Poll: The Vega Review Thread.

[mmj_uk]

They'll be fillrate limited, Vega 56 has the same 64 ROPS as Vega 64 just less shading power but I think it's safe to say that most games aren't shader limited. AMD can talk about asynchronous compute and all of that but their cards are getting killed by NVidia's high end due to their much higher pixel fillrate.

 

[WeSbO]

To me this indicates the Vega architecture still has many oft he same bottlenecks that Fiji suffered form which prevented it leveraging the raw performance numbers in real -world games.

Yep I would have to agree with you there. There's a reason that when we see Vega Shine, Fiji shines also, and when Vega does bad so does Fiji, because I think it's just limitations to the GCN architectecture, Fiji/Polaris/Vega are inherently the same after all, just tweaked down the line... When you notice that the 2 "meh" GPUs they have bought out (power hungry, dubious scaling) have both way more cores than any other of their GPUs at one point you have to come to the conclusion that AMD are hitting their architectural limits, sure those 2 GCN Gpus do really well incertain instances, and may shine when new APIs are used more, but at the end of the day Nvidia will most likely adapt their arch for the new APIs as well and will most likely do really well, so it becomes somewhat irrelevant where AMD are positioned in the long run...

 

[LoadsaMoney]

AMD has some seriously dedicated fans. It's amazing what they can get away with.

They'll have no problem generating hype for Navi.

Can say the same about Nvidia, i remember when the whole 970 having only 3.5GB came out, and they were all sending them back with extra cash, for the 980s.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not sure what point you're trying to make as the difference (28W) between the 1080 (180W TDP) and the Vega 56 (210 TDP) looks spot-on. The 1070 looks a little high. Is it a reference board?
Check out some other reviews that run Vega in it various modes to see some very high power consumption figures.

I think its more interesting compared to the RX580 - reviews either peg it slightly below or slightly above. So the main concern is pricing - if we can have some cards under £400 the Vega56 looks not too bad,above £400 not so much.

BTW,have you read the Digital Foundry review:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56-review

AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 - the Digital Foundry verdict
If you're looking for an alternative to the GTX 1070, the bottom line is that you're generally getting around 10 to 12 per cent of additional performance with the Vega 56, at the cost of some efficiency. It's also interesting to note just how consistently the card out-performs its competitor - only oddments and bugs along with a strange turnout from Crysis 3 stop it from dominating across the board, even on titles that traditionally favour Nvidia hardware, such as Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Assuming the recommended US pricing holds up - and that the Ethereum mining boom doesn't jack up the costs horrendously - the value on offer here is very good overall, especially if you own (or are considering) a 1440p or 4K FreeSync display, which pairs nicely with this product and constitutes one of the most profound gaming upgrades money can buy. At the time of writing, UK pricing is not available, but if it costs too much more than GTX 1070, that would take the shine off an impressive product.
How Vega 56 compares with its more expensive counterparts is something we are still in the process of testing. However, we've run some initial tests on the top-end liquid-cooled version of the Vega 64 (full review incoming - we've had only five days with these products, which is not ideal) and first impressions suggest that the Vega 56 offers around 85 per cent of the performance of the fully maxed Vega experience, and that gap may close up a little against the air-cooled version.

It's early days with testing there, but it may well be the case that the Vega 56 isn't just a great value contender against GTX 1070, but also its higher-end siblings too. We'll try to get some further numbers to you as soon as possible, but it seems clear that the Vega 56 is AMD's value play, where it performs very well indeed. Aside from the 2x eight-pin power input requirement and the lack of a DVI port for legacy display support, it's difficult to find much fault with what AMD has delivered here - there's strong performance out of the box, various routes forward with overclocking that deliver tangible results, and the quality of the reference card (the only Vega option for a while) also represents a big improvement over prior AMD efforts. It's been a long time since AMD has challenged Nvidia at the higher-end, but Vega 56 hits the sweet spot - it's a superb performer overall.

Having said that the GTX1070 is more efficient though,and if miners drive the price up,then its not going to matter how fast the Vega56 will be compared to the GTX1070.

Having said that look how well the Fury X is doing even against a GTX1070!!

 

[TonyTurbo78]

The 56 gives 90% of the performance at 80% of the cost, why would you bother?

we dont know what the 56 will launch at yet, I'm guessing £399. Plus a lot depends on that undervolted, underclocked HBM. I prefer to have the big card, it's not a lot of money difference and the potential in the card is there more than the 56. I'm not denying the 56 looks a fantastic little card though.

 

[harney]

I think its more interesting compared to the RX580 - reviews either peg it slightly below or slightly above. So the main concern is pricing - if we can have some cards under £400 the Vega56 looks not too bad,above £400 not so much.

BTW,have you read the Digital Foundry review:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56-review
Snip

Its interesting that some results for the rx56 seem to do very well did you see the hardware unbox rx56 results with dirt 4 outpacing the 1080ti ..
i personally think there is more under the hood for these vega's and i do not think it will take years to arrive but very soon 1 or 2 months maybe ...just a thought

 

[Spyhop]

1070 is ancient history at NVIDIA. The design team at NVIDIA must be sitting around wearing crowns and feeling untouchable.

 

[DarrenM343]

Does anyone remember the AMD Vega Nvdia jokey/NV bashing video that appeared about Vega and Volta, produced by AMD? Can we watch it now please? (EDIT:Seach the tube for AMD After the uprising). Nice CPU's however. I think this was fairly predictable to be honest, their main focus seems to have been on the CPU side of the biz.
Seems like selling quite a few.....some folks must hate NV so much .

 

[LoadsaMoney]

No CrossFire At Launch?!: WHAT. Raja Koduri said on stage in LA just over a week ago: "what do enthusiasts want?" - you know what I want? ENTHUSIAST FEATURES LIKE CROSSFIRE. Has there been a launch of a major GPU in the last ten years without multi-GPU support on day one? Even the freakin' RX 480 supported multi-GPU on day one. UGH. Sad, AMD... very sad.

POWER CONSUMPTION: OMFG : The power numbers on Vega are not good at all, there's absolutely no positive things to say about it. The cheaper Radeon RX Vega 56 still consumes up to 300W in our 7700K test bed, while the RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition uses up to 500W, and up to freakin' 600W of power when overclocked and the power limit is increased to 50%. These numbers are totally unacceptable for a mainstream, or even enthusiast gamer.

HBM2/HBCC = USELESS... For Now: I reached out to AMD to ask for some help in "testing the limits of HBCC, " and that I had an 8K display, I'd love to push the 8GB of HBM2 and next-gen High Bandwidth Cache Controller. Well, you know what - "no game uses more than 8GB" right now. AMD's words. Second, HBCC is ******* useless for gamers, and so is the almighty HBM2. NVIDIA kicks AMD's ass all over the grass with GDDR5... and blatantly spits in their face with GDDR5X.

HBM2 was meant to usher in smaller cards... yeah, didn't happen. Radeon R9 Fury X was smaller than this, and it had HBM1. I've personally been waiting years for Radeon RX Vega so that HBM2 could possibly give us smaller cards. I'd have killed for AMD to release an RX Vega Nano at launch... but nope. We have huge, power hungry, oh-so-meh performing cards.

It's SO Late : Vega was due months ago, but due to various difficulties behind the scenes (shifting from SK Hynix to Samsung for HBM2 didn't help) it was delayed and is still WEEKS away from a physical launch.

No Custom RX 56/64 For Weeks: Pushing the point above, AMD won't have Radeon RX Vega 56 or 64 cards in gamers' hands until the END OF THIS MONTH. So here I am at the end of my review where I'm meant to recommend them to you... but I wouldn't recommend a reference RX Vega from AMD due to the power consumption (which won't change with AIB cards) and the liquid cooler on RX Vega 64. If you want Vega, you'll be waiting until September if you didn't pre-order or grab one of the what-the-****-is-going-on Radeon Packs.

Water-Cooling Required... AGAIN?!: I swore off water cooled cards with Radeon R9 Fury X, and here we are again. AMD can't make an enthusiast class card without limping down onto using water cooling. Sigh. Now... if AMD beat NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and needed watercooling... I'm down with that. At least I could say "AMD beat NVIDIA's best card, but needed watercooling to do it"... at least it would've beaten the GTX 1080 Ti. But it doesn't even come close, even with 600W at its disposal and a freakin' watercooler.

Brutal, just brutal.

 

[Brazo]

The are selling out everywhere on day of release, seems as though they have clearly done something right....

They have and that is a massive success in itself but they've sold to miners and literally a handful of free sync diehards.

There is absolutely nothing to recommend this card for someone new to pc gaming or someone looking to upgrade. The freesync argument is a weak one now.

 

[Mayh3M]

I can understand you being upset but you've got a cheek saying that considering the way you acted in the Polaris thread by hyping it beyond reason.

These same people accuse you of 'trolling' or hating competition if you present the reality of where things stand.

AMD can't touch Nvidia and have shown absolutely no signs of doing so. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

 

[Gerard]

Brutal, just brutal.

Some of his points are there but water cooling being a requirement is way off the mark. Fury x didn't need it, it was just something amd done with the card to differentiate it. Presumably in response to the complaints about loud reference coolers, we know how that worked out in the end but to say it NEEDED it is bs.

 

[maltrabob]

I wanted a decent Radeon graphics to go with my FreeSync monitor and to replace my ageing R9 Fury. I am an AMD fan myself and it's anybody's business but I simply can't believe people are going to buy Vega 64 over GTX 1080 Ti which costs the same money. Vega 56 looks promising though and is a good competitor to GTX 1070, but unfortunately is too slow and not much of an upgrade for me. I have to say after all this waiting and false statements from AMD that I am both angry and disappointed. FreeSync monitor or not I am left with no option other than go green team after many years of having Radeons.

 

[Rezident]

Wow I am so glad I don't need a new card yet. Still no value at the high-end.

 

[DarrenM343]

Wow I am so glad I don't need a new card yet. Still no value at the high-end.

If we rewind to May/June last year, it makes the price seem much better (the 1080). Pascal was a good leap ahead.....the 1080 arrived 14 months ago.
That's one of the good things with all of the interests Nvidia now has - they don't need competition to drive them forward. Their other non-gaming customer need them to. Lack of competition doesn't help the pricing however.

 

[BTVA]

was seriously debating getting this to replace my 1080 since I have an MG279Q (FreeSync) but well nevermind now, the next batch of cards in on Sept.

 

[Howling]

I am an AMD fan myself and it's anybody's business but I simply can't believe people are going to buy Vega 64 over GTX 1080 Ti which costs the same money.

Where can you get a Ti for £450?

 

[harney]

Brutal, just brutal.

Which reviewer was that as agree that is brutal deluxe

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Which reviewer was that as agree that is brutal deluxe

TweakTown.

 

[Techen]

was seriously debating getting this to replace my 1080 since I have an MG279Q (FreeSync) but well nevermind now, the next batch of cards in on Sept.

I use a freesync with my 1080ti, Gsync/freesync is legit overrated if you already have high fps anyway !