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...

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 !

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!...;)

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

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

Vega 56 I'm happy with what I'm hearing about the Vega 56 and will definitely be upgrading to one. I don't get those calling Vega a disaster, my guess is they never really considered or intended to get a Vega or AMD video card. It's not like all these people have 1080tis. Suddenly, if it's not a 1080ti, it doesn't count, lol. Like that's what they mainstream gamer owns. It's truly ridiculous.

If you want AMD then this is the one to get and overclock as required.

Shortly - it's a disastah. Feels like it's 28 nm and only HBM is made on 14 nm, if this picture is real. http://sobkor.net/uploads/posts/2017-07/1501477658_amd_vega_7.jpg

Actually they got 18% performance over FuryX with 8% less power consumption.

I don't get those calling Vega a disaster

Vega isn't pushing the GPU market forward. At best, they're just treading water with Nvidia here, and doing so a year late. Ryzen pushed the CPU market forward. They forced the competition to make moves. The only move Vega is going to push is a price drop from Nvidia, which will erase any price-to-performance advantage Vega has. I don't think it's a "disaster" given the number of AMD fanboys who will never buy an Nvidia card. They're putting out something for their base, and with mining being hot, they'll sell fine. But for the objective consumer who wants to see two companies pushing each other to offer more performance at better prices, Vega is a let down.

I'm happy with what I'm hearing about the Vega 56 and will definitely be upgrading to one.

Do you call "upgrade" going from your current 1070 to a Vega 56? I call it side-grade for DX11 and tiny upgrade for DX12.

I'm happy with what I'm hearing about the Vega 56 and will definitely be upgrading to one.

Upgrade? Are you on drugs? Definitely a downgrade considering they trade blows and in DX11 vega is especially worse. Not to mention much hotter, noisier, louder etc

Upgrade? Are you on drugs? Definitely a downgrade considering they trade blows and in DX11 vega is especially worse. Not to mention much hotter, noisier, louder etc

Here and there I've seen Vega 56 come up on top in pretty much everything but few things. But then again it seems the results vary wildly between reviews.

Well, good for those who bought a 1070 and 1080 already a year ago they arent missing anything.

I think Vega 56 will provide viable competition for a GTX 1070. For current owners of a 1070 or above though, it's not all that appealing. It's a solid product overall, but I fear it's a bit too late. Had it been released earlier this year then it would have had a larger impact. I think the wild card in this situation is how attractive it is for miners. The 1070 is very popular among miners (this makes a price drop impossible) so if Vega 56 has mediocre mining performance then it might hold the edge in the gaming market (Tom's Hardware shows 30.9 MH/s for Vega 64, which is pretty mediocre for its power consumption - Vega 56 is probably a bit lower, although it has lower power consumption as well).

eh they use to much wattage, but it nice they have card to compete with 1070/1080 even if they rated and use more wattage

I think Vega 56 will provide viable competition for a GTX 1070. For current owners of a 1070 or above though, it's not all that appealing. It's a solid product overall, but I fear it's a bit too late. Had it been released earlier this year then it would have had a larger impact. I think the wild card in this situation is how attractive it is for miners. The 1070 is very popular among miners (this makes a price drop impossible) so if Vega 56 has mediocre mining performance then it might hold the edge in the gaming market (Tom's Hardware shows 30.9 MH/s for Vega 64, which is pretty mediocre for its power consumption - Vega 56 is probably a bit lower, although it has lower power consumption as well).

Vega 56 was exactly the same for Finnish tests.

Going from a 1070 to a Vega56 would be the dullest "upgrade" ever. The 1070's also got a recent price drop (well here anyway) which could affect resale price, and Vega56 is likely to be $500.

The performance of these cards is fine. They are priced correctly for what they offer. The issue here is that AMD waited far too long to release them. Nvidia can now just wait even longer to release Volta. They just have to drop the price of the 1070 and 1080 by 50 bucks each, and then continue to suck more money out of Pascal.

Really? Look at current real prices:

For reference, heres the ocuk UK prices for cheapest (full-size) cards as of today 14th August 2017; GTX1070: £379.99 (Inno3D) GTX1080: £449.99 (ocuk) GTX1080ti: £649.99 (Inno3D) RX Vega 56: N/A (MSRP approx. £399 (inc. VAT) RX Vega 64: £548.99 (Sapphire) RX V64 water: £698.99 (Sapphire) RX Vega FE: £899.99 (AMD, £300 price drop last week from £1199.99)

Vega 56 is more expensive on MSRP than current REAL 1070 prices. (wait and see REAL price when released). Vega 64 is 100 pounds more expensive than GTX 1080. :3eyes: Now tell me: Has Nvidia any real need to lower his already lower prices?

I´m glad i didn´t wait for Vega and bought my 1070 months ago although i´ve just bought a Freesync monitor a few days ago. I hope next time i upgrade my GPU, AMD has something good to offer so i can try Freesync.

Of course, as many people are willing to spend more on a newly released product. The easy solution is for Nvidia to just take an additional 50 dollar hit on each card to attempt to detour people away from buying VEGA. Granted, with the crypto insanity happening, the VEGA pricing is likely to be insane, so a price drop from Nvidia may not be needed.

Nvidia don't need to lower his prices at all: 1080 base model perform better in the major part of games (DX11) and any factory OC model outperform Vega 64 by a good margin IN ALL GAMES. Vega OC is slim at best on air.Water cooled Vega 64 model enter 1080ti price range to get some sort of OC (no throttling clocks). Read HH Vega 64 review and try to explain to a PC gamer Vega 64 really worth 100 pounds more than a 1080. Improvements in drivers along the next 2 years? Same applies to 1070 VS Vega 56. Only miners (?¿?) and AMD fanatic fanboys are going to buy these GPUs at these prices.