AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Video Card Review @ [H]

Ieldra said:
The guy has a long track record of bad predictions and generally AMD shillery.

He claimed there was a new better performing Polaris revision. Nope.

Claimed Polaris would compete with 1070. Nope.

Claimed NV was doomed and would be overtaken within a few years. Remember that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one for conspiracy theories, I don't mean to say he is being paid by AMD to publish favorable videos. He just caters to the lowest common denominator of the PC community; fanboys.

If he changed tone over the years it's because he felt he needed to maintain decent viewership
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Looks like you make similar expectation mistakes. Two peas in a pod...

Hint. He doesn't like the card or recommend it (unless you have freesync) and it doesn't overclock well at all in his testing. (Which was the reason I linked it here)
 
stashix said:
Do you plan to do an overclocking review?
I'm really interested how Vega competes in performance when pushed to the maximum.
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I think that will be more appropriately done with the custom cooled cards. We still do not have a liquid cooled card from AMD, so it is what it is.
 
Archaea said:
Can't buy a 1070 until you spend $450.

Looks to be a bit faster than 1070 in most stuff so not too painful considering the going rates of cards right now.

http://www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/nvidia/gtx1070/
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Most of the over clocked 1070's are 450+, those are faster then Vega 56 stock. All of them stay within their 150 watt range too. Really depends on what a person is looking for and if they are patient. I was getting 18 1070's at a time (overclocked AMP's) before the mining craze for 409 bucks a piece from Newegg.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814126112

This is the card I have in my test rig,

It's MSRP is $389 which I did get it for that prior to mining taking over the supply and demand charts lol. But now its close to the overclocked EVGA prices, but those EVGA's aren't as good with mining, so their cards didn't go up in price as much.
 
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I have been watching gtx1070 prices for about 2 weeks....
Last week you could get a Factory overclocked Gigabyte card for $429......this week $439 AR for a EVGA SC black edition , now prices are rising again. Newegg prices.
Gtx 1080's were about $509 to $519 for overclocked models also, still holding steady.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...4125936&cm_re=gtx_1080-_-14-125-936-_-Product
Gtx1080 water cooled were $569 AR for 2 weeks now.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...14127942&cm_re=gtx1080-_-14-127-942-_-Product
 
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kyle to raise your credibility I suggest you redo the review so 56 is against the 1080 and 64 against the 1080ti

See my post here https://hardforum.com/threads/revie...ey-on-review-guidelines-from-vendors.1942142/

I hope you dont stonewall me, as all other reviewers have when I asked them to do this. :)

And yeah, that AMD statement seems deliberatly cryptic, they dont want to confirm RRP is higher as that could be a trigger for new reviews, they also dont want to it seems to make 499usd the RRP, so they just delivered a smoke and mirrors statement.

Reviewers seem to be refusing to do anything without AMD confirming anything as if they having their hand held by AMD.

A reviewer made a bait and switch pricing video and then mysteriously pulled it very quickly, all seems dodgy.

https://www.kitguru.net/components/...-gibson-clears-up-rx-vega64-pricing-disaster/
https://www.kitguru.net/components/...rx-vega64-pricing-answers-absolutely-nothing/

komplett is the second retailer to confirm.
 
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chrcoluk said:
Kyle I read your article.

To keep it simple yes MSRP/RRP is only a suggested price, however what one can conclude from that price is that we know any retailer can sell at that price and make a profit, as RRP will be higher than wholesale price.

EU retailers have stated if they sold at that price, they would make a loss, in other words they pay more for the units than the fake RRP price. They are gouging of course but not from 499usd but 599usd. OCUK and komplett could only sell at 499usd level pricing after AMD gave them a rebate.

To be blunt it looks like you have been manipulated by AMD big time on this, you have been taken for a fool.

Think about it if it was all down to retailer gouging, all AMD had to do was make a simple statement saying something like "Our standalone VEGA 64 SKU has and will have moving forward a MSRP of 499USD".

But they didnt, you have to wonder why they didnt.
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I will tell you this and beyond this it is about all I can say. But I will tell you that I KNOW what I am talking about.

Someone is telling you lies, and it is not AMD. Selling video cards is a cut-throat business and some folks are doing just that.

Give it 7 to 14 days and everyone will be back down off their high-horses and put their lynching ropes away.
 
chrcoluk said:
kyle to raise your credibility I suggest you redo the review so 56 is against the 1080 and 64 against the 1080ti

See my post here https://hardforum.com/threads/revie...ey-on-review-guidelines-from-vendors.1942142/

I hope you dont stonewall me, as all other reviewers have when I asked them to do this. :)

And yeah, that AMD statement seems deliberatly cryptic, they dont want to confirm RRP is higher as that could be a trigger for new reviews, they also dont want to it seems to make 499usd the RRP, so they just delivered a smoke and mirrors statement.

Reviewers seem to be refusing to do anything without AMD confirming anything as if they having their hand held by AMD.

A reviewer made a bait and switch pricing video and then mysteriously pulled it very quickly, all seems dodgy.

https://www.kitguru.net/components/...-gibson-clears-up-rx-vega64-pricing-disaster/
https://www.kitguru.net/components/...rx-vega64-pricing-answers-absolutely-nothing/

komplett is the second retailer to confirm.
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I see no point of redoing a review since his conclusion will still be, it is a year late! Also, no award was given which makes redoing a review moot.
 
I'd try to find a refurbished or used warranties 1070 or 980ti instead of paying 500 for V 56. But I know that some ppl are worried about miner cards.
 
The amount of drama over AMD's pricing scheme is a bit over blown.

This release has happened just like every other release with limited stock, price gouging and no one in particular getting screwed other than the consumer.
 
Trimlock said:
The amount of drama over AMD's pricing scheme is a bit over blown.

This release has happened just like every other release with limited stock, price gouging and no one in particular getting screwed other than the consumer.
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Bingo. 100%.

As for comparisons between cards we having pretty much always used MSRP. The fact is that the review will tell you what you need to know. We already compared the V64 to the 1070 and you will see the V56 against the 1070. It will not be hard to figure out value.
 
I actually have another theory ..... and I am pretty sure I'm right.

AMD knows the Vega is going to get slammed because of it's speed that is 14 months too late, heat / power consumption issues, etc etc.

Retailers too.

The price increase is because this is the only way they are going to make money is to so before people stop buying these cards. Reviews all over are terrible. And if their not terrible, review web sites have taken a neutral position our of fear of not getting review cards in the future or what have you.

They are milking while they can.

I personally know 4 guys that were holding out for AMD and they are so pissed off right now it's not even funny. 2 of the guys ordered a 1080 ti and I went to Microcenter with the other guy last night and we bought an open boxed Asus 1080 ti.

What a horrible horrible mess and the AMD fans are taking the brunt of it.

Out of solidarity to my fellow video card owners, I will take a 7 day break from preaching about the evils of AMD GPU's.

While most of us are smart and on Team Green, I still want to show respect to my fellow Red Team members. While some of us might be Red, others Green ... in the end, we all bleed electricity.

/let us bow for 1080 minutes of silence
 
Trimlock said:
The amount of drama over AMD's pricing scheme is a bit over blown.

This release has happened just like every other release with limited stock, price gouging and no one in particular getting screwed other than the consumer.
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Ummm, no.

We aren't talking $10 or $20 or sometimes as much as $50 .... we are talking an additional $100 - $150 - $200+ from Major major retailers.

It's obscene and really does set a new benchmark.

Makes me wonder if AMD will just sell their cards directly in the future.

Be very easy for them to partner with Amazon and get 1,000's of cards shipped over night, every day all day long. Maybe that's the answer.

This hurts AMD when their cards get priced to the point they are no longer affordable.

In fact here is what I want to see, I would love for AMD to raise their wholesale prices removing all the meat on the bone. Trust me, AMD knows what the market will bare. Instead of Newegg profiting, AMD profits. Simple fix. Trust me, they could do this and it would seriously piss off Newegg and others that are jacking these prices up.

Man, thank god for the White Knight in Shining Green Armour, Sir 1080 Ti.
 
I'm not a fanboy. I run a mix of 10 EVGA 1070's superclocked and FTW's + 2 SC2 1080 Tis'. they do really well in Zcash EWBF miner. The 1080 Ti's run at 65% power limit and draw a 170 watts each. The XFX Vega does 37 M/h single mining Claymore at 65% power limit and draws 160 watts. How is this card a disaster. First driver and barely a week on the market. Some of you guys really have no clue.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Ummm, no.

We aren't talking $10 or $20 or sometimes as much as $50 .... we are talking an additional $100 - $150 - $200+ from Major major retailers.

It's obscene and really does set a new benchmark.

Makes me wonder if AMD will just sell their cards directly in the future.

Be very easy for them to partner with Amazon and get 1,000's of cards shipped over night, every day all day long. Maybe that's the answer.

This hurts AMD when their cards get priced to the point they are no longer affordable.

In fact here is what I want to see, I would love for AMD to raise their wholesale prices removing all the meat on the bone. Trust me, AMD knows what the market will bare. Instead of Newegg profiting, AMD profits. Simple fix. Trust me, they could do this and it would seriously piss off Newegg and others that are jacking these prices up.

Man, thank god for the White Knight in Shining Green Armour, Sir 1080 Ti.
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as a nvidia user i'm straight up embarrassed to be supporting any company you support.. i seriously just want to rip this card out and chuck it at you.. please do yourself a favor and take a basic business course at your local college because you have no idea what you're talking about.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Just going by what Steam Statics are telling all of us. We are all friends here. Good fun :)
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And you'd happily be quoted as saying that you'd pick up an AMD card if AMD produced one that was best for your money?

I certainly can. AMD hasn't done it in a while for me, but I don't ever count them out, for GPU or CPU.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Why must 'most of us' be on any team except the one that's for getting the best product for their money?
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Yep, plus I do not like the 8 bit hardware only support from Nvidia nor their crappy XP era control panel. AMD has 10 bit hardware support out of the box, looks really good on screen and gives me no issues, at least when I am running one card only. (Multi card stuff is always hit and miss and I just do not game much anymore, so I sold one of my Sapphire R9 Furies, the Tri X one.) Team Green does not work for me, tried it and found I lost out big time, for me.

*Noticed I said for me but, some will take that as I am saying this for everyone and makes claims I said something I did not say. * Oh, and I make no secret that I prefer AMD hardware, it just works well for what I need and want out of my computer. This is not directed at you specifically, I just could not be bothered to hunt down the post you quoted, just to much work for not a lot of benefit. :D

I am not in the market but at $499, Vega 64 would be something I would buy without hesitation, just like I bought a R9 290 without hesitation and enjoyed the crap out of it. (Even was able to be fully unlocked to a 290x.)
 
chrcoluk said:
So two retailers are lieing.

How you so confident AMD is not?
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Certain retailers would never use their positions in the community to bring heat on AMD in order to pressure their sales people into providing them more allocation in order to shut them up, would they?

Because I have a very good understanding of the channel system and what is in it.

A lot of AMD's strategy here with the bundle was to DISCOURAGE miners snatching up all the cards. I have to commend them on this. The problem is AIBs cards are not getting to retail shelves fast enough, but those will, very soon. This launch seemed to get rushed towards the end IMO, but the channel has the cards in it, with more coming.

MSRP/SEP has not changed, the rebate structure has not changed. Inventory has been low and sold out. OMG! We have never seen this at launch. Keep your panties on. ;)
 
ManofGod said:
Yep, plus I do not like the 8 bit hardware only support from Nvidia
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I agree that 10-bit color support is something that costs AMD very little to implement that Nvidia uses for segmentation, and is a typical underdog tactic not unlike Hyundai cars and Sony cameras, for example.

However, like many artifacts of 'artificial' segmentation, Nvidia knows their market: most photographers, myself being one, don't bother messing with 10-bit output or expanded gamut monitors simply because straying from SRGB results in a lot of difficulty with very little realizable benefit.


(trying to ensure color accuracy between capture and print output is a field of study within itself, and one that must be mastered for those that provide imagery for publications or produce prints themselves for sale, and adding AdobeRGB 10-bits of precision on top of that makes it worse)
 
chrcoluk said:
You are very adamant you are right so no point in me arguing further as it will just keep going back and forth and be toxic to the thread, so I will stop here, leaving it the 2 weeks as you suggested and see what happens.

I appreciate you took the time to reply to me rather than just be silent like other reviewers have been.
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I appreciate your opinions on this based on what others are saying, I am just telling you that a lot of what you are hearing is not based on facts. I can totally get why you would theorize what you saying as it makes sense with all the circumstantial "evidence" being parroted about. If retailers cannot make money on the margins that are there, then don't sell the product. Selling over MSPR/SEP is 100% up to the retailer. I can understand how some of these smaller shops cannot compete with the bigger retailers. That is a story we here in lots of product categories, but that does not make it AMD's fault. I am not arguing wrong or right here, just discussing the facts.
 
chrcoluk said:
I have actually never seen RRP change at launch tho.

When the 10 series cards got launched and were expensive, OCUK didnt claim nvidia raised the RRP, they openly admitted the prices were raised due to supply and demand.

This is different, OCUK and kompeltt have actually stated they cannot sell at the launch RRP without losing money as the wholesale price is higher, they are gouging yes, but it seems the wholesale cost has also gone up with the rebate removed.
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Maybe this time the middle man, the AIBs, wanted their piece of the cake and they raised the prices due to low supply, high demand. That would put AMD in an awkward position and explain the vague response to the issue, as they probably don't want to go against their board partners by calling them out and at the same time don't want to take the blame for the price hikes if it's not AMD's fault, and would also explain retailers' statements about too high supply prices
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
as a nvidia user i'm straight up embarrassed to be supporting any company you support.. i seriously just want to rip this card out and chuck it at you.. please do yourself a favor and take a basic business course at your local college because you have no idea what you're talking about.
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My Girlfriend sold her 290 right before Vega launched. The goal being, we go down there and get one.

But now, that's impossible. I guess now they are calling it "demand"

I understand your frustration, there is a lot of that going on right now. I was at Microcenter the other day when an argument broke out between some gamers and the 4 older business men in suits, literally suits trying to buy 20 - 30 cards for mining. That;s like the 6 or 7th time I've seen business attired men down there that were super out of place.

I'm just relating what I've read and have personally experienced. I'm kinda the messenger really, like everyone else I feed off the vibe of the community, read the news and or share any personal experiences.

How hard would it have been for AMD to stock pile to meet demand? This is actually the norm for a lot of companies. In fact, there is an article out there about this how companies do more harm than good when they do not have a good product supply and release strategy. Several in fact.

BTW, my next system will be a Ryzen 1950x, Asus Zenith Mobo.

BTW, we got that Vega card ..... it cost us $650 off of craigslist.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I love HardOCP! Kyle, noted. Knob set to rainbows.
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Yeah. Be happy you bunch of shitbags. :)

rainbow_5997c.jpg
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I agree that 10-bit color support is something that costs AMD very little to implement that Nvidia uses for segmentation, and is a typical underdog tactic not unlike Hyundai cars and Sony cameras, for example.

However, like many artifacts of 'artificial' segmentation, Nvidia knows their market: most photographers, myself being one, don't bother messing with 10-bit output or expanded gamut monitors simply because straying from SRGB results in a lot of difficulty with very little realizable benefit.


(trying to ensure color accuracy between capture and print output is a field of study within itself, and one that must be mastered for those that provide imagery for publications or produce prints themselves for sale, and adding AdobeRGB 10-bits of precision on top of that makes it worse)
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Also, the desktop on the 980ti looked completely washed out. No amount of tweaks ever fixed that.
 
Hmmmm.... Maybe we should put AMD cards in a Museum. Solve the problem for good!

WHOOOOOOOOOOOSH! Beat that :D
 
As one of the few people on the forum that *actually* has an RX Vega, the card is fine. It's not amazing, it doesn't beat Nvidia's best, but it's not bad.

What is bad is the price. At $600 to now $700 it's just in no way worth it against the GTX 1080 (unless you're locked into a FreeSync monitor).

If it was selling for the advertised $500, then yeah, the situation may be different. Lets see what happens when stock comes back in and if prices come down.
 
razor1 said:
I agree with what ya said but that 100 bucks won't discourage miners if Vega was a competitive mining card to the rx580 or 1070. Both those cards can get 2-3 bucks a day (power inclusive), so that 100 bucks well is returned in 1 month. That is why it wasn't hard for me to spend 150 bucks more on the 1070's when I couldn't get the rx 580's anymore. But Vega doesn't get the same rate of return, its 50% less than those two cards, and that does hurt it as a mining card. So that 100 bucks now will make an already bad proposition a worse proposition cause that 50% now has to include the higher price of the pack.

Now AMD is very well aware of Vega's hashing capabilities, so they already knew all this. Thats when marketing and packs come into play. AMD stated they were launching now because they wanted to make sure there was enough supply for gamers, lets see if that comes true, cause Vega 56 should have no problem selling, they virtually have no competition, its very hard to get a 1070.
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Actually I don't think it was just $100m at least not at newegg. Maybe the game packs, I didn't look at those. But the other packs Required the purchase of the other components. Not a coupon that could just not be used as first reported. So those packs likely will not garner attention from miners or at least quell the lions share of them.
 
JustReason said:
Actually I don't think it was just $100m at least not at newegg. Maybe the game packs, I didn't look at those. But the other packs Required the purchase of the other components. Not a coupon that could just not be used as first reported. So those packs likely will not garner attention from miners or at least quell the lions share of them.
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if they don't care about the stand alone product to begin with, why will they care about the packs?

its easy to see Vega is a crappy mining card comparative to any of the alternatives, its actually worse than that the 1080ti ;), and the 1080ti is a bad mining card for ETH. Vega 64 undervolted uses 250 watts of power to get 32mhs, the 1080ti uses 180watts and gets 40mhs. So if the 1080ti isn't interesting to miners, why would Vega?

What AMD believed a rumor about the 100mhs or something? If reality is what we see right with the hashrates, which it is, AMD was well aware of this before launch, does that "stop the miners" thing really make any sense?
 
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razor1 said:
if they don't care about the stand alone product to begin with, why will they care about the packs?

its easy to see Vega is a crappy mining card comparative to any of the alternatives, its actually worse than that the 1080ti ;), and the 1080ti is a bad mining card for ETH. Vega 64 undervolted uses 250 watts of power to get 32mhs, the 1080ti uses 180watts and gets 40mhs. So if the 1080ti isn't interesting to miners, why would Vega?

What AMD believed a rumor about the 100mhs or something? If reality is what we see right with the hashrates, which it is, AMD was well aware of this before launch, does that "stop the miners" thing really make any sense?
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your numbers are off - in my opinion.

I have four 1080TI and I've spent a lot of time tweaking them. I don't see 40Mhs on any of them. Low to mid 30's at about 70% power usage is more accurate. If you know how to get better - I'm all ears on the settings you recommend. Right now I'm using ~ 70-75% power target, ~1800Mhz core, 2000Mhz memory and that puts me at low-mid 30MH/s - in the neighborhood of 165-190 watts per card.

I haven't mined with Vega, but my cousin is mining with two Vega 64. He doesn't have a way to measure power use, but he is at -25% power target through AMD Wattman and consistently mining at 37-38Mh/s per card. He has nine 1080TI and he prefers the two Vega 64 for mining as it is $100-$200 cheaper initially, and so far as he's getting a better hash rate without any optimization to memory straps or firmware ---- except to use the AMD beta mining drivers. He plans to start buying Vega 56 when they come out for mining.

Like I said he can't determine power use yet - but he uses similar settings to me on the 1080TI. I told him to buy a P3 kill-a-watt to determine something to see the discrepancy - but it's not like the 1080TI are just sipping power. He has his 1080TI set to about 165 watt per card at 65% power use.



By the way, I have two PNY 1080TI reference blower card style, and two EVGA 1080TI SC cards. The EVGA cards don't like to undervolt well. I can take the PNY all the way down to 50% power target. I can't go much below 75% on the EVGA. They seem to have built in overclocking that requires some extra power. But the EVGA ICX heatsink is much better and the cards run cooler to be sure.
 
Archaea said:
your numbers are off - in my opinion.

I have four 1080TI and I've spent a lot of time tweaking them. I don't see 40Mhs on any of them. Low to mid 30's at about 70% power usage is more accurate. If you know how to get better - I'm all ears on the settings you recommend. Right now I'm using ~ 70-75% power target, ~1800Mhz core, 2000Mhz memory and that puts me at low-mid 30MH/s - in the neighborhood of 165-190 watts per card.

I haven't mined with Vega, but my cousin is mining with two Vega 64. He doesn't have a way to measure power use, but he is at -25% power target through AMD Wattman and consistently mining at 37-38Mh/s per card. He has nine 1080TI and he prefers the two Vega 64 for mining as it is $100-$200 cheaper initially, and so far as he's getting a better hash rate without any optimization to memory straps or firmware ---- except to use the AMD beta mining drivers. He plans to start buying Vega 56 when they come out for mining.

Like I said he can't determine power use yet - but he uses similar settings to me on the 1080TI. I told him to buy a P3 kill-a-watt to determine something to see the discrepancy - but it's not like the 1080TI are just sipping power. He has his 1080TI set to about 165 watt per card at 65% power use.



By the way, I have two PNY 1080TI reference blower card style, and two EVGA 1080TI SC cards. The EVGA cards don't like to undervolt well. I can take the PNY all the way down to 50% power target. I can't go much below 75% on the EVGA. They seem to have built in overclocking that requires some extra power. But the EVGA ICX heatsink is much better and the cards run cooler to be sure.
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I don't use my 1080ti for mining, but just testing it out before was getting anywhere from 38-40mhs @ 70%, its a Gigabyte. I wouldn't be surprised if its kinda like the 1070's, some just do better, probably because of the type of vram being used (different timings), but with nV cards can't change the timings.

The Vega numbers I picked up through forum numbers over @ bitcointalk so depends...... 25% less power is still above 200 watts per card.

As I said a card or two not a big deal, but when you start getting into a 6 card rig, if you don't get it under 1200 watts, kinda hard to find a server power supply to handle that. Really need to get it less than 1000 watts to be on the safe side.

Either way its right around the 1080ti, and the 1080ti is easy to get, cause miners don't care about them.

Even at 599 which would be 100 bucks less than a 1080ti, its not worth it. I really haven't seen a single serious miner recommend these cards for mining.

If I was getting 1080ti for mining I would mine other coins like Blake or Nexus, or Zcash, not ETH. Tell your cousin look at Zcash, the 1080's and 1080ti's are monsters on Zcash. He will see more profits on Zcash then Eth. Not many people mining the other alt coins, so not many people know that the 1080's and 1080ti's are much more profitable on those other alt coins, this is why I stated this mining craze thing isn't going to be over anytime soon :) yeah there will be an imminent fall once ETH goes POS, but all those miners will go to another coin just have to see which one they go to.
 
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FWIW,

1080TI prices are definitely creeping up too. It's hard to find a MSRP $700 1080TI anymore. More like $730-$740 for base 1080TI. Many of the 1080TI are now $800. That surely is miners driving prices up - as I don't think 1080TI is a high volume gaming product at it's pricepoint.

My cousin is using nicehash -- it can mine for whatever is most profitable at the time and is pretty painless -- with 10 cards he is making about >= $900 gross per month.

As to power concerns - there is always this type of thing to allow two PSUs to run from one switch. That's what he uses.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0747P36TT?psc=1

He has a 1200 watt PSU and a 1000 watt PSU powering his 10 cards on a ASRock BTC Pro h110 motherboard (holds 13 GPUs) He still needs to get three more Vega 56 to fill it out.
 
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