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

I'm wondering about that AA problem- are the techniques affected mostly ROP dependant? Maybe instead of solving Fury X problems AMD went even deeper into "do everything with shaders"
 
y0bailey said:
You know what the most frustrating part of this whole deal is...I want to grab a Vega 56 as it looks like it is going to be "OK enough" to upgrade my R390 to and push my 1440p Freesync monitor at max res w/ eye candy...BUT I CAN'T BUY THE THING!

I never pre-order, but damnit I should have pre-ordered.

I just want someone to take my money at MSRP and be done following video cards for a year.
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Vega 56 isn't out for 2 more weeks ;)
 
y0bailey said:
Is there anywhere taking pre-orders like they were with the 64? I can't find it. My google-fu is shit today.
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Not that I know if, the pre-orders for the 64 only happened a couple hours before the reviews dropped today
 
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

AMD obviously forgot how the competition fucked up around the time of their superb 9600 / 9700 Pro's...


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Presbytier said:
Graphics cards used to be so ugly.
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Some did. The 9700's/9800 & the Geforce 3 cards always looked the best imo. Now everything is encased in plastic, you don't really ever get to see the beauty of the capacitor and transistor layouts any more.
 
Knowing what we know about the Vega 64 right now, here's what I think AMD should have done to hit this one out of the park.

1. The reviews (of which [H]'s is the best. (C'mon, a little brown-nosing never hurt, right? ;) )), state that the cards have 3 power different power levels in each of 2 BIOSes.

2. The "secondary" BIOS' lowest power setting ("Heat Miser"?) only puts out 150 watts.

3. The "primary" BIOS, in "Turbo" mode kicks it up by 100w, to 253w.

Instead of marketing this as a 1080 slayer, they should have marketed it as a 1070 competitor. The "secondary" BIOS should be the default setting, at it's Power Saver (oops, "Heat Miser") setting. Call it "Default". The next two power settings on that BIOS should have been labeled for Overclockers. "Saucy" and "Jalapeno"? The other BIOS (what they call "primary") should have a sticker marked "Professional Overclocking BIOS. DANGER!" or something. Maybe a zombie skull, too.

And then it should have had an MSRP of $50-100 under a 1070.

There'd be rave reviews about how overclocking friendly this is (if you're willing to take the heat) and how it stomps the 1070. Same card, same functions....different price, different target.

Sigh.
 
Presbytier said:
Graphics cards used to be so ugly.
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True but 'Pimp my Rig' back in the day meant overclocking the fuck out of everything in your machine and to hell what it looked like. You know to actually get better performance instead of just lookin' pretty.

Vega's shiny metal cover may look nice but it gives ya fuck all extra FPS... Say's the man with a very pretty current build that's oc'ed plenty too :)
 
Kyle is the blower on the Vega 64 better or worse than the 290X blower (in terms of noise)?
 
Aardvarck said:
Pretty much sold out everywhere already.

I was able to snag a Black Gigabyte one with Prey and Wolfenstein II off of Newegg before they got gobbled up.

https://www.newegg.com/videocards/EventSaleStore/ID-1172?nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-KB Networks, Inc.-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10440897&PID=3891137&SID=rewrite
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The part that needs to be taken in by AMD is that people are willing to pay large premiums for the top end card. If AMD got there again, they could command the premiums too. For now they will get some because of pent up demand for AMD on the high end, but they need to expand beyond pent up demand.


Either way, I have to decide if I want the reference 64 or wait for the partner cards. If I get the reference card I can use the heat exhaust coming out of the back as a plasma torch. My tower could double as a marshmallow roaster, can nvidia cards do that !!!!!!
 
Over a year late and 200 watts short of a winner. I'm with the guy who said he's glad he didn't wait for this because I've been enjoying my 1080 for over a year and would probably buy it again today if I was in the market. Its nice to see that AMD does at least have a competitive card in terms of performance now, but its been a long time since they've had a card that I'd actually want to upgrade to. The only people that should be interested in this card are real AMD fans who stuck with Hawaii, Tonga and Fiji chips in the hope Vega wouldn't be a dud. Anyone else would be better off just picking up the nvidia cards if only to save themselves a little ball sweat due to the extra 200W of heat.
 
Algrim said:
Considering that the 1080 Ti trades blows with the original Titan X (Pascal) I'd beg to differ. It may not have the halo price but it has the halo performance.
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Doesn't make it a Halo Product...


I do, but when the Fury X landed, it and the 980 Ti were trading blows (only a well-overclocked Maxwell Titan exceeded both). There are three cards ahead of Vega 64 and they're all by nVidia, making it a mid-range/low-high performance card at best. People who have not already bought a 1070/1080 now have a card to go with their FreeSync monitors.
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You're talking Fury X, which was the higher-clocked factory H2O cooled model. The O2 cooled Fury was a bit behind the 980Ti...in every metric.
 
WorldExclusive said:
I had to go 4K because of the productivity benefits. But I would really like to have a 40" 4K 120Hz gaming monitor. I wouldn't need to upgrade for many years.
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Yeah, I'm hoping for something like that too. 42"-44" somewhere, 4k, 120hz and some form of adaptive refresh rate tech compatible with a GPU that is actually powerful enough to drive it.

This is the holy Grail.
 
If you down clocked this 1200-1500mhz, 14nm card to 1050mhz 28nm Fury levels, would it really perform much better at all and save much power? I'm seriously doubting any claims of architecture improvements with the benchmarks we're seeing.

Maybe cutting the memory bus width really hurt this card?
 
Algrim said:
Considering that the 1080 Ti trades blows with the original Titan X (Pascal) I'd beg to differ. It may not have the halo price but it has the halo performance.
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It also came out almost a year later, and shortly after Nvidia launched a new Halo product in the Titan XP...

By this line of reasoning, AMD's RX480 is also a Halo product, because it pretty much matches the performance of my 2013 Kepler Titan :p
 
ronan_zj said:
like the last time, AMD won't be happy and will not put [H]OCP on reviewer list next time.
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That would be stupid. Not unlikely, but stupid.

A dual gpu ncu vega riding magical drivers equipped with advanced pixel engines will surely show up any day now with three times the performance because of its new programmable geometry pipeline and half the wattage due to a high bandwidth memory controller with one third of the heat due to its rapid packed math packed with advanced technologies that the people at this place just wouldn't understand.

... sigh.

At least RTG is selling the cards and packages. Here's hoping that leads to a better product later down this line for them.
 
guys, AMD RTG knows they are behind and use tons of power. I'm sure they're working on it and we'll see an improvement in the future. This current Vega just isn't 'the solution' as much as it feels like a stop-gap
 
Napoleon said:
guys, AMD RTG knows they are behind and use tons of power. I'm sure they're working on it and we'll see an improvement in the future. This current Vega just isn't 'the solution' as much as it feels like a stop-gap
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heh, that's what everyone keeps saying "Wait for drivers", "Wait for partner cards". Blah blah blah, Why wait when you can just buy something that's better & already available? People are tired of waiting, AMD made us wait for 2 years, and they didn't deliver.

Napoleon should have waited for the Russian winter to be over. ;)
 
Napoleon said:
guys, AMD RTG knows they are behind and use tons of power. I'm sure they're working on it and we'll see an improvement in the future. This current Vega just isn't 'the solution' as much as it feels like a stop-gap
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This was supposed to be the solution to the Fury cards using a ton of power.
 
Krenum said:
heh, that's what everyone keeps saying "Wait for drivers", "Wait for AIB cards". Blah blah blah, Why wait when you can just buy something that's better & already available?

Napoleon should have waited for the Russian winter to be over. ;)
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First, I love winter :)

Second, I love my GTX 1080 haha. Honestly, with Lisa Su at the helm I feel better about AMD as a company.

I realize that RTG is a bit different since the merger but if their CPU division could leap to Ryzen, I have to at least hope their GPU's can do some cool stuff as well. TBH, Vega fills a huge void with its 1440p freesync performance levels, now people can use all the great displays with a better GPU. If its prices stabilize I do think it can offer a good price/performance, especially if you consider the cost advantages of freesync displays over gsync.

I've been an Nvidia fan since they took on ATI during the Riva TNT days, as the underdog. I'm hoping for more competition to keep things interesting.

Ocellaris said:
This was supposed to be the solution to the Fury cards using a ton of power.
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Yea... the OC values getting reported with +50% power are nuts, lol
 
Azphira said:
So.... Is me buying a Titan Xp now too close to a Volta based card launch?
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It's not only my opinion, but buying flagship cards is best bought on release. When you pay 1200 for 2 years of uncontested performance it's worth it. Right now though, I would highly recommend not buying a Titan.

Either grab a 1080ti or wait for Volta Titan.
 
Napoleon said:
First, I love winter :)

Second, I love my GTX 1080 haha. Honestly, with Lisa Su at the helm I feel better about AMD as a company.

I realize that RTG is a bit different since the merger but if their CPU division could leap to Ryzen, I have to at least hope their GPU's can do some cool stuff as well. TBH, Vega fills a huge void with its 1440p freesync performance levels, now people can use all the great displays with a better GPU. If its prices stabilize I do think it can offer a good price/performance, especially if you consider the cost advantages of freesync displays over gsync.
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Me too, just not Russian winters with no supplies :)

Anyway, yes, I agree they are good for the Freesync crowd. Everyone was just wishing that they AMD/ATI would have made a return to their glory days with Vega, they sure did hype it up to be that.
 
Ultima99 said:
Don't worry guys. In 3 years the driver improvements will have this thing TRASHING the 1080 and getting close to the 1080Ti....
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you dont need to wait so long, it does that already
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thingi said:
Vega sucks period AND it's priced too high. It should have been given a HardOCP 'spaceheater' award.
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So Does 1070 and 1080 suck?

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TorxT3D said:
havent been impressed with amd since radeon 9800pro.

good greif how many fails is it gonna take before nvidia buys out amd... or have they already and just use the name as a fake competitior,,,


hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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it seems you never owned a 7970/R9 290X or R9 Fury X then


CSI_PC said:
I would say Nvidia's advantage with their architecture is that it is designed to scale heavily or be cut heavily; in Essence the GP102 is Tesla/Quadro/Geforce, the GP104 is Tesla/Quadro/Geforce,etc.

The point being there is not much difference even between the various segmented GPUs even on Nvidia, the exception being the largest die P100 and V100 purely designed for HPC and these are true multi-precision GPUs; FP16/32/64 with ideal scaling.
Also Nvidia is better at segmenting this architecture for its various markets.
The GCN architecture works well up to a point.
Cheers
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Then there is AMD which technically AMD doesnt cut compute capability on consumer GPU instead charging 5x more because hgiher compute performance
 
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I guess my plans are to upgrade my X58 to Ryzen 1600X and keep my 290X a bit longer until 1070 /Vega 54 performance falls into the $250-265 target as I really don't see anything in that price range to upgrade to yet as no way I will pay miner pricing.
 
Ocellaris said:
This was supposed to be the solution to the Fury cards using a ton of power.
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No, that was what some people fantasized, but that was never the truth.

Navi will be the first cards out by Raja that aren't under the Arctic Island or previous Island architecture. The whole Islands Architecture was pre-Raja. Navi is the first true Raja RTG card.

Could be good or could suck. But no way was Vega the "solution" since Raja got here - they are just trying to break even to recoup R&D costs on a badly designed architecture.
 
PontiacGTX said:
you dont need to wait so long, it does that already
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So Does 1070 and 1080 suck?

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I find you're skill to selectively choose only the games Vega does well in ohh so impressive

and yes
1080 performance 14 months later isn't that great at all

did you even read the Computerbase final words?
on how performance fluctuates?
or did you just scour the internet and reviews, trying to find only the good things?
 
Peter2k said:
I find you're skill to selectively choose only the games Vega does well in ohh so impressive

and yes
1080 performance 14 months later isn't that great at all

did you even read the Computerbase final words?
on how performance fluctuates?
or did you just scour the internet and reviews, trying to find only the good things?
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If the games you put will lower the overall performance because there is a clear bias I dont see why include them for example Computerbase has Anno 2050 which favors Nvidia heavily and I dont think many people plays that game

If Vega 56 being 100usd cheaper than 1080 isnt that great at all well I dont know what it is,It is late but people would buy a 400usd card which has 95-90% performance of one or one has +5-10% and costs 100usd more?

The results From TPU,Guru3d,TT,Anandtech for RX Vega 56 puts it most of the times close to 1080 I dont know what review you were looking at
 
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