AMD Radeon Vega 64 Revisited: Did It Age Better than GTX 10 Series?

[Steve]

Today we're dusting off our old Radeon Vega 64 to compare against its old rival, the GeForce GTX 1080. Here's what's going to be our last big revisit to the Radeon Vega GPU on a 51 game benchmark.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2523-amd-vega-gpu-revisit/

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

Yeah, I agree that 1080Ti is a GPU of a decade...

 

[darkeasterbunny]

Back in the day, mining was sort of irrelevant, not so much in the years in between. Including the mining performance would have given a more balanced idea.

In mining Vega is a beast. Owners could have easily earned their money back with the difference in hashrate between the 1080 and Vega 64.

I feel this review was set up in a way to favor Nvidia, intentionally ignoring where Vega shines. But nothing new there.

 

[McMurdeR]

As an owner of a 1080 myself, I'm just glad these cards still do as well as they do, considering how hard it's been to find good value replacements.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

The benchmark is for Warhammer Vermintide where the results are close, but the article talks about Warhammer 3 and Vegas winning by a lot. Is this an error?

 

[nnguy2]

The benchmark is for Warhammer Vermintide where the results are close, but the article talks about Warhammer 3 and Vegas winning by a lot. Is this an error?

Two different games were benchmarked. Warhammer Vermintide favors 1080 while TW:WH3 favors (yugely) Vega 64.

Look at the graph and you will se both games listed.

 

[takaozo]

Both cards remind me of prevoius mining craze when a 1060 was 400 from 250. Hell yea was still better than last craze.
But still, both good cards after all this time.

 

[PEnnn]

"The AMD reference design was also pretty bad. It was hot, loud, and often throttled. "

The same holds true, even in 2022, for many cards from both companies!!

PS: GPUs don't improve with age.....

 

[kmo911]

Gtx 1080 ti FF version with 11gb ram was a dream. but ray tracing only in software.

if it not ussing rtx rts cores its still strong

 

[Rocky4040]

I got a Vega 56 still so far it has served me well. I have it flashed with the Vega 64 bios which gives it access to V64 voltages and HBM2 memory speeds. I run the core at 1825Mhz HBM2 @1100Mhz under volted in MSI Afterburner -121 which is just Afterburners slider control. I play a few of these games benched here and my FPS is higher than in the benches here and besting the 1080 numbers listed here by a fair amount.

I am how ever worried for the near future and that game that just listed min requirements and it had the 1080 and Vega 56 listed as min cards and game set to low @ 1080p if you wanted 60FPS. I guess it's time to retire this old girl and get something new here soon. I am going to wait for the next gen cards though and if priced right I'll get one of those or maybe pick up current gen card for a really nice price. nothing below a 6700XT though because anything lower and I may as well keep this card I have.

 

[maroon1]

GTX 1080 came out May 2016 while Vega64 came out August 2017... 1 year and 3 months gap between the two.

You might as well compare Vega64 to RTX 2080 (which came out on September 2018).

 

[Colonel Blimp]

Still love my Saphire Pulse Vega56.
£280 - bargain.

 

[EdmondRC]

The bottom line is that drivers matter.

 

[ZackL04]

The bottom line is that drivers matter.

The bottom line is that AMD takes forever to squeeze out max performance drivers*

Fixed

 

[Avro Arrow]

I should preface this by saying that I totally agree that the GTX 1080 was the better buy compared to Vega. Raj Koduri really pooped the bed with ATi Vega, although nowhere near as bad as he's pooping the bed with Intel Arc today.

Having said that, I saw a pic that cracked me up and I think that this would be the appropriate time to post it:

 

[AREryilmaz]

Back in the day I had a sapphire ref V64 and boy it was such a joy to tinker with it. Seriously, I have never owned any other piece of hardware that gave me that kind of joy better. Then I sold it and bought a 1080ti, sold that one too now I got a 3060ti. 1080ti was objectively a better performer but wasn't really fun. 3060ti is miles better than both, obviously, not really in terms of performance but in terms of features and efficiency.
I wish I had not sold that Vega.
Btw I could undervolt it and get around 5% less perfirmance for only 170 watts. That wasnt hot or loud.
I'd still buy a second hand vega for a good price just for the fun of it.

 

[Julio Franco]

The benchmark is for Warhammer Vermintide where the results are close, but the article talks about Warhammer 3 and Vegas winning by a lot. Is this an error?

That was a mistake, yes. We tested both and there are scores for the two games in the performance summary graphs, but the description was for Warhammer 3 indeed, now corrected.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I had two vega 64s, got them because they were only $250 each. Sure they were about 1080 performance, assuming no driver issues, it took until around 2019 for them to be rock solid. Both were reference cards, and yeah if you wanted to keep temps below 72c to prevent HBM thermal throttling they were LOUD. And pumped out a ton of heat.

Both of mine died early deaths, both from apparent trace burns on the PCB itself. Several forums for both miners and gamers have seen similar issues, perhaps vega's burst power draw was too high for its board.

I shoulda just bought a 1080ti when they were new.....

GTX 1080 came out May 2016 while Vega64 came out August 2017... 1 year and 3 months gap between the two.

You might as well compare Vega64 to RTX 2080 (which came out on September 2018).

The vega 64 was compared to the 1080 when it came out and that is what it was sold against.

Yeah, I agree that 1080Ti is a GPU of a decade...

It really is, although the entire pascal line has decent OC performance, as did maxwell. OCed 1080tis still perform amazing 6 years later.

 

[ZedRM]

but of course, it's too little too late and gamers should avoid both of these GPUs in 2022 as there are simply better second hand deals.

That's a silly notion. Vega64 might not be a great value these days, but a GTX1080 is a solid option for those on a budget given how prices have dropped.

 

[ZackL04]

I had two vega 64s, got them because they were only $250 each. Sure they were about 1080 performance, assuming no driver issues, it took until around 2019 for them to be rock solid. Both were reference cards, and yeah if you wanted to keep temps below 72c to prevent HBM thermal throttling they were LOUD. And pumped out a ton of heat.

Both of mine died early deaths, both from apparent trace burns on the PCB itself. Several forums for both miners and gamers have seen similar issues, perhaps vega's burst power draw was too high for its board.

I shoulda just bought a 1080ti when they were new.....

The vega 64 was compared to the 1080 when it came out and that is what it was sold against.
It really is, although the entire pascal line has decent OC performance, as did maxwell. OCed 1080tis still perform amazing 6 years later.

Mmmm overclocking 980ti’s…. THAT was a good time

 

[BadThad]

Well, the bottom line is truly that we no longer have to buy ancient video cards....THANK GOD! These tests are interesting but no longer "needed".

 

[Steve]

That's a silly notion. Vega64 might not be a great value these days, but a GTX1080 is a solid option for those on a budget given how prices have dropped.

Sorry what prices are you looking at for second hand GTX 1080's? Just so I know what I'm dealing with here.

 

[Vanderlinde]

Back in the day, mining was sort of irrelevant, not so much in the years in between. Including the mining performance would have given a more balanced idea.

In mining Vega is a beast. Owners could have easily earned their money back with the difference in hashrate between the 1080 and Vega 64.

I feel this review was set up in a way to favor Nvidia, intentionally ignoring where Vega shines. But nothing new there.

Compute you mean. It had a larger purpose then just mining. But these Vega's where just discarded Mi200 GPU's if I'm not mistaken. With HBM tho; fairly new tech offering a far wider bandwidth bus then traditional GDDR.

 

[fb020997]

Bought my dear reference Vega 64 in the midst of the first min…ehm…huge wasting of power for useless coins era, sept. 2017, for 570€ 1080s and especially 1080tis were quite a bit more expensive. It’s been watercooled since day zero, and OCed/UVed since week 2. In those 5 years, I tweaked a lot with the UV settings, with great gains in both efficiency and performance. In my summer profile, it uses 70w less (GPU-z and AMD Overlay) with around 5% better performance than a reference, aircooled one (around same GPU clocks in-game thanks to a hefty UV/underclock but HBMs at 1100). The winter profile is of course less efficient, around 10-20w more for around 15% more performance than the usual reference aircooled one, but it helps heating up the underside of my desk quite nicely.
All in all, no regrets of the Vega. If I had to buy a GPU in 2017, I’d still buy the Vega 64.

 

[neeyik]

But these Vega's where just discarded Mi200 GPU's if I'm not mistaken.

MI25s - the MI200s are an entirely different chip. The Vega 64 and MI25 were identical apart from their clocks: the Vega had faster boost and memory, the MI had faster base. So the chips for the Instinct cards were actually 'disgarded' chips for Vega 64 cards, which is why they're labelled as 'Vega 10 XT GL' variants.

One wonders how things may have turned out for the Vega line if the chips were manufactured by TMSC on the same node as Nvidia's GP104. The Vega had everything going for it: immense FP16 and FP32 throughput, lots of cache, super wide memory bus. The GP104, though, had better clock speed and a far lower power draw (180W vs 295W).

And, of course, the GP104's architecture was better suited for the rendering workloads of that time. Ultra long, complex shaders wouldn't become the norm for another six years.