AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 Review

[AntiShill]

+1
... Same statements over and over again argued Ad Nauseam in every related post.

...

How come you are never tired of the same old "compute" marketing nonsense from AMD. The bait-and-switch to gamers. And would any AMD partisan like to explain why there is so many terrible benchmark results for this one benchmark see:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2225361-FFXIV-Stormblood-Benchmark-Scores/page3

Note posts, 27, 43,44,45 to start. Ryzen has a lot of explaining to do. Any Ryzen partisans have the guts to tackle this?

The easy path of course is to blame the benchmark itself, but if all you got is software optimizations will help later, when is that later ever going to come? My FX-8320 never got that memo, or the fixes that really helped with it 8-cores. If this process take 2 years, there will be new CPUs by then and it would be called too little too late.

 

[AntiShill]

I'm sorry dude, but you clearly are just being silly. The server industry doesn't care about what you just said. You are not making sense at all with the whole "best lap times". Since when did a company care about gaming performance of their servers?
I understand if you dislike it for not being a great gaming product but hating it's compute performance is just weird. I also can't seem to find any of that "deceitful marketing" that you mentioned. Did you imagine it?

And what the hell do you have against miners? I've done mining myself a while ago. It's something that very few can actually do properly and also requires investing huge amounts of money to buy the hardware and run it 24/7. Are you jealous? Is that why you are so salty?

AMD hyped ryzen to the gamers, that is when AMD messed up. I've got nothing against miners or server builds, but don't pretend to be better for gaming when they are NOT. They might be adequate for those that just want adequate, but it is still a bait-and-switch. This is deceitful marketing, that I am trying to call out, and then they overprice and that is a even more blatant travesty.

BTW what does jealousy have to do with anything? LOL. And I do NOT hate compute performance, but I much rather save money than pay extra for more compute cores that do NOT help gaming. Do NOT bait-and-swtich. Do NOT hype it to the gamers, if AMD is NOT going to deliver real gaming value.

I think he was talking about this: https://www.techspot.com/review/1450-core-i7-vs-ryzen-5-hexa-core/
the OCed 7800x 6 core Intel chip was just equal in gaming compared to the R7 1600. the 4.8GHz 7700K was also just 9% faster than the 4.0GHz 1600.
there's no denying that the 7700k is the best gaming CPU at the moment. Value wise most consider the 1600 to be the winner since you save over 100$ for a much better GPU.

The 1600 for $100 is not enough of a saving. AMD is good keeping to a socket, so that is its saving grace.You will need need at least $150 savings so that in 2 years time, when the next gen GPU gets bottlenecked by the any of the current generation of ryzen. This GPU bottlenecking is already showing up on the GTX1080ti. But if the top line R5 1600x at $150, then you will you have that $150 for the 1600Xreplacement at that time which will hopefully easy that bottlenecking of the GPU. You have to think a step ahead to defend the money you put into your builds.

 

[slamscaper]

I know folks were expecting a lot more, but honestly I'm impressed. It definitely competes with the 1070 very well and this is an early review sample. We all know AMD's GPU's ALWAYS age better over time, so I would bet by a few months in this card will be handily beating the 1070 in every popular game.

What really makes me want one or two of these is the fact that my new 4K monitor supports Freesync. I'm peeved that my GTX 970's in SLI cannot make use of Freesync simply because Nvidia blocks it on their cards. I've been with the green team for so long now and I'm tired of them abandoning the older gen cards with driver updates while AMD seems to keep improving their older generations to a point that makes them far more usable after a long time. At this point I'm looking for long life from my GPU's, considering how fast technology moves. I believe I'm ready to make a switch. Ryzen and Vega would be a sweet build for me.

 

[ddferrari]

I know folks were expecting a lot more, but honestly I'm impressed. It definitely competes with the 1070 very well and this is an early review sample. We all know AMD's GPU's ALWAYS age better over time, so I would bet by a few months in this card will be handily beating the 1070 in every popular game.

What really makes me want one or two of these is the fact that my new 4K monitor supports Freesync. I'm peeved that my GTX 970's in SLI cannot make use of Freesync simply because Nvidia blocks it on their cards. I've been with the green team for so long now and I'm tired of them abandoning the older gen cards with driver updates while AMD seems to keep improving their older generations to a point that makes them far more usable after a long time. At this point I'm looking for long life from my GPU's, considering how fast technology moves. I believe I'm ready to make a switch. Ryzen and Vega would be a sweet build for me.

"...I'm tired of them abandoning the older gen cards with driver updates while AMD seems to keep improving their older generations..."

That's called a specious argument; it seems reasonable on the surface, but reality doesn't quite match up.

It's not that Nvidia abandons their cards (or releases drivers that actually slow them down to spur sales- which some baselessly claim), they just release GPUs that are fully fleshed-out from the start. AMD has a history of releasing cards in a rush that simply aren't ready for prime time, and then promise to continue to work on them after the sale. I'll take what I paid for right now and in full, thank you. You're not getting more with AMD, you're just slowly getting dealt what you had coming in the first place.

By the time this card improves enough to exceed the 1070- (and will it ever, considering power consumption, heat, and poor overclocking?), Volta will be out.

 

[Boilerhog146]

EPIC FAIL! that's the only way to describe it ,price too high,too late,too much power ,piss poor availability,poor driver,yeah they will get another 10/15 % with new driver ,MAYBE! but can you find one ?ya can go anywhere right now and pick up any kind of 1070 your heart desires.with full maturity.this is a poor choice ,buy this and your donating to AMD ,

 

[hyperspaced]

Don't worry about AMD people. Vega will be having ridiculously high hashrates in ethereum mining and is going to sell like hotcakes, even with this horrible power consumption. Expect the card to sell at a +50% premium from the MSRP in a couple of months. This is were the money is and AMD knows it.

 

[AntiShill]

Don't worry about AMD people. Vega will be having ridiculously high hashrates in ethereum mining and is going to sell like hotcakes, even with this horrible power consumption. Expect the card to sell at a +50% premium from the MSRP in a couple of months. This is were the money is and AMD knows it.

Yay we can all look forward to playing Ethereum Miner Super Deluxe!! At least it has better payout than the casino. LOL.

 

[darisalfafa]

Really now with name calling? And besides what is so wrong with saving money? You go ahead and be hopeful that your donations help AMD. But advising others to pay more fore less is the actually what would lead people to believe someone is either are paid by AMD or work for AMD.

I can't be a shill, when I advocate for everyone to get more for their money and pay less in any way possible, and demand, AMD, Intel, nVidia lower their prices. The only gain I get is when I get to pay less for stuff for myself, but I make no money from it. Maximizing bang for the buck is all I am trying to do. It is counter productive when we have fanboys too eager to make donations for unjustified higher prices.

No, you are a guy that I don't know that has stupid points/analysis, criticising AMD for the wrong reasons. Now think whether or not a self proclaimed advisor to "not pay more for less", can get away with something asinine like this.

"Likw Ryzen, AMD show up late to the market, being the second option, they still have the gall to overprice their wares. Really AMD?!? This is how you win friends? Any goodwill that was left over from the 939 era has now all been evaporated completely.

AMD, if you are just going to be the me-too product with me-too on par performance, and that is really being generous, actually stuff like Ryzen bottlenecking the GPU, slower single cor/gaming performance, and the higher power consumption of the Vega, really qualifies as 90% me-too. So the prices will have to be significantly lower. Sure price it high at the beginning see how many gullible fanboy donations you can get, but the market reality will soon assert itself...

What kind of deceit and bait and switch AMD trying to pull over their customers? AMD used to deliver value and it was clear and obvious to see. But now it is like all marketing games. What the heck happened?"

Saying it's always the second option, then isolating AMD's weakness (not addressing competitor's weaknesses) and then continuing with price drops that are not exclusive to AMD. Top kek "advice". Pathetic. Even my 12 year old self would know that in the past.

 

[Magistus]

Where is the 64?

 

[ddferrari]

Where is the 64?

Already explained in the review. Read and come back.

 

[AntiShill]

....Saying it's always the second option, then isolating AMD's weakness (not addressing competitor's weaknesses) and then continuing with price drops that are not exclusive to AMD. . ....

If AMD priced their Vega 56 at $300, I'd tell everyone it is a great deal. There is no good GPU at the $300 price point right now. The 1060 are $250 card, and the 1070 are $350 cards. That would have been ideal pricing for Vega 56.

But you like to make donations to AMD, who am I to stop you. Just don't lead the other lemmings over the cliff.

 

[Magnums94]

At my local internet shop, price ranges for variety of 1070's are starting from 400 to 537 euros. If AMD really want to be competetive, then they should at least undercut the 1070. If they decide to put it more expensive or even the same, then they will be doomed.

As many already mentioned. They arrived late with this product, and considering that power consumption is not something they can be proud of (comparing to 1070), then they should at least make it more appealing to the customers by putting it in cheaper, but I highly doubt that it will happen.

 

[Flebbert]

Just read the 62 comments on here....... Some really down to earth comments on here and some not so much.

Lets all remember that it is day one of the release for this card and that it is not trying to beat the 1080Ti but provide market value against the 1070 and 1080.

The only cards currently released are the reference cards with day 1 drivers and the performance looks to be the equal +-5% to the NVidia options.

The power is a concern but really my old 390 is only 20W less TDP than the air cooled Vega 64 so really not a big deal.

These are 10+ and 13+ TFLOP cards and a whole new architecture ....... performance is going to improve.

The Vega 64 can be picked up for $699 in aus vs the 1080 which has the majority around the $800+ mark.

Everyone keep a level head, keep the fanboy/hating (which ever camp you fall into) to a reasonable level and wait until the dust settles over the next 60 days.

 

[Boilerhog146]

NEWEGG has them in stock but the bundled cards are the only ones left in stock ,all individual cards list out of stock.and the lowest price Vega 64 is 839.00 cdn.which is more than a 100 dollars more than I paid for a Gigabyte GTX 1080 Extreme gaming premium pack rev2 .the one with the highest clocks and front HDMI for VR.oh, and no listing for the lower end model, vega 56 is MIA.

who in their right mind would pay more for less.?though I gues if you were doing a complete new build ,the bundled version ,may be the way to go but then you have to do some math ,to see if you are actually getting a good deal.also I notice the bundled cards only come with a 1700x or 1800 x proc,and premium x series mobo no b350 boards in bundles,marketing ploy to say the least.

As for mining ,we'll see what the powerbill has to say about that. over the course of a year ,will you really make some cash.my buddy found out the hard way ,rma card after card ,driving his power bill up .after about six months ,I loaned him a shirt,lost his,the cards just can't take the abuse, that they are not designed for.oh and .venders started giving him the gears over the RMA's . he gave up the mining and the hungry MULES .he may not be making that cash but he is sure saving some.

EDIT: Checked NCIX ,only available for preorder as well ,and too expensive.

after checking memory express,tiger direct,newegg,and ncix.I can now safely say ,they are not available in Canada as a stand alone product ,well done AMD,
also there is a Gigabyte aorus GTX 1080 ti sitting on sale just north of 900.00 cdn at newegg right now.
I guess that why no availability,wouldn't be able to sell them anyway.even the AMD fans that I know personally are Bawking at the new Vega,

 

[Boilerhog146]

Also, WTF is with the pricing AMD? You are supposed to be the value proposition brand. Who in their right mind is going to want to buy AMD, the bargain product, when they can get a less power hungry "premium" brand in Nvidia. Like I said, this card better perform in the professional space and it's screwed at it's current price.

it does perform in professional space ,but at what price again ,priced higher than titan,Really?

 

[Puiu]

If AMD priced their Vega 56 at $300, I'd tell everyone it is a great deal. There is no good GPU at the $300 price point right now. The 1060 are $250 card, and the 1070 are $350 cards. That would have been ideal pricing for Vega 56.

But you like to make donations to AMD, who am I to stop you. Just don't lead the other lemmings over the cliff.

I would tend to agree with you if for prices where actually the market prices. you won't find a GTX 1070 for under 430$ (maybe with some luck in a very limited special offer)
Where I live, in Romania, the cheapest is 570$ and that's after a 20% discount was applied which is ridiculously high. (although I do understand why the prices are so high)
I'm waiting for some GPU dumps on the SH market after ETH becomes too expensive to mine. It should happen soon this fall.

 

[Boilerhog146]

I would tend to agree with you if for prices where actually the market prices. you won't find a GTX 1070 for under 430$ (maybe with some luck in a very limited special offer)
Where I live, in Romania, the cheapest is 570$ after a 20% discount was applied which is ridiculous.

That's fine and dandy, market prices are in u.s. dollars.u.s. dollar, romainian dollar and Canadian dollar all different.so how much are the new vega's there.and how available are they compared to that 1070 that you obviously can go buy right now?

 

[AntiShill]

I would tend to agree with you if for prices where actually the market prices. you won't find a GTX 1070 for under 430$ (maybe with some luck in a very limited special offer)
Where I live, in Romania, the cheapest is 570$ and that's after a 20% discount was applied which is ridiculous.

Well we all know that the crypto miners have severely distorted the market prices right now. The official release price for the GTX1070 was $379 over 15 months ago. The GTX1060 was a $250 card. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_10_series

The market was pushing for $350 for while, and a $20 slip for 15 month old design is not all that unreasonable or unrealistic in a normal market. It is truly crazy that I can sell my GTX1070 I got last year and potentially make profit of $100.

So the onus in on AMD, whether they intend to be good for gamers, or they just want to milk people for donations exploiting the current market chaos. Where the set their price is a clear indicator of that. It is one thing that Newegg, Amazon, retailers, mark-up because of market demands, and another when AMD is looking to exploit the situation. And the fact is they've chosen to set a MSRP higher than 1070 being a 90% me-too product, 15 months late, with higher power consumption. That is a clear insult to the intelligence of all of us gamers.

And how we as consumer responds is up to us. I wouldn't buy a GPU of any sort until the crypto miner insanity blows over.

 

[Boilerhog146]

My next logical Question is where are the vega 56 cards ,and the more affordable bundles like a b350 board,with a Rysen 1600 ,vega 56. not part of the marketing ploy Huh? gimmick to get the consumer to build a high end rig that they don't want or need.may as well push some high end memory kit at them as well.

@AntiShill , same here,I only bought the gigabyte gtx 1080 Extreme Gaming Premium pack Rev.2, in may ,at NCIX for 729.00 .back to 959.00 2 days later .with no stock available.so yes I could very easily flip my 1080 over for a profit.newegg wants 989.00 for either rev 1 or 2.

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125969


Edit: oops,, maybe not.try selling a vega ,any vega , over this and the Extreme version is only 40 dollars more.the vega has to drop drasticly in price before any of them sell ,to anyone half sensible anyway ..I think I'm gonna get the Extreme Aorus version to sli with my Extreme Gaming Non Aorus version for some awesome Sli action..would look pretty cool I think with the Aorus logo in the top slot and Extreme Gaming litup just below that in the third slot . the same card as mine is still at 985.oo.and another listed for 1065.00 not sure why the higher priced one is there .they are not listed what revision so would have to call to make sure getting latest revision .there was a packaging issue which made cards shrouds move and fans clicked upon install.easy fix though.just not for everyone to fix so created some rma's and a new revision.as I read it anyway.

 

[ddferrari]

Conclusion for everyone:

Vega 56 is the new high-performance value king. It costs as much as a 1070, while being as fast or faster, with expected potential to become faster due to drivers and OC potential due to 3rd party coolers. (also packed math!)

Also, the 60-70W difference between Vega 56 and 1070 is peanuts. Nobody cares. People bought and loved 290/X/390/X and those were 275-250W GPUs, while this uses just 210W.

Since Techspot apparently hired Ned Flanders to be the moderator, I'll keep this post kind and christian-like.

Vega 56 offers the same framerates overall as the 15-month-old 1070. It runs hotter. It sucks more power. It costs more- once the mining debacle is taken out of the equation. OCing will undoubtedly be mediocre, like all AMD cards.

It is the King of nothing.

 

[ddferrari]

My next logical Question is where are the vega 56 cards ,and the more affordable bundles like a b350 board,with a Rysen 1600 ,vega 56. not part of the marketing ploy Huh? gimmick to get the consumer to build a high end rig that they don't want or need.may as well push some high end memory kit at them as well.

@AntiShill , same here,I only bought the gigabyte gtx 1080 Extreme Gaming Premium pack Rev.2, in may ,at NCIX for 729.00 .back to 959.00 2 days later .with no stock available.so yes I could very easily flip my 1080 over for a profit.newegg wants 989.00 for either rev 1 or 2.

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125969


Edit: oops,, maybe not.try selling a vega ,any vega , over this and the Extreme version is only 40 dollars more.the vega has to drop drasticly in price before any of them sell ,to anyone half sensible anyway ..I think I'm gonna get the Extreme Aorus version to sli with my Extreme Gaming Non Aorus version for some awesome Sli action..would look pretty cool I think with the Aorus logo in the top slot and Extreme Gaming litup just below that in the third slot . the same card as mine is still at 985.oo.

There's no point in getting a more powerful version of the GPU you already own for an SLI setup. Your system will down-clock it to match the weaker card. They both have to run at the same clock speed for SLI to work.

 

[Boilerhog146]

Don't worry about AMD people. Vega will be having ridiculously high hashrates in ethereum mining and is going to sell like hotcakes, even with this horrible power consumption. Expect the card to sell at a +50% premium from the MSRP in a couple of months. This is were the money is and AMD knows it.

I expect this ,every bit,then I also EXPECT that RMA'S will skyrocket ,with all these HOTCAKES .(READ HOT).being used for mining and .we legit consumers .get treated the same .when trying to do a legit RMA. I personally do have a problem with miners using graphics cards for mining.too many rma will eventually effect warranty periods IMO.

 

[Puiu]

Well we all know that the crypto miners have severely distorted the market prices right now. The official release price for the GTX1070 was $379 over 15 months ago. The GTX1060 was a $250 card. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_10_series

The market was pushing for $350 for while, and a $20 slip for 15 month old design is not all that unreasonable or unrealistic in a normal market. It is truly crazy that I can sell my GTX1070 I got last year and potentially make profit of $100.

So the onus in on AMD, whether they intend to be good for gamers, or they just want to milk people for donations exploiting the current market chaos. Where the set their price is a clear indicator of that. It is one thing that Newegg, Amazon, retailers, mark-up because of market demands, and another when AMD is looking to exploit the situation. And the fact is they've chosen to set a MSRP higher than 1070 being a 90% me-too product, 15 months late, with higher power consumption. That is a clear insult to the intelligence of all of us gamers.

And how we as consumer responds is up to us. I wouldn't buy a GPU of any sort until the crypto miner insanity blows over.

you do realise that the 1070 was never at that price point, besides a few very limited deals (a few coupon deals I remember), even before miners brought the price higher? (and the only country that actually got that was the US) Nvidia can tell us that they want to sell them at 100$ it's pointless if it will never be sold regularly at that price by anybody.
it's similar to how the R7 1700x had a 299$ deal on amazon.

 

[Boilerhog146]

I kinda disagree with using an AMD card on an Intel Core i7. I think it's well known that Nvidia is optimized for intel better than AMD cards are.

I don't think this is true to be honest, having looked at lots of footage from AMD GPU launch events over the years, they have been using intel CPU's in their test systems at events, now why would they do that if it hindered the performance of the product they are trying to promote?

I would be interested to see if this is a true though

Now why would they do that if their own cpu is "GOOD ENOUGH" to run the products they are trying to promote.? lolz.proof that intel cpu's are the undisputed king in gaming .no further evidence required..

 

[Boilerhog146]

My next logical Question is where are the vega 56 cards ,and the more affordable bundles like a b350 board,with a Rysen 1600 ,vega 56. not part of the marketing ploy Huh? gimmick to get the consumer to build a high end rig that they don't want or need.may as well push some high end memory kit at them as well.

@AntiShill , same here,I only bought the gigabyte gtx 1080 Extreme Gaming Premium pack Rev.2, in may ,at NCIX for 729.00 .back to 959.00 2 days later .with no stock available.so yes I could very easily flip my 1080 over for a profit.newegg wants 989.00 for either rev 1 or 2.

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125969


Edit: oops,, maybe not.try selling a vega ,any vega , over this and the Extreme version is only 40 dollars more.the vega has to drop drasticly in price before any of them sell ,to anyone half sensible anyway ..I think I'm gonna get the Extreme Aorus version to sli with my Extreme Gaming Non Aorus version for some awesome Sli action..would look pretty cool I think with the Aorus logo in the top slot and Extreme Gaming litup just below that in the third slot . the same card as mine is still at 985.oo.

There's no point in getting a more powerful version of the GPU you already own for an SLI setup. Your system will down-clock it to match the weaker card. They both have to run at the same clock speed for SLI to work.

Yes, you are 100% correct,installing a close match pair of cards ,and drivers, both cards default to the lower cards clocks,also you put odd memory amounts like a 2gig card and a 4 gig card you have only the 2 gig available ,been like that since you could crossfire or sli,cards.
, However,had you done a little investigation ,you would know that which I have already researched .Also under DX12 and the Vulkan API.in win 10/you are supposed to be able to mix gpu's, correct me if I misread.
Just so happens the Aorus Extreme Gaming has the same massive clocks as the Gigabyte Extreme gaming that I have .just different led logo,,slightly different shroud. back plate .but essentially the same card..also when you manually set clocks via software or bios mod .as long as the lower card can run at the higher clocks your good to go. and it wouldn't be the first time I flashed a GT to an Ultra with a modded bios..DOH!