AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB review

Posted on: 08/14/2017 01:59 PM

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Not sure if I like it yet..

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:07 PM

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Looks like a better deal than the 64, but if Nvidia now drop price on the 1070 and 1080, it could basically invalidate this card for anyone who isn't strictly Team Red.

Good for AMD though. I'm glad to see they finally have a product in this market again.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:08 PM

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A rather annoying issue with this review, the wrong bars are highlighted (Vega 64 is highlighted as opposed to Vega 56).

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:11 PM

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The Vega56 beats the 1070 with cooler reference models despite the +70W power consumption. Paired with a Sync monitor, it is obviously a better choice. The Vega64 also nearly reaches the 1080. Of course the 1080Ti remains unchallenged, but not most consumers don't buy in that price range.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:15 PM

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Just wowzers ... updating as we speak.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:28 PM

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Thanks, was difficult trying to keep focus on the numbers, eyes being drawn away. (Also, sorry I didn't mean any disrespect).

Just read through the article now, I'm actually quite impressed. While it is a shame AMD brought these cards to the party late, they did deliver what they said they would.

Vega 56 performing either at 1070 or between the 1070 and 1080. Vega 64 performance showing it's on the 1080 consistently and no doubt the liquid cooled edition will be between the 1080 and Ti.

We have to remember that when Vega was first announced, it was meant to compete with the 1080, not Titan/1080 Ti, it's community hype that lead to false expectations.

With the features on board Vega though, it will be interesting to see how it will perform over the years to come, assuming games and software make use of such features and, how the impact would be. Will we see a generation difference like what happened between Kepler and Maxwell, how GCN was able to maintain it's performance between the competing generations? Time will tell.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:29 PM

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This definitely seems like the winner of the two cards but it's going to hurt when Nvidia just cuts the pricing on the 1070/1080.

Hopefully 7nm helps Vega next year.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:34 PM

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No worries mate, it was a colossal screw-up from my side. Fixed now.

The past weeks have been insane, this was pure exhaustion. The 56 arrived on Friday. I hate rushing these things, and the 56 review was that a rushed review.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:36 PM

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Unless 56 has hidden potential, its barely better than 379$ msrp 1070.

So, yeah Vega late to party and still doesnt offer much. For 24/7 usage 1070 is hands down better choice.(gaming, etc..)

I am surprised its not disaster after all shenanigas AMD did on events. So at least that works for amd.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:38 PM

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Unless 56 has hidden potential, its barely better than 379$ msrp 1070.

So, yeah Vega late to party and still doesnt offer much. For 24/7 usage 1070 is hands down better choice.(gaming, etc..)

I am surprised its not disaster after all shenanigas AMD did on events.


You can buy 1070s from 440$. Vega56 has a 400$ MSRP, with the AIBs should be around 430-450$, if the miner hysteria doesn't hit the prices like 500-550$. Paired with a Sync monitor, it will be a better choice in both circumstances.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:46 PM

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The Witcher III has the 2560x1440 results twice instead of the 4k results at the end.

Great write up and review. Hopefully things can only get better with driver optimisation in the future.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:48 PM

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The Witcher III has the 2560x1440 results twice instead of the 4k results at the end.

Great write up and review. Hopefully things can only get better with driver optimisation in the future.

Correct, that was already updated. But thanks for mentioning.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:49 PM

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This definitely seems like the winner of the two cards but it's going to hurt when Nvidia just cuts the pricing on the 1070/1080.

Hopefully 7nm helps Vega next year.

Problem is here in the UK Nvidia is just straight up cheaper... heck for the liquid cooled vega 64 you can buy a 1080ti... and the 1080 is almost £100 cheaper than the stock 64 and thats a custom cooled one... seems american prices are a bit better, here either Nvidia love the UK or AMD just got pricing wrong, though might be due to cryptocurrency inflating the pricing?

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:53 PM

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For the same price, 56 is better overall pick. I am interested how FP16 will play out

Posted on: 08/14/2017 02:56 PM

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Very nice performance on this for the price. Although I've yet too see what the list price here in Denmark will be, as no stores have put it up yet.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the prices are inflated elswhere, like the UK, by miners.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 03:01 PM

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Crypto is definitely inflating all the pricing here in the US at least. There were 1070's going for $390 in May that are selling for $470 now. I don't know why that wouldn't effect UK pricing though - maybe just less miners in the region. No idea.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 03:06 PM

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Might be a European thing? unsure personally, 1070's are cheap here going for as low as £328 when 1080's as low as £489, comparing that to the Vega 64 cards which are going for £549+ it's hard to see why anyone would pick Vega.. Sadly no Vega 56 pricing here yet, so cannot do a comparison. But Liquid64 is going for £700 and 1080ti's are going for as low as £669 :/

Very messed up and confusing pricing over here i guess, either they screwed up pricing of its due to mining and companies still trying to make a buck on that

Posted on: 08/14/2017 03:15 PM

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this is a step to the right direction for AMD. finally a product that can exchange blow with the green camp on the mid to high-end although the 1080ti is still the king of the uber high-end.

i can only see this number improve over time with driver optimization down the line, thumbs up to AMD =)

Posted on: 08/14/2017 03:34 PM

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Will be very interesting to see how overclocking the hbm will effect the performance on the vega 56

Posted on: 08/14/2017 04:24 PM

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Thanks HH, great review as always. So the 56 is the only attractive part in the Vega lineup, despite its higher power draw vs the 1070. I think Nvidia will not sit idly by or give AMD any breathing room. Would expect a statement from them in next few days or weeks about a Volta release, simply to take the wind out of vega sales. If they push volta forward and give a firm release date, that could do it.

Posted on: 08/14/2017 04:28 PM

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This definitely seems like the winner of the two cards but it's going to hurt when Nvidia just cuts the pricing on the 1070/1080.

Hopefully 7nm helps Vega next year.

I hope for that too and also I really hope they get way more bandwidth to go with the cards...

Posted on: 08/14/2017 04:41 PM

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Thanks for the very in depth review Hilbert , now get some sleep Boss you deserve it .

I really believe this is the better value of the two Vegas , due to price/performance , although late to the party i'm glad AMD finally have this video cards out. But i doubt gamers will be able to get hold of this cards as the miners are going thru a buying frenzy all over the web shops , not a single RX Vega available at the moment in the USA !

Posted on: 08/14/2017 04:53 PM

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Nice review, and it would appear that the cards are priced right, I have only a couple of minor niggles. What isn't mentioned or at least given the appropriate weight is the fact that this is a brand-new architecture product, hot off the presses, so to speak, and as such there is a lot of optimizing in AMD's upcoming drivers that certainly will leach out more performance, and there are game optimizations in the various engines tested here that will also be made. Whereas *all* of the nVidia products listed are as mature and as fast as they will likely ever get, because their drivers are mature and contain plenty of optimizations for the programs tested--and game developers have had a lot of time to tweak for the current nVidia architectures.

Also, AMD usually releases like this, I've noticed, these days: mid-range, then high-end, followed by the least profitable sector low end last. I think these are mid-range products not intended to compete with GPUs that cost more than 2x as much in some cases... I think the ultra-high end will come later...perhaps a x2 GPU product, possibly.

But in terms of these mid-range AMD products, it's *never* been a fact, regardless of who makes the cpus and gpus, nVidia, AMD, or Intel, that new architecture products perform at 100% of their lifetime performance on the day they are shipped. Never. It simply does not happen--I wasn't surprised to see nice gains for the Ryzen cpus six months later--I expected it. It *always happens that way.* No exceptions to the rule that I have ever seen. What did surprise me was the fact that apparently some other people *cough* *were surprised* to see such improvement six months later. I think the problem is that cpu and gpu competition had gotten so lax and slow in recent years that many people had simply forgotten some of the basics they were familiar with in years past. Just lulled to sleep, along with Intel, maybe...

So what can we reasonably look forward to in terms of performance improvements due to driver optimizations? Anywhere from 5% to 20% I'd say, maybe even more, depending on the game and whether or not the game engine makes full use of the Vega's new architectural features--I don't think any of the games tested here do that. Improvement is guaranteed--it always works like this. It comes in time for all newly-introduced architectures.

I did want to comment on the temperatures of the various GPUs tested...using GPU-Z, I note that the Idle numbers are right on the money for my RX-480 8GB, but the Load temp of 82 is way, way off and far too hot... Running the GPU @ 100% load for 10 minutes at its stock 1305Mhz, and running the stock fan profile in the Crimson 17.7.2's, fan maxes at 47% and temp maxes @ 65C. I never see 70C, much less 82C...not even sure the GPU could handle that for long. Just thought I'd mention it. I do have case fans that exhaust air from the case constantly, but nothing unusual, actually--the stock 120M fans the value case I'm using came with.

One last comment, the dedicated system ram for the GPU option is very interesting and I'd love to know more about that--not for performance reasons, but because I noticed that Win10x64 in my system (on Preview build 16257) divvies up the ram like this, according DXdiag.exe:

I have 16GBs system ram and 8GB's dedicated VRAM, but Windows divvies it up as follows: 8GBs system ram dedicated to the CPU; 8GBs of VRAM ram dedicated to GPU (Its on-board ram, of course) and finally 8GBs of shared system memory that both the GPU and the CPU can access. It's possible that the latter amount of shared ram might create some bus contention at times between the GPU and CPU that would slow things down a tiny bit. So I am wondering if the Crimson feature to dedicate some system ram to the GPU exclusively, as if it was on-board VRAM, is meant to override the Windows stock settings as described in this paragraph--which it would seem to me it would have to do in order to do what it says it is doing. Just a thought...

Again, overall a very good review...! HH, they've been working you hard lately, but I imagine you've enjoyed every minute of it!...

Posted on: 08/14/2017 04:54 PM

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Shortly - it's a disastah.

Feels like it's 28 nm and only HBM is made on 14 nm
http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=33338

Posted on: 08/14/2017 05:05 PM

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Oook

Thanx for yet another great product review.

although after seeing this and the 64 card im not sure. I sit on a 980TI card and a aoc 144hz G-sync monitor.

My first thought was to sell these two in a package deal get myself a vega+freesync and go up a notch in resolution (running only full HD atm on a 24inch)

The question remains to see if nvidia will lower their prices too. I need at least 1080 performance for it to be worth upgrading from the 980TI. Hmm