AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 Video Card Review @ [H]

Jean-Francois Laliberte said:
Good luck finding a RX vega 56 at $399, never gonna happen. The real price is going to be $499, and this is at that price that the comparison should've been done. Dissapointing review from hardocp...
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You want a review based on speculation? Maybe what you meant is you would have liked for them to throw in a 1080 just for reference?
 
Brian_B said:
I haven't had an AMD since my 6790, but my understanding about PowerTune was that it worked nearly the opposite of nVidia Boost.

PowerTune has a default high clock that it maintains, and it only underclocks if it exceeds a power or temperature limit. Boost has a lower default clock and ramps up as power and temperature allow, up to a maximum clock speed.

PowerTune underclocks when needed, Boost overclocks when possible.

So I'm not sure, when you say a less aggressive boost clock, if you are talking about the default clock, or a less aggressive PowerTune profile (which would more or less amount to the same thing as a more aggressive Boost profile), or what.

Sure, AMD could have lowered the default voltage and clocks on any of their cards, the 56 is no exception. The state of power management in chips today is that you can pretty much pick whatever TDP/Voltage and/or temperature profile you want to run the chip at, and the properties of your design and silicon and process node and so forth will then determine what clocks you can run for that given setting. AMD obviously wants to be able to compete versus the 1070 in gaming, this review shows they succeeded there. The TDP/Voltage is what it needed to be to achieve that with an acceptable yield.
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Vega has 3 phases

"It runs at a Base Clock of 1247MHz and a Boost Clock of 1546MHz. In our testing, we actually discovered there is a third "Peak Clock" and that is set to 1630MHz. "


When it's undervolted and set to just run at 1546MHz it performs much better in power draw and AVG Fps.
 
shad0w4life said:
Vega has 3 phases

"It runs at a Base Clock of 1247MHz and a Boost Clock of 1546MHz. In our testing, we actually discovered there is a third "Peak Clock" and that is set to 1630MHz. "


When it's undervolted and set to just run at 1546MHz it performs much better in power draw and AVG Fps.
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That is good to know, I didn't realize that - thank you for the info.
 
Jean-Francois Laliberte said:
Good luck finding a RX vega 56 at $399, never gonna happen. The real price is going to be $499, and this is at that price that the comparison should've been done. Dissapointing review from hardocp...
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They compared it to 1070s which are selling for around $50 less than a 1080 currently, maybe go back to all the 1070 reviews and give them a huge fail.
 
jardows said:
Well, that would be rather disappointing. The future of Vega then would be dependent on what AA technology is pushed by the game developers, a situation that AMD could easily lose out due to their limited resources.
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MSAA has been on the out for a while now - some games still support it, but those that do very rarely offer it as the only anti-aliasing solution. I like it when I have the performance to spare, but I don't think this will be that big of an issue. There are definite advantages to shader-based anti-aliasing.
 
Rizen said:
MSAA has been on the out for a while now - some games still support it, but those that do very rarely offer it as the only anti-aliasing solution. I like it when I have the performance to spare, but I don't think this will be that big of an issue. There are definite advantages to shader-based anti-aliasing.
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And definite drawbacks. MSAA is far from depreciated.
 
Wow, the Vega 56 is certainly the best of the range by the looks of it. I'm glad AMD got one of there cards right.
 
Meeho said:
And definite drawbacks. MSAA is far from depreciated.
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It's definitely less prevalent in games now regardless of how useful the tech is. I use it whenever I can, but I have plenty of GPU grunt to spare.
 
Great review Kyle and Brent, Vega 56 is definitely a card to get at the $400 card range even with the higher power consumption. Wonder if they force Nvidia hand to drop GTX 1070 price.
 
Great review and it seems to provide some solid competition in its price bracket. It is certainly quite late, but maybe it can shake things up a bit if the pricing doesn't get jacked up.
 
Nice! Probably going to switch to AMD in my next compie build. My GTX 960 is getting long in the tooth.
 
Great review Kyle, I am glad the card is competitive and I will most likely buy one when AIB boards hit the market.
 
Interesting review.

To me, it's hard to get excited about a "new" card that just edges out a card that has been out for over a year.

Sure they cost the same............but the 56 is just too power hungry, noisy and about the same performance.....maybe 10% better, but 10% increase on already fast frames are just not
that impressive.
 
magoo said:
Interesting review.

To me, it's hard to get excited about a "new" card that just edges out a card that has been out for over a year.

Sure they cost the same............but the 56 is just too power hungry, noisy and about the same performance.....maybe 10% better, but 10% increase on already fast frames are just not
that impressive.
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Being this late doesn't have a drawback if the end user is locked to either a Free-Sync or G-Sync monitor. I'd gladly trade my 1070 for the V56 to finally utilize Free-Sync, not that I've had any reason to with the performance of my 1070 on my 1440p/144hz monitor. If prices do remain near MSRP, I can sell my 1070 at a good price and could break out with an even trade or a trade that'll end up netting me profit.

Not too bad actually having choices now.
 
Jean-Francois Laliberte said:
Good luck finding a RX vega 56 at $399, never gonna happen. The real price is going to be $499, and this is at that price that the comparison should've been done.
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To be honest, I think your right.

After reading the review, I think AMD could maybe be justified for pricing this card at $449, but there is no way this card will sell at $399 maybe for the first week, then AMD will hike the price.

I think it’s naive to assume this card will sell at $399, not after what happened to the 64.
 
Stimpy88 said:
To be honest, I think your right.

After reading the review, I think AMD could maybe be justified for pricing this card at $449, but there is no way this card will sell at $399 maybe for the first week, then AMD will hike the price.

I think it’s naive to assume this card will sell at $399, not after what happened to the 64.
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Retailers are pricing the card higher than $499. AMD just released a statement on this,

"“Our SEPs, and the price tag that we announced,” Youngblood says, “is our full intention of where we would suggest the product be priced. Not just for launch, but ongoing."

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/amd-rx-vega-launch-price-reduction
 
Only fanboys and Freesync owners are tied to AMD cards. If Nvidia feels the least bit threatened by the Vega56, they'll just drop the price on the 1070 by $50. At this point in the 1070 lifecycle they can afford to.
 
I doubt Nvidia is gonna want to lose out on the profit margin of the 1070 by lowering it $50. Didn't they have a price drop earlier following 1080 ti release anyway?
 
lucidrenegade said:
Only fanboys and Freesync owners are tied to AMD cards. If Nvidia feels the least bit threatened by the Vega56, they'll just drop the price on the 1070 by $50. At this point in the 1070 lifecycle they can afford to.
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Only fanboys and Gsync owners are tied to Nvidia cards. (See what I did there?) Dude, AMD Vega 56 is definitely a good product and will earn them some so they can turn around and do more research and development. AMD Is alive! :) (Yea, I am an AMD Fan, I never hide it.)

Oh, and why would retailers drop prices on their 1070's if they are already selling and making them money? Are you feeling a bit of concern for the green team?
 
ManofGod said:
Only fanboys and Gsync owners are tied to Nvidia cards. (See what I did there?) Dude, AMD Vega 56 is definitely a good product and will earn them some so they can turn around and do more research and development. AMD Is alive! :) (Yea, I am an AMD Fan, I never hide it.)

Oh, and why would retailers drop prices on their 1070's if they are already selling and making them money? Are you feeling a bit of concern for the green team?
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Its an ok product, only because the 1070's are damn hard to get at MSRP (hard to find too). If the 1070's were available, Vega 56 would be pretty much dead in the water.
 
razor1 said:
Its an ok product, only because the 1070's are damn hard to get at MSRP (hard to find too). If the 1070's were available, Vega 56 would be pretty much dead in the water.
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Nope but, you just go right on believing. :D It will only be better once aftermarket cards are released. :)
 
sabrewolf732 said:
Retailers are pricing the card higher than $499. AMD just released a statement on this,

"“Our SEPs, and the price tag that we announced,” Youngblood says, “is our full intention of where we would suggest the product be priced. Not just for launch, but ongoing."

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/amd-rx-vega-launch-price-reduction
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I'll probably get flame-ed for this, but based on that it sounds like many of the reviewers/TechTubers lost their shit over all this before all the info came to light. I'm not calling any of them morons or anything and AMD needed to be more forthcoming with all this info. That part specifically I can understand the community being mad, there certainly was that feeling of a lack of communication from AMD and some of their previous comments were very vague.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
I'll probably get flame-ed for this, but based on that it sounds like many of the reviewers/TechTubers lost their shit over all this before all the info came to light. I'm not calling any of them morons or anything and AMD needed to be more forthcoming with all this info. That part specifically I can understand the community being mad, there certainly was that feeling of a lack of communication from AMD and some of their previous comments were very vague.
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the reason they most likely have stayed fairly quiet about it up to this point is that they'd be throwing the retail companies they work closely with under the bus but at some point AMD had to save themselves at the detriment of potentially hurting those retailers.
 
I think it would have been a great card if used 50 watts less power, @ $385, and was released in September of 2016.
I have a feeling we will see the $399 price for about 3 days. You can buy a Gigabyte gtx1070 for $429 when I checked last week.
Unfortunately The Vega 56 "mines" better than the gtx1070, so the price for Vega 56 will be over $450 in a week and the gtx1070 prices should fall.

Did the review mention that the Vega 56 cards performance could have been had with a factory overclocked gtx1070 for under $400, 6 to 10 months ago?
I bought one ,I remember.

My crystal ball is clear. :)

It should also be told that Nvidia's Volta cards will be here ~ 6 months after the Vega 56. If you waited this long (15 months) whats another 6? :) Chances are very good that a Volta gtx2070 for $425 will get you gtx1080ti performance.

But I will agree this card is better than the piece of crap Vega 64. BUT, what is that really saying?
 
ManofGod said:
Nope but, you just go right on believing. :D It will only be better once aftermarket cards are released. :)
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That is just the way it is, around the 1070 performance while still using 50% more power, AMD is a so advanced they took a step backwards for last gen.... At least the regular Fury comparing to the 970...... yeah still used 50% more power there too though but at least noticeably faster, it was faster than the gtx 980 too. Can't say that Vega against the gtx 1070 or gtx 1080 this time. Again this time competing against nV's 4th and 3rd best cards in their line up while consuming much more power and coming out a year later, these aren't great cards, they are ok for what they are, but that is it.

The only reason Vega 56 will do well is because the 1070's are that good at mining, the extra costs of the 1070's are covered by improved better power consumption figures over the rx5xx in mining.

It really is funny when you look at mining and the 1070's are only using 100 to 120 watts and provide better hashrates over the rx 580's in pretty much all GPU mineable coins. Really shows how far behind AMD GPU tech is.
 
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razor1 said:
That is just the way it is, around the 1070 performance while still using 50% more power, AMD is a so advanced they took a step backwards for last gen.... At least the regular Fury comparing to the 970...... yeah still used 50% more power there too though but at least noticeably faster, it was faster than the gtx 980 too. Can't say that Vega against the gtx 1070 or gtx 1080 this time. Again this time competing against nV's 4th and 3rd best cards in their line up while consuming much more power and coming out a year later, these aren't great cards, they are ok for what they are, but that is it.

The only reason Vega 56 will do well is because the 1070's are that good at mining, the extra costs of the 1070's are covered by improved better power consumption figures over the rx5xx in mining.

It really is funny when you look at mining and the 1070's are only using 100 to 120 watts and provide better hashrates over the rx 580's in pretty much all GPU mineable coins. Really shows how far behind AMD GPU tech is.
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Doesn't this forebode GTX1070's being the next bang/bust GPU mining victim? What happens when the Volta XX60 card comes out at about GTX1070 perf, and at lower power consumption? Won't miners dump into the market, crashing Nvidia's used card market pricing just the same as what happened to AMD in the big Bitcoin bust?
 
Awesome review and great conclusion. Looks like Vega 56 is the card to get, at least for people looking for 1070-class performance. I might even buy one just for fun on my HTPC (though I'm in no rush, I'll wait to see what AIB cards look like).
 
Magic Hate Ball said:
Doesn't this forebode GTX1070's being the next bang/bust GPU mining victim? What happens when the Volta XX60 card comes out at about GTX1070 perf, and at lower power consumption? Won't miners dump into the market, crashing Nvidia's used card market pricing just the same as what happened to AMD in the big Bitcoin bust?
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Right now most of the 1070's are hard to find right now, the only ones that are easy to find are EVGA's for good reason, cause I think they have different timings on their memory, and of course the memory doesn't clock anywhere near as the other AIB's so they could be getting the memory for another manufacturer or something.

No won't happen that way with nV cards cause they can mine much more than Eth lol, all those cuda miners that popped up in the past 6 months or so can do many different alt coins. There are quite a few them that get almost the same profitability as ETH right around 2 bucks a day per card. ETH gets 2-3 bucks dual mining. So miners will just keep buying nV cards for mining, unless they can replace their current cards with XX60 voltas or what ever. It doesn't stop there either, the 1080's are good at anything other than ETH, they get 3 bucks a day per card on the other alt coins. Which off sets the extra power of 30%. And this goes for the 1080ti too. ETH blockchain is the limiting factor for all cards, but once ya go to other coins is no longer a problem for nV cards, unfortunately AMD cards having limited good open cl miners right now for the other alt coins.
 
Magic Hate Ball said:
Doesn't this forebode GTX1070's being the next bang/bust GPU mining victim? What happens when the Volta XX60 card comes out at about GTX1070 perf, and at lower power consumption? Won't miners dump into the market, crashing Nvidia's used card market pricing just the same as what happened to AMD in the big Bitcoin bust?
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We are all waiting for a big GPU dump. It hasn't happened yet, and not sure when it will. I am guessing low memory cards should start flooding out soon (2-3 GB) as the complexities of most alt-coins will make these cards worthless.
It is kinda crazy. I keep wondering, what are all these new shinny Ryzen/TR builds using for a GPU? They have no iGPU to temporarily hold the fort. WTH are new builds being sold with?
 
funkydmunky said:
We are all waiting for a big GPU dump. It hasn't happened yet, and not sure when it will. I am guessing low memory cards should start flooding out soon (2-3 GB) as the complexities of most alt-coins will make these cards worthless.
It is kinda crazy. I keep wondering, what are all these new shinny Ryzen/TR builds using for a GPU? They have no iGPU to temporarily hold the fort. WTH are new builds being sold with?
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Threadripper? 1080s, 1080 Ti, most likely. Ryzen...1060 or 1070. RX 580 and 570 are virtually gone according to nowinstock.
 
SighTurtle said:
Threadripper? 1080s, 1080 Ti, most likely. Ryzen...1060 or 1070. RX 580 and 570 are virtually gone according to nowinstock.
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1080/ti isn't an average system buy. Oh, so there has been plenty of stock of MSRP Nvidia GPU's? Colour me stupid! :rolleyes:
 
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razor1 said:
Right now most of the 1070's are hard to find right now, the only ones that are easy to find are EVGA's for good reason, cause I think they have different timings on their memory, and of course the memory doesn't clock anywhere near as the other AIB's so they could be getting the memory for another manufacturer or something.

No won't happen that way with nV cards cause they can mine much more than Eth lol, all those cuda miners that popped up in the past 6 months or so can do many different alt coins. There are quite a few them that get almost the same profitability as ETH right around 2 bucks a day per card. ETH gets 2-3 bucks dual mining. So miners will just keep buying nV cards for mining, unless they can replace their current cards with XX60 voltas or what ever. It doesn't stop there either, the 1080's are good at anything other than ETH, they get 3 bucks a day per card on the other alt coins. Which off sets the extra power of 30%. And this goes for the 1080ti too. ETH blockchain is the limiting factor for all cards, but once ya go to other coins is no longer a problem for nV cards, unfortunately AMD cards having limited good open cl miners right now for the other alt coins.
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But if a far more efficient, lower tier card comes from Nvidia, they wouldn't want to shift older cards to the used market and move to a newer CUDA Volta chip?

Just curious.
 
All I've got to say is that I'm surprised. I guess the only thing left to see are real world pricing/availability as well as an AIB overclocking comparison from [H]. But as it stands, yea, I am surprised. My default response of 'Oh, I guess I'll just wait for a 1070' now needs to be a little more nuanced.
 
Magic Hate Ball said:
But if a far more efficient, lower tier card comes from Nvidia, they wouldn't want to shift older cards to the used market and move to a newer CUDA Volta chip?

Just curious.
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If its making money @ 2 bucks a day this is all inclusive of power being used, what is the use of letting them go?

Just get more systems....newer cards will have even better returns. More money never hurts right ;)

The reason why miners need to upgrade every generation is because of difficulty levels as a coin gets "mined out" @ 2 bucks a day per card that is a damn good return once the systems are already paid off. Many of these new alt coins with one rig I can mine like 300 coins a day, they are like penny stocks at the moment and difficulty is way low.

Eth by next year will be mined out, and doesn't matter what hardware ya get its not going to be profitable to mine, that is what happened with Bitcoin an Litecoin and will happen to ETH prior or around POS with current generation cards.

Right now I have 20 out of my 26 rigs rigs doing Eth, I'm getting around 1 coin a day, 3 months ago, if I had the same amount of rigs I would have been getting 2 coins a day. These other alt coins won't hit this kind of difficulty for a long time, talking about a year or so. So right now if they are getting 2 bucks a day on penny coins, after they mature and difficulty goes up that rate should stick up to a certain point when difficulty overcomes the price increases of that coin.

The Eth blockchain and other algorithms created a huge market of new ICO's and coins. There is like 800 + coins now, a good chuck of them mineable. There are reports out there, optimistic of course thinking the crypotomining market will be strong for 10 years, now I don't think that will happen, but everything will have its hills and valleys. I think its going to be strong for the next 3 years with all the stuff that is going on right now.
 
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The 1070 has half the memory so that accounts for two things less power draw and higher mem OC. The 1070 is old tech that will be unable to keep up going foward. All OC cards draw more power and gen more heat.

I would like to see a multi monitor comparison I am sure the 1070 could not keep up with th 56 because of mem limitations. I wonder how the 1080 would fair against the 64.
I use three 144Hz 1080p Freesync monitors but what about three 1440p monitors tested too?

How loud a sound is subjective in this case I think the consant droning is what is the real complaint.
Look at this chart.
http://www.industrialnoisecontrol.com/comparative-noise-examples.htm
Clearly 45.2 or 53.9 is not that loud.

My FX 9800GT was loud.
6800 ultra was loud
5950U was loud
 
TechCat said:
The 1070 has half the memory so that accounts for two things less power draw and higher mem OC.
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No, it doesn't.

TechCat said:
The 1070 is old tech that will be unable to keep up going foward.
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Vega isn't really 'new' tech. And by the time 'forward' happens, all of these cards will be falling short.

TechCat said:
All OC cards draw more power and gen more heat.
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But how much more? Nvidia cards have lately overclocked quite well while still undercutting the base TDP of comparable AMD cards, generally because AMD runs their cards higher than they really should with brute force voltage. Why do this rather than a binning scheme is up for debate. Many find that they can both lower the voltage and overclock their AMD cards, resulting in a more favorable if not superior performance profile.

TechCat said:
Clearly 45.2 or 53.9 is not that loud.
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Yes, >45dB is loud, and yes, sound signature counts too. The coolers AMD outfit Vega with at release are just as unimpressive as the ones they've used for the last four or five generations. They really should just slap an open-air cooler on them instead of halfassing the blowers.
 
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