The Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid, Vega 64 & Vega 56 Test: 32 Games Benchmarked

[Julio Franco]

This might be the biggest GPU benchmarking session in TechSpot's history, it's so large that we almost gave up after accepting the challenge. After about a week's worth of testing, we have an incredible amount of data to pour over for a total of 32 titles benchmarked in this article.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1476-amd-radeon-vega-64/

 

[VitalyT]

In short, AMD holds true to its image...

 

[Magnums94]

AMD Ryzen - success.

AMD Vega - fail.

I already said it some time ago, Vega arrived on the market late so it should have been something spectacular, however, I don't see anything amazing or outstanding about this card at all.

If Vega had launched at the same time as Nvidia launched their 1080 graphics card, then probably I would say that it's all about preference on which chip manufacturer you want to support, yet 1080 still have somewhat edge in this.

But right now, all the power consumption, pricing and general performance of Vega, easily shifts my choice towards green team.

With Ryzen though, AMD did a really great job, Ryzen is very competetive CPU, compared to Intel and I would gladly go with red team on CPU decision, considering that I would be ''better futureproofing'' with more cores than with Intels quad-core setup.

I don't take those Ryzen bottlenecks too seriosly, for me, I still see it as better CPU than Intels. Unless, you are truly 110% into gaming and nothing else, then I would see your point in sticking with Intel, otherwise - Ryzen would be better choice.

And hey! We all gain from this battle between AMD and Intel - cheaper products for us!

 

[JohnnyStone]

Again you guys don't even realise what Vega was designed for. Please do some research before saying it is a failure. Yes it is not the best at games, but it is for sure not a failure. The main design was for compute and pro, but mainly for compute, at which it excels.

On the Pro level, nothing can beat the Radeon Pro SSG, but this is probably something most WCCF readers does not even know exists. So at games it is not the best and now it is a total failure, yet gaming is by far no longer the main money maker in the GPU business. That is why even nVidia made it clear that Volta is not coming to desktop. It might still come when a new architecture is unveiled.

So stop spreading lies of stuff you know nothing of.

 

[Blakey]

To summarize AMD performs about the same as equivalent Nvidia card (which is 15 months old now?) uses way more power, runs hotter/louder and at least here in the UK at the moment costs considerably more, all the Hype for nothing, not even competitive enough to make Nvidia change any pricing either unfortunately.

Cheapest Vega 64 = £570
Cheapest GTX 1080 = £490

Hell the cheapest Liquid Cooled Vega 64 is £700 while GTX1080ti is £675

but these will change in time obviously

 

[Blakey]

Again you guys don't even realise what Vega was designed for. Please do some research before saying it is a failure. Yes it is not the best at games, but it is for sure not a failure. The main design was for compute and pro, but mainly for compute, at which it excels.

On the Pro level, nothing can beat the Radeon Pro SSG, but this is probably something most WCCF readers does not even know exists. So at games it is not the best and now it is a total failure, yet gaming is by far no longer the main money maker in the GPU business. That is why even nVidia made it clear that Volta is not coming to desktop. It might still come when a new architecture is unveiled.

So stop spreading lies of stuff you know nothing of.

AMD market these as gaming, so these "lies" you speak of come from AMD? these are their consumer gaming cards, not their workstation Pro series.

everything you just said was completely irrelevant to this article..

 

[Puiu]

Great benchmark as always. Now to see if the undervolting + 50% power limit + memory OC does indeed make the Vega 56 as good if not better than the air cooled Vega 64 (while the power draw doesn't increase by much) as others have reported.

I would also love to see a comprehensive review of Vega's compute performance. It was after all built with those kinds of workloads in mind.

 

[Magnums94]

AMD market these as gaming, so these "lies" you speak of come from AMD? these are their consumer gaming cards, not their workstation Pro series.

everything you just said was completely irrelevant to this article..

I completely side with Blakey on this one.

JohnnyStone, AMD indeed has ''designed'' Vega RX 64 to be as their ''gaming'' card. You are probably mistaking it with Vega Frontier, in which case you would be right.

Radeon RX Vega 64 - GAMING card. (intended)
Radeon Vega Frontier Edition - CONTENT CREATION card.

That's just how it is.

P.S. AMD have lost this battle, at least in my book.

 

[Magnums94]

Oh, and by the way, look at this video, and think about it.

I find this extremely hilarious.

 

[Burty117]

@Steven, Are you guys planning to do another review in a few months time? Similar to what you did with the RX480? It was interesting how much changed in a few months with much more mature drivers.

Hell the cheapest Liquid Cooled Vega 64 is £700 while GTX1080ti is £675

You'd have to be a little crazy to buy the Vega 64 right now, In the UK at least.

I would also love to see a comprehensive review of Vega's compute performance. It was after all built with those kinds of workloads in mind.

If this does happen, can we please have a comparison with Nvidia cards? Such as the 1080Ti or Titan? As a reference point and something to compare to rather than just various AMD cards.

 

[Exzul]

I wouldn't call Vega a fail, they've put a lot more forward thinking into these cards with technology that can be utilised by developers in future games. With both the companies moving away from sli and crossfire I would imagine developers will utilise the technology as much as they can.

With Amds epyc doing well and deals for vega to go into apple and rpog laptops I think support for their hardware is going to grow strongly.

These cards have good future proofing, there's a lot more that can be squeezed out of them. My money is going on a 56. I'll also have to grab one of their Xbox one x as I've been really enjoying 4K gaming and been waiting on the technology to catch up glad I didn't opt out for the 1080ti and waited for this 1080ti is more than I would like to spend but I think the 56 will hit the spot for my custom cooled loop.

 

[JohnnyStone]

Again you guys don't even realise what Vega was designed for. Please do some research before saying it is a failure. Yes it is not the best at games, but it is for sure not a failure. The main design was for compute and pro, but mainly for compute, at which it excels and I am not talking about the FE.

On the Pro level, nothing can beat the Radeon Pro SSG, but this is probably something most readers do not even know exists. So at games it is not the best and now it is a total failure, yet gaming is by far no longer the main money maker in the GPU business. That is why even nVidia made it clear that Volta is not coming to desktop. It might still come when a new architecture is unveiled.

So stop spreading lies of stuff you know nothing of.

 

[Fobus]

^^ he must be trolling at this point. Copy-paste with no mind...

 

[JohnnyStone]

AMD market these as gaming, so these "lies" you speak of come from AMD? these are their consumer gaming cards, not their workstation Pro series.

everything you just said was completely irrelevant to this article..

I completely side with Blakey on this one.

JohnnyStone, AMD indeed has ''designed'' Vega RX 64 to be as their ''gaming'' card. You are probably mistaking it with Vega Frontier, in which case you would be right.

Radeon RX Vega 64 - GAMING card. (intended)
Radeon Vega Frontier Edition - CONTENT CREATION card.

That's just how it is.

P.S. AMD have lost this battle, at least in my book.

Maybe you missed that I said Vega and not RX Vega????

AMD did not design RX Vega, but Vega. The RX is only the downscaled gaming version of Vega. Lisa explained it in detail long ago, that because AMD is a small company with a limited budget, that they had to chooses which market they targeted. They chose the markets where they could profit the most, since they desperately needed the money. Well, for all practical reasons AMD was almost bankrupt.

So, I am not mistaking anything and you are just a bit uninformed.

 

[JohnnyStone]

^^ he must be trolling at this point. Copy-paste with no mind...

If this was an nVidia article, I would be trolling, or maybe you misunderstand the term. Trolling is when you troll of one product within another product's articles. Anyway, I clicked on post and then the post did not appear, so I posted again, shoot me for that...

 

[JohnnyStone]

AMD market these as gaming, so these "lies" you speak of come from AMD? these are their consumer gaming cards, not their workstation Pro series.

everything you just said was completely irrelevant to this article..

I completely side with Blakey on this one.

It is simple, he said "AMD Vega - failed'' and I pointed out that Vega as a whole did not fail. I would have responded differently if he said RX Vega failed.

In that case, RX Vega is not the killer many hoped for. For now I would also be a bit careful in buying one to play games. That does not mean things won't change in the future though. I think that FP16 might make a huge impact in future games. This is still up in the air though. It is a bit early though to completely call it a failure as much as it is to say it is a success. For the long term this card may prove to be worth it.

As a Compute card and a Pro card, Vega is for sure a winner and I am not talking of the FE version. If you don't know about the other cards, find out.

 

[JohnnyStone]

^^ he must be trolling at this point. Copy-paste with no mind...

Also, calling people names show a lack of respect and capacity to actually handle the argument rather than degrading the person.

 

[Magnums94]

Maybe you missed that I said Vega and not RX Vega????

AMD did not design RX Vega, but Vega. The RX is only the downscaled gaming version of Vega. Lisa explained it in detail long ago, that because AMD is a small company with a limited budget, that they had to chooses which market they targeted. They chose the markets where they could profit the most, since they desperately needed the money. Well, for all practical reasons AMD was almost bankrupt.

So, I am not mistaking anything and you are just a bit uninformed.

It doesn't change the fact that Nvidia stays more superior in this and it would be pointless to go after worse product only because of fanboying.

And no, I don't want AMD to fail, I want them succeed, because if they do - Nvidia would be forced to lower the prices and we - consumers, would only benefit from that. But unfortunately, Vega is no threat to current Nvidia products, and their flagship - Nvidia GTX 1080 TI, still keeps the throne as the ultimate GPU for gamer.

I wish it would have been different, but it's not. Vega flopped and Nvidia wasn't even forced to play their best cards (Volta being prolonged) so it's safe to assume that for consumer gamer - Nvidia will remain as ''go to'' brand.

Sure, AMD will satisfy miners and perhaps content creators, but personally I'm none of them so I could care less...

 

[Kojokl555]

@Steve,
Great benchmark, as always. Love the amount of data you have.

I noticed that you used Crysis 3 for your Power Consumption figures, although Crysis 3 was not included in the Game Benchmarks this time.
Then I looked up your RX Vega 56, 25 Game Benchmark from the 14th of August were Crysis 3 was included. Vega 56 performed really bad in this title.

So this leads to my question: May there be a problem with not fully/properly utilizing Vega 56 leading to a lower power consumption in this very game?

I asked myself this because other hardware reviewer show a greater disparity in power consumption between Vega 56 and gtx 1070 FE. On the other Hand Vega 64 had a really high power consumption, did it perform also bad in crysis?

Maybe this is in general a topic to look at. What game to use for Power Consumption testing , is not an easy choice when comparing like 8 different chips. But I think you shouldn't have used Crysis 3 for this Vega article/video.

Nevertheless, very informative!
Greetings from Germany

 

[Burty117]

II've been really enjoying 4K gaming and been waiting on the technology to catch up glad I didn't opt out for the 1080ti

The 1080Ti is the only single card in the world right now that can run games reliably at 4k with decent in game graphic options, how have you been enjoying 4k gaming without one? SLI 980Ti setup perhaps?

Again you guys don't even realise what Vega was designed for. Please do some research before saying it is a failure.

This review is research into how it performs in games, this entire article is research...

Yes it is not the best at games

Ok good, glad we're on the same page here...

The main design was for compute and pro, but mainly for compute, at which it excels and I am not talking about the FE.

Ok sweet, So it's no use to anyone reading this article about it's gaming performance? Gotcha...

So at games it is not the best and now it is a total failure, yet gaming is by far no longer the main money maker in the GPU business.

Well if I'm building a gaming PC or upgrading a current machine, Why would I choose the slower, more power hungry Vega based GPU? You say it's not the main money maker in the GPU business, this may be true, but it's still a huge chunk of money AMD is missing out on, Ask Nvidia...

That is why even nVidia made it clear that Volta is not coming to desktop. It might still come when a new architecture is unveiled.

Or like Intel before Ryzen came out, they're not going to release anything new because the only competition is themselves? Ever thought about that?

So stop spreading lies of stuff you know nothing of.

No Lies have been spread today. You even said it yourself, Vega is not very good for gaming but great at Compute workloads, this article is about the gaming performance and that is why the comment section is full of failure comments because it isn't very good at gaming.

 

[Puiu]

@Burty117 @JohnnyStone
Let's not argue about things that are clear. This is a gaming review of the cards. We have a clear picture of what's going on with Vega. Besides the Vega 56 which seems to have great potential and value, the other cards do not offer good value even if we add freesync in the picture since we'd be just shifting costs.
Hopefully Steve will listen to our request for some professional workloads too so we can see the whole picture of what AMD is trying to do.

 

[JohnnyStone]

Maybe you missed that I said Vega and not RX Vega????

AMD did not design RX Vega, but Vega. The RX is only the downscaled gaming version of Vega. Lisa explained it in detail long ago, that because AMD is a small company with a limited budget, that they had to chooses which market they targeted. They chose the markets where they could profit the most, since they desperately needed the money. Well, for all practical reasons AMD was almost bankrupt.

So, I am not mistaking anything and you are just a bit uninformed.

It doesn't change the fact that Nvidia stays more superior in this and it would be pointless to go after worse product only because of fanboying.

And no, I don't want AMD to fail, I want them succeed, because if they do - Nvidia would be forced to lower the prices and we - consumers, would only benefit from that. But unfortunately, Vega is no threat to current Nvidia products, and their flagship - Nvidia GTX 1080 TI, still keeps the throne as the ultimate GPU for gamer.

I wish it would have been different, but it's not. Vega flopped and Nvidia wasn't even forced to play their best cards (Volta being prolonged) so it's safe to assume that for consumer gamer - Nvidia will remain as ''go to'' brand.

Sure, AMD will satisfy miners and perhaps content creators, but personally I'm none of them so I could care less...

First off, it does make a difference, since you said that I had mistaken and now say that I am a fanboy.

I understand your point on gaming, but the part you need to care about, is that the market has changed. GPU's are now no longer designed mainly for gaming. Why is that important? Because the future of gaming is going to be impacted badly by this change. Why must a GPU company sell a card at $500 when they they can get $3000 in a different market? This is not only true of Vega but Volta as well. If you think nVidia's decision to not bring Volta to the desktop is only because of RX Vega's failure to beat the Ti, it is not the whole story.

Volta is designed primarily for compute, the same as Vega. I suspect that the Ti will be the top card for a long time to come.

Maybe this video will help you guys understand a bit better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVPUjadCyh8&t=0s

So we need to care why things are as they are.

 

[JohnnyStone]

" I suspect that the Ti will be the top card for a long time to come."

That is in gaming.

 

[JohnnyStone]

II've been really enjoying 4K gaming and been waiting on the technology to catch up glad I didn't opt out for the 1080ti

The 1080Ti is the only single card in the world right now that can run games reliably at 4k with decent in game graphic options, how have you been enjoying 4k gaming without one? SLI 980Ti setup perhaps?

Again you guys don't even realise what Vega was designed for. Please do some research before saying it is a failure.

This review is research into how it performs in games, this entire article is research...

Yes it is not the best at games

Ok good, glad we're on the same page here...

The main design was for compute and pro, but mainly for compute, at which it excels and I am not talking about the FE.

Ok sweet, So it's no use to anyone reading this article about it's gaming performance? Gotcha...

So at games it is not the best and now it is a total failure, yet gaming is by far no longer the main money maker in the GPU business.

Well if I'm building a gaming PC or upgrading a current machine, Why would I choose the slower, more power hungry Vega based GPU? You say it's not the main money maker in the GPU business, this may be true, but it's still a huge chunk of money AMD is missing out on, Ask Nvidia...

That is why even nVidia made it clear that Volta is not coming to desktop. It might still come when a new architecture is unveiled.

Or like Intel before Ryzen came out, they're not going to release anything new because the only competition is themselves? Ever thought about that?

So stop spreading lies of stuff you know nothing of.

No Lies have been spread today. You even said it yourself, Vega is not very good for gaming but great at Compute workloads, this article is about the gaming performance and that is why the comment section is full of failure comments because it isn't very good at gaming.

Again, you said Vega is a fail and that is a lie, you did not say RX Vega, there is a difference.

And the the future may show both of us wrong and to claim failure at this point is just wrong. I am not saying drivers will fix everything, but I do believe FP16 can make a huge difference. So RX Vega might be a good future proof card, running current games fairly well, with very high minimum frame rates. I know time will tell, but ... time will tell.

 

[JohnnyStone]

@Burty117 @JohnnyStone
Let's not argue about things that are clear. This is a gaming review of the cards. We have a clear picture of what's going on with Vega. Besides the Vega 56 which seems to have great potential and value, the other cards do not offer good value even if we add freesync in the picture since we'd be just shifting costs.
Hopefully Steve will listen to our request for some professional workloads too so we can see the whole picture of what AMD is trying to do.

Quite true, I won't argue with you.

Just watch that video I posted, it will clear a lot of misunderstanding up.