AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and Radeon RX Vega 56 official specs and pricing are out

Julio Franco

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AMD sure is enjoying its sweet moment with Ryzen, staging its release as they saw fit bit by bit, while in the process making most of Intel's Core lineup obsolete. It must feel good after Intel has reigned and dictated terms for most of the rivalry's life and in particular to the Core family of processors that have had AMD's offerings relegated to the low-cost segment of the market.

We've also been waiting patiently for Radeon Vega, AMD's next generation graphics architecture that is supposed to compete with Nvidia's highly impressive Pascal (GTX 1080, and the rest of the GeForce 10 series) and in similar fashion we've been receiving this information very slowly. Although if rumors hold true, Vega won't have such a comfortable position against the latest GeForce.

With Radeon RX Vega GPUs confirmed to arrive in August, we now have official information on the models, pricing and specs.

The flagship model will be the Radeon RX Vega 64, which will utilize the full capabilities of the new architecture: 64 compute units and 4096 stream processors, equipped with 8GB of HBM2 memory. There will be two variants, a more expensive $599 liquid cooled model that will push the clocks to the max and an air cooled version expected to retail for $499. Then there's the Radeon RX Vega 56, a cut down version of the same GPU, with fewer (56) compute units and stream processors for $399.

Among Vega highlights, AMD is touting support for the latest DirectX 12 features, use of faster HBM2 memory, an improved display engine for multiple 4K monitors, including support for 4K 120 Hz HDR displays, among many architectural improvements that help to push the performance envelope in this and upcoming graphics chips, as AMD points out "Vega 10" is the first implementation of the Vega architecture on the 14nm FinFET process.

AMD also plans to offer Radeon Vega in packs that will grant you access to a game bundle (Wolfenstein II and Prey) and a discount when buying a Ryzen CPU or Samsung Freesync monitor. In fact, the RX Vega 64 Liquid may only be sold as part of this pack. We'll be able to better judge how good that is for gamers once we get actual performance data which remains undisclosed -- but just for reference, rumors point out to the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition (the fastest version of Vega) to be on par with a GeForce GTX 1080.

For now, here are some technical highlights from the Radeon Vega presentation at SIGGRAPH:

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Yeah this is a bit disappointing!

The power is the biggest killer here, at the same price and same performance they look competitive but those power draws are going to be some serious heat beds.
 
Well if these are actually competitive with Nvidia cards, we can say bye bye to reasonably priced cards. For a few months at least.
 
It seems that they launched anyway because it was either get some money back from the R&D or lose it all. It would have been totally a different picture more than a year ago (March 2016 to be precise), at least in the competition department. This is just too late, too expensive and even with those prices it seems they'll be getting very very low margins due to HBM2 instead of GDDR5X cost-wise. Not commenting on performance yet until I see some numbers, but I'm not getting my expectations up.
 
New silicon is rarely optimized.

Keep using your R9's, Radeon fans and wait for the Vega improvements ... in Gen 2 or 3.
 
Yeah this is a bit disappointing!

The power is the biggest killer here, at the same price and same performance they look competitive but those power draws are going to be some serious heat beds.

Not really. Most people won't notice the few extra dollars off their power bill. Yeah, it could be better but it most certainly isn't the deal you make it out to be.

It seems that they launched anyway because it was either get some money back from the R&D or lose it all. It would have been totally a different picture more than a year ago (March 2016 to be precise), at least in the competition department. This is just too late, too expensive and even with those prices it seems they'll be getting very very low margins due to HBM2 instead of GDDR5X cost-wise. Not commenting on performance yet until I see some numbers, but I'm not getting my expectations up.

There's a couple assumptions in your post. First, HBM2 is cheaper to produce than HBM. All your thoughts on HBM2 yield and costs are nothing but that, thoughts. That is, unless you have an industry source none of us have access to. Your second assumption is that AMD only releases cards for gaming when in fact a large portion of Vega is focused on compute and professionals. It's worth noting that HBC is huge for many professionals.

So yes while Vega isn't the Messiah of gaming let's not boiling everything down to "this card sucks if it can't game better then everything else".
 
Is it just me or the prices don't look amazing and those power consumption numbers don't help?

It's not just you. The price, the power consumption nor the performance make any of these cards an attractive alternative to a GTX 1070 or 1080.

but you save $200 off a $900+ samsung ultrawide when you get an rx.. [and if you happen to already have gsync... by their logic, your upgrade through nvidia is only the cost of the card]

On paper for someone without a sync monitor and thus much of a preference to a company.... AMD might sound alright.

Wont the price dependency change once it releases? Meaning.. couldn't 1070/1080 drop their prices? They must have earned enough r&d by now.

I've been trying to hold out with my msi 980.. for the next line of nvidia models. I was willing to switch to AMD if performance was able compete with nvidia's next line up. And the way AMD takes forever to release competitive hardware... you'd be stuck with a freesync monitor and only xfire to help lighten the comparisons.
 
So basicly if the performance rumor is true, their highest Card is going to be the AMD equivalent of GTX1080 but consume more power? oh and the GTX1080 is over a year old now bare in mind.

AMD will have to be a good bit cheaper to be appealing, why else would you buy something that consumes more power and has worse Drivers.. At Least prices should drop a bit for Nvidia cards I guess.

Really hope they perform better than expected even though that never seems to be the case with AMD would love to do a new build this year swapping over to full AMD for a change.
 
but you save $200 off a $900+ samsung ultrawide when you get an rx.. [and if you happen to already have gsync... by their logic, your upgrade through nvidia is only the cost of the card]

On paper for someone without a sync monitor and thus much of a preference to a company.... AMD might sound alright.

Wont the price dependency change once it releases? Meaning.. couldn't 1070/1080 drop their prices? They must have earned enough r&d by now.

I've been trying to hold out with my msi 980.. for the next line of nvidia models. I was willing to switch to AMD if performance was able compete with nvidia's next line up. And the way AMD takes forever to release competitive hardware... you'd be stuck with a freesync monitor and only xfire to help lighten the comparisons.

Agreed.
There should at the very least be some sales from etailers. I know there are 3 or 4 GTX 1080's at $509us on newegg right now.
 
So basicly if the performance rumor is true, their highest Card is going to be the AMD equivalent of GTX1080 but consume more power? oh and the GTX1080 is over a year old now bare in mind.

AMD will have to be a good bit cheaper to be appealing, why else would you buy something that consumes more power and has worse Drivers.. At Least prices should drop a bit for Nvidia cards I guess.

Really hope they perform better than expected even though that never seems to be the case with AMD would love to do a new build this year swapping over to full AMD for a change.

AMD's own slides put Vega RX 1fps faster than a 1080 FE.
 
Not really. Most people won't notice the few extra dollars off their power bill. Yeah, it could be better but it most certainly isn't the deal you make it out to be.



There's a couple assumptions in your post. First, HBM2 is cheaper to produce than HBM. All your thoughts on HBM2 yield and costs are nothing but that, thoughts. That is, unless you have an industry source none of us have access to. Your second assumption is that AMD only releases cards for gaming when in fact a large portion of Vega is focused on compute and professionals. It's worth noting that HBC is huge for many professionals.

So yes while Vega isn't the Messiah of gaming let's not boiling everything down to "this card sucks if it can't game better then everything else".

But it does suck. Vega RX uses more power for the same performance as the tried and true GTX 1070 and 1080. There is absolutely no reason to buy Vega in any form. Period.

As for the professional side, even Linus said Vega FE was a "bad product." He may have even called it hot trash.
 
There's a couple assumptions in your post. First, HBM2 is cheaper to produce than HBM. All your thoughts on HBM2 yield and costs are nothing but that, thoughts. That is, unless you have an industry source none of us have access to.
Well, I wasn't exactly assuming, but my source is from a certain green company, not necessarily ecological, so it doesn't help my case, does it? If what I was told a month ago is no longer valid, well I don't have that source at my disposition on demand. If what he said wasn't true, poor me; but at no point it was an assumption.
 
So basicly if the performance rumor is true, their highest Card is going to be the AMD equivalent of GTX1080 but consume more power? oh and the GTX1080 is over a year old now bare in mind.

AMD will have to be a good bit cheaper to be appealing, why else would you buy something that consumes more power and has worse Drivers.. At Least prices should drop a bit for Nvidia cards I guess.

Really hope they perform better than expected even though that never seems to be the case with AMD would love to do a new build this year swapping over to full AMD for a change.

AMD's own slides put Vega RX 1fps faster than a 1080 FE.

So their highest 345W water cooled Vega RX is 1 fps faster than a reference 1080.. how exciting haha
 
Not commenting on performance yet until I see some numbers, but I'm not getting my expectations up.

Considering the one live demo they did do was a 2x Crossfire to get Prey(?) running at 4K, I'm not holding my breath. A single GTX1080 can do that. If they were trying to impress me with a working Crossfire setup, it had the opposite effect.
 
but you save $200 off a $900+ samsung ultrawide when you get an rx.. [and if you happen to already have gsync... by their logic, your upgrade through nvidia is only the cost of the card]

On paper for someone without a sync monitor and thus much of a preference to a company.... AMD might sound alright.

Wont the price dependency change once it releases? Meaning.. couldn't 1070/1080 drop their prices? They must have earned enough r&d by now.

I've been trying to hold out with my msi 980.. for the next line of nvidia models. I was willing to switch to AMD if performance was able compete with nvidia's next line up. And the way AMD takes forever to release competitive hardware... you'd be stuck with a freesync monitor and only xfire to help lighten the comparisons.

Agreed.
There should at the very least be some sales from etailers. I know there are 3 or 4 GTX 1080's at $509us on newegg right now.

3 or 4 gtx 1080's at $509us on newegg? I see 1.
 
But it does suck. Vega RX uses more power for the same performance as the tried and true GTX 1070 and 1080. There is absolutely no reason to buy Vega in any form. Period.

As for the professional side, even Linus said Vega FE was a "bad product." He may have even called it hot trash.

Linus isn't a professional. He doesn't work in any professional industry using software like AutoDesk or Maya aside from selling to PC gamers and getting non-pc gamers into the fold. Whatever he says on the professional side is out of complete ignorance. If you can show me links to where he tested performance in professional applications, I'd like to see it.

Now there are very few benchmarks of the card right now so I will bring up Frontier edition's numbers

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graph...B-Air-Cooled-Review/Professional-Testing-SPEC

It is obvious that professional performance is quite good, especially considering the cards it is running against. It trades blows with the Quadro P5000 and that's a nearly $2,000 card.

Well, I wasn't exactly assuming, but my source is from a certain green company, not necessarily ecological, so it doesn't help my case, does it? If what I was told a month ago is no longer valid, well I don't have that source at my disposition on demand. If what he said wasn't true, poor me; but at no point it was an assumption.

I see what you did there ;)


IMO AMD should have released these cards at $50 cheaper. For gaming I don't see much of a reason to buy them at the current price.
 
"AMD sure is enjoying its sweet moment with Ryzen" And that's what it is, a moment. Soon AMD will be slammed on their collective head by Intel just as it's always been. All those "obsolete cores" will still be bringing in a good money on the3 used market while the Ryzens drop to like 50 bucks. It's inevitable. The Radeon Vega FE will be "the fastest graphics card on the planet" for about 9 more seconds and be slammed on its head by nvidia. Sorry fanboys.
 
Linus isn't a professional. He doesn't work in any professional industry using software like AutoDesk or Maya aside from selling to PC gamers and getting non-pc gamers into the fold. Whatever he says on the professional side is out of complete ignorance. If you can show me links to where he tested performance in professional applications, I'd like to see it.

Now there are very few benchmarks of the card right now so I will bring up Frontier edition's numbers

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graph...B-Air-Cooled-Review/Professional-Testing-SPEC

It is obvious that professional performance is quite good, especially considering the cards it is running against. It trades blows with the Quadro P5000 and that's a nearly $2,000 card.



I see what you did there ;)


IMO AMD should have released these cards at $50 cheaper. For gaming I don't see much of a reason to buy them at the current price.

He's digging deeper than the Cinebench results everyone keeps drooling over.

Totally reminds me of what AMD did with AoTS and Async Compute, so forgive me if I keep my excitement down until more 3rd party real world tests come out.
 
295w TDP for a card that probably isn't more than 5-10 percent faster than a 180w TDP GTX1080. If it is faster at all when you prise it out of AMD's hands and bench it on games that aren't all their favorable choices

Erm....

I hesitate to mention R600.....but it's almost like R600 again
 
Is it just me or the prices don't look amazing and those power consumption numbers don't help?

At the end of the day, we still don't know the performance. It seems like Vega64 Air will be like <10% stronger than a stock 1080 for a tad less money (Remember 1080's are still a little inflated due to crypto). It will also effectively have double the VRAM capacity due to how HBM2 stores data. I would say that will make it sell alright. Many people would trade some efficiency for double the VRAM and access to Freesync.


The problem is there still are a ton of unknowns:

-Some info says the LE was compared to the 1080, but other stuff says it is actually the air version being compared.

-It is confirmed by AMD that Tiled Rasterization is STILL NOT ENABLED, but that it will be by launch day. This could add a decent amount of performance. However it still seems like AMD is having trouble programming it.
 
Not really. Most people won't notice the few extra dollars off their power bill. Yeah, it could be better but it most certainly isn't the deal you make it out to be.



There's a couple assumptions in your post. First, HBM2 is cheaper to produce than HBM. All your thoughts on HBM2 yield and costs are nothing but that, thoughts. That is, unless you have an industry source none of us have access to. Your second assumption is that AMD only releases cards for gaming when in fact a large portion of Vega is focused on compute and professionals. It's worth noting that HBC is huge for many professionals.

So yes while Vega isn't the Messiah of gaming let's not boiling everything down to "this card sucks if it can't game better then everything else".

But it does suck. Vega RX uses more power for the same performance as the tried and true GTX 1070 and 1080. There is absolutely no reason to buy Vega in any form. Period.

As for the professional side, even Linus said Vega FE was a "bad product." He may have even called it hot trash.

I would say regardless of how Vega64 ends up, Vega56 will be an excellent card at the very least:

-$399 ($50 cheaper than 1070's)

-At least 10-15% stronger than the 1070

-Freesync is way cheaper (That matters in this price range)

-Sure it uses more energy than the 1070, but 220w is perfectly fine. No one will care.
 
As for 1080ti owners? Appears they are resting comfortably, knowing these hot lava bricks are simply RX590 - 600 comparison to the 1070 - 1080, as was the 570 - 580 compared to the 1060; (*Granted... the 570 was kind of in a class of its own) 1080ti is still the card to beat for 4K / 60, and Ultrawide 1440 100hz;

This boils down to monitor sync of choice. Otherwise, this poses less threat to Nvidia than the RX 570 / 580, because @ $499 you are no longer in the mid-range, budget class. W/ the AIO liquid cooled Vega being priced @ $599, all things being equal it make more sense to get a EVGA 1080ti SC @ $720.
 
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