1080 by about 11.5 percent in its 99th-percentile frame time metric, and by about 6 percent in terms of average FPS. The RX Vega 56 fares better and delivers 99th-percentile frame times and average frames per second scores similar to a hot-clocked GeForce GTX 1070:
The RX Vega 56 is a happier story for AMD. As was the case with the R9 Fury versus the R9 Fury X, losing eight of the full Vega 10 chip's compute units to the world's tiniest chainsaw just doesn't hurt the Vega 56 that much. Our indices of 99th-percentile frame times and average frames per second put the Vega 56 dead-on with a hot-clocked GTX 1070, and only 10% behind the Vega 64 in our FPS index. The 56 does draw much more power than a GTX 1070 in our test system, but not in the eye-popping way of the Vega 64.
As I posted a couple of days, AMD asked reviewers to prioritize the RX Vega 56 over the RX Vega 64. Judging from the early reviews it's clear why the company wants to draw attention away from the RX Vega 64.

Our last stop is PC Perspective. Ryan Shrout drew a lot of criticism last month because he bought a Radeon Vega Frontier Edition to analyze its gaming performance. After testing the Vega 64 and Vega 56 cards, Shrout claims they perform a bit better than he expected. He concludes the Radeon RX Vega 64 will have a tough time competing with the GeForce GTX 1080 but notes the RX Vega 56 may be a better option than the GeForce GTX 1070 (as long as you don't care about power efficiency).

The one sliver of good news is that the current mining performance of Vega is far lower than what was rumored, so demand from miners will be lower than expected. Vega had a lot of potential but sadly it doesn't show. Perhaps the driver team will deliver further improvements the coming months, but given that they've already had a lot of time to get it right I wouldn't hold my breath for this.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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