AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and 56 Reviews [*UPDATED* Aug 28]

[sontin]

They are only competitive because of the price. Competition should be GP102 aka GTX1080TI and Titan.

Its nothing else than a "race to the bottom" concept. But i guess people dont care about the implication of it...

 

[PeterScott]

I could order the rx64 two places in my country today. One place was clearly below 1080 price the other it was way way above 1080ti. Double price. Crazy stuff.
I think retailers dont know how to price this card and its probably due to mining. Nearly all polaris is gone and the few on stock is just a tad below 1070. Amd is doing really good. Lol.

Mining is the only reason Vega will sell.

Without mining, the GTX 1080 would be $400 or less by now and the GTX 1070 would be $300 or less.

 

[Phynaz]

Yes they did, Vega 56 is very competitive against GTX1070 both in performance and performance/$. Im sure if you enable Chill, Vega 56 will also be competitive in Perf/watt as well.

Even in power save Vega 56 consumes 30% more power than a GTX 1070, while giving up 10% of its performance.

That's not very competitive.

 

[Mercennarius]

Even in power save Vega 56 consumes 30% more power than a GTX 1070, while giving up 10% of its performance.

That's not very competitive.

I've never bought a GPU because it used less power than a more powerful GPU if both of them worked with the PSU I had. Only miners are really going to care about the power requirements between Vega and Pascal. And even they will opt for Vega since it will mine significantly better.

 

[tential]

Because the GPUs released 24 hours ago and the supply is tiny compared to Nividas while the demand is much higher at the moment. Give it 2-3 months when things should normalize and you will have at least equal pricing. We know the MSRPs with normalized supply/demand ($399/$499), and if its anything like Polaris was last year we will likely see rebates on aftermarket branded Vegas even lower priced within 3-6 months.

AMD said these are launch msrp prices only and that they don't hold true for after the launch period according to the article just posted. So we could be seeing prices go up.

 

[Crumpet]

I think having them in power saver mode as stock would have made much more sense, just because these initial reviews would have shown less insane power draw.

Whilst enthusiasts like me don't care so much, average Joe will look at his potato unbranded 500w power supply and go spend his money on a 1070 (and promptly kill his psu, but thats not the point, Nvidia has the cash by then)

AMD said these are launch msrp prices only and that they don't hold true for after the launch period according to the article just posted. So we could be seeing prices go up.

If prices go up, Vega becomes a non-seller to anyone but the biggest fanboy.

 

[AtenRa]

Even in power save Vega 56 consumes 30% more power than a GTX 1070, while giving up 10% of its performance.

That's not very competitive.

Really ?? seems to me you are very biased 😉


https://www.techspot.com/review/1468-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56/page8.html

 

[Phynaz]

Only miners are really going to care about the power requirements between Vega and Pascal.

Incorrect, lots of people care about power requirements. Power consumption is is more important to me than price for example.

Power consumption is important to people with OEM systems - you know, 90%+ of the market.

 

[Phynaz]

Really ?? seems to me you are very biased 😉


https://www.techspot.com/review/1468-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56/page8.html

Dude, really? You're still coming to the defense of AMD?

http://techreport.com/review/32391/amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-and-rx-vega-56-graphics-cards-reviewed/11

System Power Consumption Full Load
GTX 1070 - 232 watts
Vega 56 Power Saver - 296 watts

 

[AtenRa]

Incorrect, lots of people care about power requirements. Power consumption is is more important to me than price for example.

Power consumption is important to people with OEM systems - you know, 90%+ of the market.

90% of the market doesnt care about $399-799 GPUs for gaming 😉

VEGA 56 is very competitive vs GTX1070 for the actual consumers those two cards are aiming for.

 

[Head1985]

I could order the rx64 two places in my country today. One place was clearly below 1080 price the other it was way way above 1080ti. Double price. Crazy stuff.
I think retailers dont know how to price this card and its probably due to mining. Nearly all polaris is gone and the few on stock is just a tad below 1070. Amd is doing really good. Lol.

here in czech republic limited edition cost same as non limited black one.
Both cards cost more than aftermarket 1080 and not much less than aftermarket 1080TI...

 

[Phynaz]

90% of the market doesnt care about $399-799 GPUs for gaming 😉

VEGA 56 is very competitive vs GTX1070 for the actual consumers those two cards are aiming for.

Please tell us, which consumers are those? Because it's not competitive for me and I would assume I'm part of the target market. I'm even flexible on price.

 

[tential]

They are only competitive because of the price. Competition should be GP102 aka GTX1080TI and Titan.

Its nothing else than a "race to the bottom" concept. But i guess people dont care about the implication of it...

Well because the majority of amd buyers on here are interested in affordable lower end performance.

That's why I'm pissed I waited for high end twice in a row. And each time amd buyers didn't seem to really care if the highend didn't turn out well. They mostly care about the $400 and under range it seems with getting great bargains in the $200-300 range.

Also yes if I'm understanding you right there are other implications. Take 4k 144hz monitors. Since there isn't an amd gpu to drive them well, there's less chance they get made for freesync (0 announcements compared to gsync despite gsync being the less prolific option).

Now when those monitors come out only Nvidia users will want and be able to drive them which drives up the price. If amd has viable cards there'd be more interest, more options and lower prices

Just 1 example....

 

[Mercennarius]

AMD said these are launch msrp prices only and that they don't hold true for after the launch period according to the article just posted. So we could be seeing prices go up.

They could also be launch prices and expect prices to fall even lower in the coming months. We saw that initially with Polaris last year, launched at $199 and 3-4 months later companies like Powercolor had them at $160 after rebates. Highly doubt MSRP goes up..but if miners love these cards street prices could go up unfortunately.

 

[railven]

here in czech republic limited edition cost same as non limited black one.
Both cards cost more than aftermarket 1080 and not much less than aftermarket 1080TI...

Since the other thread got locked, curious about your prior expectations of Vega 56. Do you still see yourself swapping over to it?

 

[tential]

I think having them in power saver mode as stock would have made much more sense, just because these initial reviews would have shown less insane power draw.

Whilst enthusiasts like me don't care so much, average Joe will look at his potato unbranded 500w power supply and go spend his money on a 1070 (and promptly kill his psu, but thats not the point, Nvidia has the cash by then)



If prices go up, Vega becomes a non-seller to anyone but the biggest fanboy.

AMD sucks at voltage and power. I'm 100% positive if i picked a random forum member and gave them the card to test for a week, he would deliver better Temps, power consumption, noise, etc. Than amd. That's just the sad history of it.

 

[AtenRa]

Please tell us, which consumers are those?

People that have more than 250-300W PSUs in their systems.

GTX1070 Recommended System Power (W)4 500W

You can use the same PSU with a VEGA 56

 

[PeterScott]

They could also be launch prices and expect prices to fall even lower in the coming months. We saw that initially with Polaris last year, launched at $199 and 3-4 months later companies like Powercolor had them at $160 after rebates. Highly doubt MSRP goes up..but if miners love these cards street prices could go up unfortunately.

You keep repeating that. You do know that current price for Polaris cards is above $300??

 

[tential]

90% of the market doesnt care about $399-799 GPUs for gaming 😉

VEGA 56 is very competitive vs GTX1070 for the actual consumers those two cards are aiming for.

Please tell us, which consumers are those? Because it's not competitive for me, I would assume I'm part of the target market. I'm even flexible on price.

You now see my extreme frustration when I read reddit, here, etc. And amd focused forum posters completely didn't care about the 1080ti bracket of performance and price.

It seems maybe that amd is realizing this too that they're better off ceding the super high end and focusing on the mainstream parts.

 

[Mercennarius]

Please tell us, which consumers are those?

Look at any steam survey..very very very very very few people are gaming with anything more than at $250-$300 GPU even in 2017. If you have a 4 year old 290X your still in the top 10% of users on steam. 1070/1080 GPU users make up only about 5% of all the DX12 GPU users on steam....and probably about .00005% of total users on steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

 

[Phynaz]

People that have more than 250-300W PSUs in their systems.

So that's me - I use 450W power supplies. Vega 56 is still not competitive, unless higher heat output, increased fan noise, and higher cost of operation are good things.

 

[n0x1ous]

The sad part is, this may pan out and people will defend it because of SFF and how it's a premium product. *cough* Fury Nano *cough*. Hopefully AMD agrees with them and doesn't price cut it a few months after release.



You aren't the first person I've seen say something similar, comparing GTX 1080 FE MSRP to Vega 64 MSRP, but odd in other conversations the time the GTX cards were on the market or their current MSRP doesn't matter because "this is now, that was then."



On the topic of hating on Vega. I don't personally hate it, just seriously disappointed. The future article of what happened will be an interesting read. The tech in AMD is impressive. It might outlive Pascal (as previous AMD products have) but it seems AMD just can't learn from it's own mistakes and it's remaining vocal supporters are fine with it.

What I mean is, AMD is a corporation that badly needs funding. They can't compete with out it. But for years, a good chunk of their vocal supporters don't support AMD with their money. They seem to exploit AMD more than anything else. You can probably count on one hand the number of Pro-AMD posters who buy AMD GPUs at original MSRP outside of those using them with the intention of mining (their goal is to make money not to promote AMD - classic example huge raving AMD promoter used his mining profits to buy SLI 1070's for his gaming rig 😵). HD 7970 got lashed at for being too expensive. 290X wasn't as highly recommended until AIBs and then after the mining bubble popped it no one was rushing to buy "expensive" new models gobbling up used models. How many posters here actual own Fury outside of the ones that bought them after the huge discounts?

And the kicker was basically an AMD salesman promoting future miracle gains and then "I wasn't even planning on buying" confession. It's just comical.

Me! Bought Fury X on launch day and Vega 64 liquid on launch day

 

[PeterScott]

People that have more than 250-300W PSUs in their systems.

I think the minimum recommendations are something like 500W+ for a Vega 56.

 

[krumme]

Even in power save Vega 56 consumes 30% more power than a GTX 1070, while giving up 10% of its performance.

That's not very competitive.

"The other big surprise besides good performance is how power efficient Vega can be if it's operating in the right clock/voltage band. Our testing shows power efficiency being close to the GeForce GTX 1060, which means Pascal is not that far away when running at the right settings. "

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_56/37.html

Get one while you can !

 

[Mercennarius]

You keep repeating that. You do know that current price for Polaris cards is above $300??

I know the current street price, yes, I have multiple Polaris cards. I'm referencing MSRP, and also the fact that it's true you could pick up an RX 480 for 20% off launch MSRP only 3-4 months after release. I know because I did. And it's certainly possible that could happen again.