Buy used 1080 or Vega 64?

I'm going to upgrade after a couple of years from a RX 580. I have a chance to get a GTX 1080 or Vega 64. Both are reference cards and both for $220. I'm looking to buy just for pure performance, not concerned with power draw or heat, etc. Help me out H'ers, which should I get.

If you will generally play newer API games as in DX 12 and particularly Vulkan games than the Vega 64.
While only one game here, Nvidia Turing cards are doing very good so this game is showing more of hardware limitations of using Vulkan and DX 12 API's
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pag..._graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html

Now if you play older games, the ones that are on sale and even many modern released games then either one is fine and pick your preference. Both support FreeSync monitors and if one can get a Gsync monitor then only the 1080 will at this time. Newer Gsync monitors coming should allow AMD cards to also support them but have not seen any yet.

Now there are other considerations as well, if you do compute stuff depending upon application it could be the 1080 due to Cuda support or the Vega 64 which in general has superior compute performance but may not be as well supported on the software being used. You have to do your own research on that.

Best answer is for you to look at the most recent reviews possible, the games you want to play, if this is going to be a gaming card and then decide.

if you buy a Vegan 64 you are beyond help

I'm not a fan of reference coolers -- but if you have to choose, Nvidia's reference coolers nearly always suck less than AMDs.

I can see a use case for either depending on the workload. Pure performance in what?

V64 - faster, more OC, more tinkering and more fun. Better build quality to boot and if you want to water cool it you can go crazy. One of my favourite video cards in a long time, really neat to tutu with.
Also a compute beast.

1080 is also a great card. I think if they are similar price then go V64 unless you get a cheap as chips 1080. But the 1080s seem to hold value better because nvidia.

P.s. undervolting on the reference cooler (V64) is fine, mine stays under 190W peak. It's not that loud unless you want to keep it at 60° or something.

I'm super happy with my Vega 64 that I bought from Kyle in one of his [H] unloadings here some months ago, but I also water cool it. The Vega 64 with decent cooling and some patience can generally be tweaked to perform within a hands reach of a stock 5700XT.

1080.

AMDs drivers may be closing on Nvidias, but when I owned a 1080ti and a Vega 64, Nvidia drivers had less bugs. I have a really bad taste in my mouth about Vega especially from the launch drivers.


Its louder, hotter, does NOT overclock as well, has slightly lesser quality drivers, both support freesync and both are about the same performance. So why?

Not a significant enough upgrade from rx580 imo.

Archaea said:

1080.

AMDs drivers may be closing on Nvidias, but when I owned a 1080ti and a Vega 64, Nvidia drivers had less bugs. I have a really bad taste in my mouth about Vega especially from the launch drivers.


Its louder, hotter, does NOT overclock as well, has slightly lesser quality drivers and about the same performance. So why?

Click to expand...

In fairness, I had a launch 5700XT and the launch drivers sucked, and I returned it. Later, I bought a 5700 flashed to an XT and the driver issues were fixed about 3 months after launch. I wouldn't judge a Vega 64 based on launch drivers. According to Techspot, the Vega 64 is about 6% faster at 1440p in their 13 game average. There is a lot of room to tweak the power draw to allow for better boosting. Obviously, you can overclock the 1080 also, but I think you could make a good argument for either card.

noko said:

If you will generally play newer API games as in DX 12 and particularly Vulkan games than the Vega 64.
While only one game here, Nvidia Turing cards are doing very good so this game is showing more of hardware limitations of using Vulkan and DX 12 API's
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pag..._graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html

Now if you play older games, the ones that are on sale and even many modern released games then either one is fine and pick your preference. Both support FreeSync monitors and if one can get a Gsync monitor then only the 1080 will at this time. Newer Gsync monitors coming should allow AMD cards to also support them but have not seen any yet.

Now there are other considerations as well, if you do compute stuff depending upon application it could be the 1080 due to Cuda support or the Vega 64 which in general has superior compute performance but may not be as well supported on the software being used. You have to do your own research on that.

Best answer is for you to look at the most recent reviews possible, the games you want to play, if this is going to be a gaming card and then decide.

Click to expand...

Thanks. This is for purely gaming, mostly anticipating Flight Simulator 2020.

kirbyrj said:

I can see a use case for either depending on the workload. Pure performance in what?

Click to expand...

See above.

N4CR said:

V64 - faster, more OC, more tinkering and more fun. Better build quality to boot and if you want to water cool it you can go crazy. One of my favourite video cards in a long time, really neat to tutu with.
Also a compute beast.

1080 is also a great card. I think if they are similar price then go V64 unless you get a cheap as chips 1080. But the 1080s seem to hold value better because nvidia.

P.s. undervolting on the reference cooler (V64) is fine, mine stays under 190W peak. It's not that loud unless you want to keep it at 60° or something.

Click to expand...

Could you point me to the guide you used to undervolt?

Edit: Not sure the site I linked to was legit for the recommended system req.

kirbyrj said:

In fairness, I had a launch 5700XT and the launch drivers sucked, and I returned it. Later, I bought a 5700 flashed to an XT and the driver issues were fixed about 3 months after launch. I wouldn't judge a Vega 64 based on launch drivers.

Click to expand...

Fine,
We can judge it by
Vega launch Drivers - TERRIBLE (I state)
Radeon VII launch drivers - TERRIBLE (Steve from Gamers Nessus states)
5700XT launch drivers - TERRIBLE (You state)

Why again shouldn't we consider drivers for AMD GPUs inferior?


Gamer’s Nessus said Radeon VII launch drivers were some of the worst he’s ever encountered. I don’t know how they could be worse than launch Vega. But hey, Ive sworn off buying another launch AMD card so I’ll not know.
https://hardforum.com/threads/fs-three-rx-vegas-fair-prices.1946097/






Loyal AMD GPU launch buyers be like:

kirbyrj said:

What resolution? I looked up the recommended specs and it's looking like it's a DX11 title.

Click to expand...

1440 ultrawide

Archaea said:

Fine,
We can judge it by
Vega launch Drivers - TERRIBLE (I state)
Radeon VII launch drivers - TERRIBLE (Steve from Gamers Nessus states)
5700XT launch drivers - TERRIBLE (You state)

Why again shouldn't we consider drivers for AMD inferior?

Click to expand...

Because after 3 months they work fine...? It's almost like you're forgetting that you don't have to run on the launch drivers forever. All you've done is tell me why I shouldn't buy an AMD card within the first 3 months of it's launch.

From my own experience the second go around with Navi was perfectly fine. I've had multiple Vegas that all ran fine, and the 1 Radeon VII I tried ran fine also...all on NON LAUNCH DRIVERS!

kirbyrj said:

Because after 3 months they work fine...? It's almost like you're forgetting that you don't have to run on the launch drivers forever. All you've done is tell me why I shouldn't buy an AMD card within the first 3 months of it's launch.

From my own experience the second go around with Navi was perfectly fine. I've had multiple Vegas that all ran fine, and the 1 Radeon VII I tried ran fine also...all on NON LAUNCH DRIVERS!

Click to expand...

Tastes bad man.
Tastes bad.

Archaea said:

Tastes bad man.
Tastes bad.

Click to expand...

So you shouldn't take into consideration 2 years worth of driver updates?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Teenk9 go back and run the 17.8 drivers when the 19.12 ones are available. And likewise, no one is suggesting running the original 368.25 GTX 1080 launch driver either.

kirbyrj said:

So you shouldn't take into consideration 2 years worth of driver updates?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Teenk9 go back and run the 17.8 drivers when the 19.12 ones are available. And likewise, no one is suggesting running the original 368.25 GTX 1080 launch driver either.

Click to expand...

I hold the opinion ,after significant time spent, in ownership of, or in using* (in the last five years)
(I use my cards for gaming and crypto mining)

GTX 560 *2
AMD 285
AMD 380 *2
AMD RX480 * 4
AMD RX580 * 14
GTX 1060 *12
980ti * (graphics card on forensic workstation at work, used in compute for password cracking)
AMD Fury X *2
AMD Vega 56 *2
AMD Vega 64
GTX 1070 *8
GTX 1080ti *>30
RTX 2080

That Nvidia drivers are a notch above AMD drivers. They are far far far less buggy at launch and they have less minor bugs in extended use too. So when the rest of the stats also favor Nvidia (features, cooling, noise, power consumption etc) or even if it is close, I’m going to recommend Nvidia. That is until the trajectory has clearly changed. It hasn't.


Fine wine has proven to be a dubious claim as well, a product of a less changing architecture more than a savy driver development team.

kirbyrj said:

So you shouldn't take into consideration 2 years worth of driver updates?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Teenk9 go back and run the 17.8 drivers when the 19.12 ones are available. And likewise, no one is suggesting running the original 368.25 GTX 1080 launch driver either.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I'm just not getting it. Who gives a shit what the damn drivers did at launch if it works great NOW? As of NOW the Vega series cards work very well and are likewise very performant.

i don't think drivers are such an issue for the v64 right now. The 5700xt on the other hand is in pretty rough shape driver wise. I've had more system hangs, freezes, reboots, crashes,and issues with my 5700xt than any other card/driver combo i've ever used. The only other card that gave me an issue that could compete with this was when i bought the original 5870 on launch to replace my 4870s in cfx and it would simply lock up with any type of load or 3d application. I'd say it was just the card, and not the design but when I called sapphire, they elevated my ticked to their lead tech/designer who oversaw the production of the 5870 series and he knew every single issue I reported to him as if it were inherent in most of the cards they shipped. He told me 'as a side note' not to exchange the card, but to wait a few months until they issue a revision if i wanted to be able to actually use card regularly. I ended up getting a refund from the egg and doing just that.

Archaea said:

That Nvidia drivers are a notch above AMD drivers. They are far far far less buggy at launch and they have less minor bugs in extended use too. So when the rest of the stats also favor Nvidia (features, cooling, noise, power consumptiom etc) or even if it is close, I’m going to recommend nvidia. That is until the trajectory has clearly changed. It hasnt.

Click to expand...

The frustrating part is that AMD is listing many of the issues plaging the 57xx series in their driver notes but are unable to actually remedy them 6 months later. The AMD driver team has always been short on staffing and I'd have to comment that this is still an issue today.

Dark12 said:

Not a significant enough upgrade from rx580 imo.

Click to expand...

Graphics have more or less plateaud in the last 5 years. Everything gives a similar image quality today with AA and SSAA essentially removing aliasing scenes. The jump from 1440p to 4k is pretty minimal on most size displays that pc gamers run at, so the overall wow factor is essentially gone from a new videocard purchase. Jumping from 1024x768 to 1080p gaming was exponentially morerewarding than a few more fps with shadows enabled on the same games we benefit from today. The one major thing that gives the most benefit is upgrading from something like a 2500k era chip to a new ryzen or intel and you're min/avg fps at lower resolutions will virtually double in a lot of games.

The only problem you will have with Vega 64 is the power consumption will be twice as high as that of the GTX 1080. That's not wort5h the extra case cooling and PSU you may have to purchase.

For something that's only %5 faster, that requires a lot of tweaking your part just to ATTEMPT to get the power consumption under control (and if you get one with reference blower, prepare to bring in the noise). The GTX 1080 has this handled for you from the factory.

Just realize if you under-clock it to the Quiet BIOS (to get power consumption down below 220w
), it will cost you that 5-8% performance advantage the Vega 64 currently enjoys.

This is the performance hit form BIOS power options at launch:



The improved drivers won't do anything bout the piss-poor performance/watt.



Unless you don't care about power consumption, the GTX 1080 is the better buy. If you live somewhere warm, you'll have to run your AC twice as hard when you're gaming, along with making sure your case can handle 450w combined output.

defaultluser said:

The only problem you will have with Vega 64 is the power consumption will be twice as high as that of the GTX 1080. That's not wort5h the extra case cooling and PSU you may have to purchase.

For something that's only %5 faster, that requires a lot of tweaking your part just to ATTEMPT to get the power consumption under control (and if you get one with reference blower, prepare to bring in the noise). The GTX 1080 has this handled for you from the factory.

Just realize if you under-clock it to the Quiet BIOS (to get power consumption down below 220w
), it will cost you that 5-8% performance advantage the Vega 64 currently enjoys.

This is the performance hit form BIOS power options at launch:

View attachment 208895

The improved drivers won't do anything bout the piss-poor performance/watt.

View attachment 208898

Unless you don't care about power consumption, the GTX 1080 is the better buy. If you live somewhere warm, you'll have to run your AC twice as hard when you're gaming, along with making sure your case can handle 450w combined output.

Click to expand...

It's obvious you don't have experience tweaking Vega. Vega benefits greatly from undervolting to drop temperatures and power usage. What this ALSO does is allow the card to overclock or at least maintain consistent default clock speeds at a lower heat and power draw. Undervolting Vega not only lowers power usage, it runs cooler, quieter, and faster.

Archaea said:

I hold the opinion after significantly using (in the last five years)

GTX560
AMD 285
980ti
Fury X
Vega 56
Vega 64
1060
1070
1080ti
2080

That Nvidia drivers are a notch above AMD drivers. They are far far far less buggy at launch and they have less minor bugs in extended use too. So when the rest of the stats also favor Nvidia (features, cooling, noise, power consumptiom etc) or even if it is close, I’m going to recommend nvidia. That is until the trajectory has clearly changed. It hasnt.

Click to expand...

All I am saying is that I wouldn't shy away from a Vega 64 card just due to the drivers at this point in the release cycle of both cards. Nor am I saying there aren't other considerations other than raw performance. You're not the only one who has used a bunch of cards in the last 5 years* I might go so far as to say that I like AMD's control panel better as it gives you more granular control without resorting to 3rd party apps. I very rarely have significant issues with either company's drivers this late in the lifecycles. I haven't switched to the new 2020 Adrenaline driver as I don't have an AMD card currently, so I can't comment on it. I'll probably pick up another 5700 as I think it's the best bang for the buck card you can buy right now. And I wouldn't hesitate to tell the OP to save up and just buy one of those then flash it with the XT bios when they go under $300 instead of buying a 3 year old card for $220.

* I think my list is something like the GTX 750Ti, 760, 780, 950, 960, 970, 980, 1050, 1060 (3 and 6GB), 1070, 1070Ti, 1080, 1080Ti, 1660Ti, RTX 2060, 2060 Super, 2080 Super, Radeon 7950, 7970, 285, 290, 290x, RX 580 (4 and 8GB), Vega 56, Vega 64, Radeon VII, 5700XT, 5700

defaultluser said:

The only problem you will have with Vega 64 is the power consumption will be twice as high as that of the GTX 1080. That's not wort5h the extra case cooling and PSU you may have to purchase.

For something that's only %5 faster, that requires a lot of tweaking your part just to ATTEMPT to get the power consumption under control (and if you get one with reference blower, prepare to bring in the noise). The GTX 1080 has this handled for you from the factory.

Just realize if you under-clock it to the Quiet BIOS (to get power consumption down below 220w
), it will cost you that 5-8% performance advantage the Vega 64 currently enjoys.

This is the performance hit form BIOS power options at launch:

View attachment 208895

The improved drivers won't do anything bout the piss-poor performance/watt.

View attachment 208898

Unless you don't care about power consumption, the GTX 1080 is the better buy. If you live somewhere warm, you'll have to run your AC twice as hard when you're gaming, along with making sure your case can handle 450w combined output.

Click to expand...

Which article is that from? I could look around, but I'm sure you could find it quicker than I could. I looked at their 2080 Super review and it was showing the Vega 64 ahead by about 5-6% in the 13 game average.

FlawleZ said:

It's obvious you don't have experience tweaking Vega. Vega benefits greatly from undervolting to drop temperatures and power usage. What this ALSO does is allow the card to overclock or at least maintain consistent default clock speeds at a lower heat and power draw. Undervolting Vega not only lowers power usage, it runs cooler, quieter, and faster.

Click to expand...

This is true, but I also understand that not everyone wants to take the time to play around. Every Vega is different and you have to play around with yours to get the optimal settings which can be very good once you dial it in. Not everyone has time for that (or cares enough to do it).

Very good advice and conversations going, thanks all. Keep it coming.

Wow lol, few very strong and not so accurate Vega statements but I understand the premise.
Drivers are fine and very stable these days. Launch was years ago, things have changed since lots.
Double the power use? Hahaha yeah if you want to do a brute force no brain water OC. I get max 1.6ghz, under 190w peak. That's basically same as a stock 1080 power use tdp and faster than a stock v64 or 1080. Typically boost is 1.5-1.6 depending on the scene/game and load, it goes highest at highest load. Often its running average around 130-150w @1.55.. So less power than a 1080 and faster when it needs to. All on a 'crappy reference blower'. I do run a more aggressive fan curve but that's what a big Hifi is useful for drowning out in gaming. Blowers are noisier, both will be audible if running aggressive curves. Stock curves its pretty quiet but will get around 80c range. I prefer closer to 60. Voltage is 1025mV which is decent for an undervolt. HBM is 1070-1100 still tweaking it (had stability issues at 1020mV so backed it off).
Later sillicon seems to be much better than launch for undervolting and OC, another plus for the v64. 1080 might be the same but it was a shorter production run than vega I think.
Undervolting is a lottery to a point but almost all of the newer cards I've seen have done very well there.

TLDR you can have the efficiency of the 1080 and more speed for 1440p..

Aftermarket air coolers are little trickier for v64 though that's one area the 1080 has a definite lead.

I don't have a guide sorry, just tinkered around and learned the crashing way haha. NKD who I bought it off used timespy and a few other benches looped to test stability. Was bang on the money at 1025mV as going lower was little unstable for me. There are some guides on /r/amd if you look.

One thing against the v64 is transient power spikes need a decent psu. Iirc 550w minimum, 750w is reccomended.
Main issue is spikes due to game loading screens where it pulls 1000fps. Using a frame limiter mitigates most of that and also setting p6 p5 etc states and tuning them, also helps keep core cooler to allow for higher peak boost under demand.
Stuff like that is why I love the v64, so much to tweak and fine tune.

Also 5700 flashed to xt is a great idea too but check the drivers for your game first they are having more issues than normal on that new uarch.

Another thing to note although 10 series did start supporting 10bit colour outside of dx windows, it's still not as comprehensive support as Vega so if you are doing any colour sensitive workloads, that's another thing to consider.
Last part is vram latency, bandwidth etc and compute is beastly on the v64. It has more compute than the Ti.. If you can use it. Either card is great and you'll love it but I feel the v64 is better once you tune them and more fun to do so, as a hardware enthusiast.

I'm really more interested in undervolting to keep the fan noise down: cooler = less max spin for the fans. Talking to the sellers they both said the stock fans get pretty loud. I'm assuming moreso on the V64.

Think about aio cooling.
Vega and 1080 boost clock matainance are held back by air cooling.

Teenk9 said:

I'm really more interested in undervolting to keep the fan noise down: cooler = less max spin for the fans. Talking to the sellers they both said the stock fans get pretty loud. I'm assuming moreso on the V64.

Click to expand...

Yeah was also some of my motivation to do so and just less room heating in summer.
Blowers are Blowers, there isn't going to be much difference. Why Vega could be louder is higher stock power settings. Undervolting can of course bring that back under control.

N4CR said:

Yeah was also some of my motivation to do so and just less room heating in summer.
Blowers are Blowers, there isn't going to be much difference. Why Vega could be louder is higher stock power settings. Undervolting can of course bring that back under control.

Click to expand...

Blowers are not blowers. I had a rack of eight 1080ti MSI reference cards crypto mining and a single Vega 64 reference blower was louder than all eight of the 1080ti crypto mining. The blowers workload depends on the cards power use and thermal characteristics

Nvidia blowers can be annoying, but are usually effective. Most of the time you don't want to be in the same room as an AMD blower.

1080 for gaming vs Vega.
Vega looks like a 1070 or worse in a lot of productivity workloads.

You pick whatever works best for what you need the most.

Simple as that.

Brand doesn't mean anything when my $ needs to produce work.

Archaea said:

Blowers are not blowers. I had a rack of eight 1080ti MSI reference cards crypto mining and a single Vega 64 reference blower was louder than all eight of the 1080ti crypto mining. The blowers workload depends on the cards power use and thermal characteristics

Click to expand...

I don't think anyone cares about the thermals and noise from mining use-case these days. That said if you run stock for stock, of course the 1080 will be quieter, it has a lower TDP. I never said otherwise. I just said blowers in general are louder. They are blowers...
If I can be assed fabbing a bracket and slapping on my accelero 3, I won't hear the V64 at all.

Either way if the user wants to upgrade the air coolers, the same cost and penalty apply to both. Just there are more bolt on options for a 1080.

I been trying a new card out as I liked it's profile being the very same as my Power Color Red Dragon RX 580 8Gb card .. it's the MSI RX 5700 Mech OC which appears to me a card made to scale down in price because we are starting to see the RX 5700 come down to $299 - 339 price as to offer a 7nm card with 8Gb in that range and power is tame to my flashed RX 5700

I know you said power was no issues but here is a look at power draw of the card .. I don't know if AB reads only the GPU power or total card power .. but it reads the way Polaris reads and that RX 5700 is using RX 570 like power useage .

crazycrave said:

I been trying a new card out as I liked it's profile being the very same as my Power Color Red Dragon RX 580 8Gb card .. it's the MSI RX 5700 Mech OC which appears to me a card made to scale down in price because we are starting to see the RX 5700 come down to $299 - 339 price as to offer a 7nm card with 8Gb in that range and power is tame to my flashed RX 5700

I know you said power was no issues but here is a look at power draw of the card .. I don't know if AB reads only the GPU power or total card power .. but it reads the way Polaris reads and that RX 5700 is using RX 570 like power useage .

Click to expand...

If the OP is going to spend the money to put an AIO on the $220 card, he should just get the 5700 instead. Absolutely the best bang for the buck sub $300.

N4CR said:

I don't think anyone cares about the thermals and noise from mining use-case these days. That said if you run stock for stock, of course the 1080 will be quieter, it has a lower TDP. I never said otherwise. I just said blowers in general are louder. They are blowers...
If I can be assed fabbing a bracket and slapping on my accelero 3, I won't hear the V64 at all.

Either way if the user wants to upgrade the air coolers, the same cost and penalty apply to both. Just there are more bolt on options for a 1080.

Click to expand...

No you’ve missed the point

A 1080 doesn’t have a noise problem whatsoever with its reference blower. The AMD Vega does.

My friend NIck after years with Nvidia reference cards bought his first AMD card with the Vega 64 for his gaming machine. I told him it was loud, and he should buy a non reference card with three fans if he wanted a Vega 64. He said basically the same thing you just said. Meh, I’ve had many nvidia blowers before. They are fine. It doesn't matter to me. He called me, astounded, within a few days asking me if there could be something wrong with his card because the blower was so loud under gaming load. I said no, I warned you they are loud. He asked me why AMD would even make a blower that loud as he couldn't even hear the game with his open ear headphones, and the fan noise in gaming was driving him crazy. He said his previous nvidia blowers had been nearly silent under load inside hos case.

He sold the Vega 64 reference card nearly immediately in disgust. That’s true, and its true beyond question a Vega 64 blower is both much louder and much more annoyingly pitched than a 1080 reference blower. The dB rating alone doesn't tell the story because of the higher more annoying pitch of the AMD blower compared to the soft whoosh of the nvidia 1080 blower.

ReRead what you said about blowers. You said blowers are blowers, and Vega could be louder indicating its all about the same. As former owner of both of these cards at the same time, I assure you it is not even close to the same.

also crypto mining load or gaming load. It matters not. 100% duty is the same fan volume on both mining or gaming. The darn AMD reference 64 fans were embarrassingly loud and all the reviews noted such. This isn’t an opinion. Okay, you can undervolt — if the OP wants to mess with that and if he can still get top performance doing so. Just like overclocking, undervolting at full performance is not guaranteed.

bottom line. 1080 is a more enjoyable, quieter, cooler, frustration free, and superior card in reference blower form. The original poster never said he wanted to swap to aftermarket heatsinks or watercool. I know 5 gaming LAN friends of many years friendship, good friends, who bought AMD Vega 64 fairly early on, six people counting myself. We all sold them, disgusted with the noise and buggy drivers. I’m glad to hear they’ve fixed the buggy drivers by now.


6dB is twice as loud - and as I mentioned, its not just over twice as loud, it’s significantly higher pitched and in your face present. Techpowerup agrees the noise of a Vega 64 at stock reference blower levels was unacceptable.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-vega-64/30.html

A used 1080 will rock everything you throw at it especially it you aren't playing in 4k.

Archaea said:

No you’ve missed the point

A 1080 doesn’t have a noise problem whatsoever with its reference blower. The AMD Vega does.

My friend NIck after years with Nvidia reference cards bought his first AMD card with the Vega 64 for his gaming machine. I told him it was loud, and he should buy a non reference card with three fans if he wanted a Vega 64. He said basically the same thing you just said. Meh, I’ve had many nvidia blowers before. They are fine. It doesn't matter to me. He called me, astounded, within a few days asking me if there could be something wrong with his card because the blower was so loud under gaming load. I said no, I warned you they are loud. He asked me why AMD would even make a blower that loud as he couldn't even hear the game with his open ear headphones, and the fan noise in gaming was driving him crazy. He said his previous nvidia blowers had been nearly silent under load inside hos case.

He sold the Vega 64 reference card nearly immediately in disgust. That’s true, and its true beyond question a Vega 64 blower is both much louder and much more annoyingly pitched than a 1080 reference blower. The dB rating alone doesn't tell the story because of the higher more annoying pitch of the AMD blower compared to the soft whoosh of the nvidia 1080 blower.

ReRead what you said about blowers. You said blowers are blowers, and Vega could be louder indicating its all about the same. As former owner of both of these cards at the same time, I assure you it is not even close to the same.

also crypto mining load or gaming load. It matters not. 100% duty is the same fan volume on both mining or gaming. The darn AMD reference 64 fans were embarrassingly loud and all the reviews noted such. This isn’t an opinion. Okay, you can undervolt — if the OP wants to mess with that and if he can still get top performance doing so. Just like overclocking, undervolting at full performance is not guaranteed.

bottom line. 1080 is a more enjoyable, quieter, cooler, frustration free, and superior card in reference blower form. The original poster never said he wanted to swap to aftermarket heatsinks or watercool. I know 5 gaming LAN friends of many years friendship, good friends, who bought AMD Vega 64 fairly early on, six people counting myself. We all sold them, disgusted with the noise and buggy drivers. I’m glad to hear they’ve fixed the buggy drivers by now.


6dB is twice as loud - and as I mentioned, its not just over twice as loud, it’s significantly higher pitched and in your face present. Techpowerup agrees the noise of a Vega 64 at stock reference blower levels was unacceptable.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-vega-64/30.html
View attachment 209714

Click to expand...

Couldn't even hear the game with his open ear headphones? LOL! Talk about a complete and total exaggeration. I have had a Vega 56 reference with a 64 bios flashed to it and even at it's loudest, it is barely audible and I have had non reference cards that are far noisier. The Vega reference cards are just fine, if you have proper case ventilation but then again, that goes for every card.

ManofGod said:

Couldn't even hear the game with his open ear headphones? LOL! Talk about a complete and total exaggeration. I have had a Vega 56 reference with a 64 bios flashed to it and even at it's loudest, it is barely audible and I have had non reference cards that are far noisier. The Vega reference cards are just fine, if you have proper case ventilation but then again, that goes for every card.

Click to expand...

Barely audible?

then you clearly had a different fan on your card than the fan we had on ours.

We both agreed we could hear our Vega 64 blowers 2 rooms away in that conversation. Ours were both launch cards.

IdiotInCharge said:

Nvidia blowers can be annoying, but are usually effective. Most of the time you don't want to be in the same room as an AMD blower.

Click to expand...

That is not at all true when it comes to the AMD blower, unless you just like to parrot what others say online. 2.5 or so years later and my Vega 56 Reference in 3 different cases has not been noisy at all.