AMD Vega (FE and RX) Benchmarks [Updated Aug 10 - RX Vega 64 Unboxing]

[swilli89]

Can't be... AMD marketing only does minimum framerates these days.

Most likely a AIB/OEM board partner if anything.

I think even trying to quantify what their RTG marketing folks have been doing recently is impossible. Their Ryzen build up was almost perfect, very reasonable amount of teasing and actual data that they more than backed up once Ryzen was released. With Vega? (and even Polaris).. I mean we have yet to see final RX Vega but just based on what we know.. its been pretty bad. Most here know I want AMD to be competitive but even I have to admit this entire lead-up has just left me a bit baffled.

 

[Mopetar]

Most here know I want AMD to be competitive but even I have to admit this entire lead-up has just left me a bit baffled.

What were they going to do that was any different? It's not like they can just come out an say it's not a great gaming card and that their customers should just sit this one out or start running compute applications instead of games.

 

[AtenRa]

It seems like AMD expected that their architecture would be the primary target for games after winning the console business, which is a pretty good strategic bet, but they ended up flat out wrong. Mantle/Vulkan and DX12 have not made nearly the dent they had hoped in the amount of time they hoped, leaving them with their pants down and nvidia doing a much better job of optimizing their architecture and software for games right now.

It's actually amazing how poorly their strategy played out and big props to nvidia for countering it.

GCN in working just fine, Polaris 10 is very competitive against Pascal in DX-12 games. There is something not working correctly or not working at all on VEGA in games, there is no way they spend all those transistors just for higher clocks when they could spend them for more SPs, ROPs, TMUs etc etc.

edit: Just double Polaris 10, add HBM 2 and you have higher than GTX1080 performance with a smaller die and less TDP than VEGA.

 

[coercitiv]

edit: Just double Polaris 10, add HBM 2 and you have higher than GTX1080 performance with a smaller die and less TDP than VEGA.

This is what I don't get about these 2x Polaris napkin estimates: board power for Polaris 10 is 150W+. Even HBM savings would be offset if we were to consider the stock 185W board power for RX 580. So Fantasy Polaris would still be ~300W, with 12% lower clocks and 12% higher execution resources.

 

[caswow]

ssg, infinity fabric and who knows what else is in there. not possible under 500mm² if they just double an 480...

 

[3DVagabond]

I tend to agree, but, that would be against the Sherman Antitrust Act, they can't tell the manufacturer you can only use G-sync, and can't enable freesync.
That is pretty much what Intel was busted for, they attempt to monopolize.

nVidia supplies the scaler I believe. Or it's licensed and has to be to their spec.

 

[leoneazzurro]

This is what I don't get about these 2x Polaris napkin estimates: board power for Polaris 10 is 150W+. Even HBM savings would be offset if we were to consider the stock 185W board power for RX 580. So Fantasy Polaris would still be ~300W, with 12% lower clocks and 12% higher execution resources.

Also, Polaris is already 232 mm^2, double that and it is 464 mm^2 but some things simply don't scale linearly (i.e. crossbars). You have the same area, some power, maybe performance would be similar and you have less features...

 

[Cloudfire777]

Well it makes all sense now why AMD decided to sell the Vega RX at the same price as a GTX 1080 and why they took their sweet time.

Vega RX is a mining beast so even though Nvidia got faster cards for gaming, AMD is pretty much guaranteed to sell out Vega RX the minute it goes on sale.

Prepare for prices above $700 and sold out cards everywhere. Sucks for gamers but atleast AMD found a way to get a ton of sales.
I just hope for their sakes its not something they are proud of because the day mining on GPUs expires, they have alienated a lot of their gamers which have moved on to Nvidia.

 

[Glo.]

Vega RX is a mining beast so even though Nvidia got faster cards for gaming.

Aaaaaaand, you know this based on...?

 

[Qwertilot]

Also, Polaris is already 232 mm^2, double that and it is 464 mm^2 but some things simply don't scale linearly (i.e. crossbars). You have the same area, some power, maybe performance would be similar and you have less features...

The - far from certain! - hope would have been that they could have shipped it ~1 year ago.

That's been one of the very obvious casualties of AMD's shrunk GPU R&D budget though. They haven't done a top to bottom architecture based refresh of their products for a long time. More like a few random cards scattered about.

 

[bononos]

It seems like AMD expected that their architecture would be the primary target for games after winning the console business, which is a pretty good strategic bet, but they ended up flat out wrong. Mantle/Vulkan and DX12 have not made nearly the dent they had hoped in the amount of time they hoped, leaving them with their pants down and nvidia doing a much better job of optimizing their architecture and software for games right now.

It's actually amazing how poorly their strategy played out and big props to nvidia for countering it.

I think Nvidia uses different architectures for its gaming/professional lines so they don't have to compromise on performance for either product whereas AMD has to shoehorn its GCN to do both compute and gaming well. AMD had no choice on DX12 otherwise the industry will would have shifted to a more Gimpworks development model and would've cost AMD even more.

 

[leoneazzurro]

The - far from certain! - hope would have been that they could have shipped it ~1 year ago.

That's been one of the very obvious casualties of AMD's shrunk GPU R&D budget though. They haven't done a top to bottom architecture based refresh of their products for a long time. More like a few random cards scattered about.

Yes, but in that case you would have ended with a chip of the same size or bigger, same or worse power draw, and less features and less compute power. So now some people are finding Vega not good for gaming because being around 1080 power with worse power draw, they would have said the same one year ago and with less possibilities of seeing their card improving its performance over time due to missing features.

 

[amenx]

Aaaaaaand, you know this based on...?

Rumor based on info from AMD AIB partner. Gibbo the admin of OCUK (and retailer) trying to devise plan to keep stocks close to MSRP price due to this.

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/ru..._be_insanely_good_crypto_currency_miners.html

 

[leoneazzurro]

Rumor based on info from AMD AIB partner. Gibbo the admin of OCUK (and retailer) trying to devise plan to keep stocks close to MSRP price due to this.

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/ru..._be_insanely_good_crypto_currency_miners.html

I think he asked about the "gaming " part, not the "mining" one.

 

[Glo.]

Rumor based on info from AMD AIB partner. Gibbo the admin of OCUK (and retailer) trying to devise plan to keep stocks close to MSRP price due to this.

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/ru..._be_insanely_good_crypto_currency_miners.html

I think he asked about the "gaming " part, not the "mining" one.

Exactly.

 

[guskline]

This latest rumor about mining clearly will help sales but gut the gaming market.

Based upon what I have seen so far, and since I don't mine, I moved on to Nvidia, purchasing a GTX1080TI for my 5960x rig and moving my GTX1080 gpu over to my 1800x rig to replace the RX480.

What choice did I have?

All of my machines are custom watercooled, so to "hope" to get a RXVega64 that I could custom watercool in the near future is appearing less and less likely. Goodness knows what the cost would be, if the mining comment is true.

Second, from the info already out there, including AMD's own, the RXVega matches a GTX1080, NOT a GTX1080TI.

I was patient waiting for an AMD "high end" card to finish the Ryzen7 1800x build but no more.

I bet RTG is glad that Threadripper is on the doorstep to keep the tech journalists focused on it.

 

[Malogeek]

What choice did I have?

Why wait this long and not a few more works for cards to be released?

 

[CatMerc]

This was posted in another thread (the Vega / Navi rumors one) and the conclusion over there was that either this is outright a fabrication or that it's using minimum / 99th percentile frame rates as the 1070 numbers didn't match up with what's been reported in numerous benchmarks.

And that conclusion is pretty dumb. It entirely depends on what section of the game was tested. TPU for example got even LOWER numbers than that benchmark with DOOM.

https://tpucdn.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_1080_Mini/images/doom_2560_1440.png

 

[guskline]

Few more weeks?
I don't mean to be disrespectful. However hasn't a "few more weeks" been the Swan Song for Vega for quite awhile?

Moreover, when I saw that Vega's performace even from AMD's most promising leaks had it competing with the GTX 1080 ( which I already had) instead of the GTX1080TI, the decision became much easier.

I really hope the RTG team can improve drivers and bring out more of the Vega.

Price wise, to buy a RXVega64, if I could even get one, would be at least $500 plus add a waterblock an backplate and we are now over $650.

I paid a lot for the Gigabyte Aorus GTX1080Ti with WB ($850) but I have it, it is extremely powerful and it is a clear step up from the GTX1080.

 

[jpiniero]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vega-frontier-edition-16gb,5128-9.html

Tom's had a recent review of the Vega FE... and the FE is barely faster than Fury X in Doom Vulkan @ 4K. I would not be surprised if the Vega 56 is not much slower than this though.

 

[Red Hawk]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vega-frontier-edition-16gb,5128-9.html

Tom's had a recent review of the Vega FE... and the FE is barely faster than Fury X in Doom Vulkan @ 4K. I would not be surprised if the Vega 56 is not much slower than this though.

Technically Fury X can't run at the same settings as Vega can in Doom, though - the game won't allow you to run the highest texture and shadow settings if you only have 4 GB of RAM.

 

[cytg111]

I paid a lot for the Gigabyte Aorus GTX1080Ti with WB ($850) but I have it, it is extremely powerful and it is a clear step up from the GTX1080.

Did the same after it came apparent that vega vas 1070 1080 territory, got an inno3d 1080ti up from an 780gtx, holy smokes. Here is to hoping AMD turns it around.

 

[moonbogg]

Why wait this long and not a few more works for cards to be released?

Patience run out, and when they are gone, they're gone. I know what that's like when it comes to waiting for hardware. In this case, Vega doesn't seem compelling enough to wait for.

 

[Stuka87]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vega-frontier-edition-16gb,5128-9.html

Tom's had a recent review of the Vega FE... and the FE is barely faster than Fury X in Doom Vulkan @ 4K. I would not be surprised if the Vega 56 is not much slower than this though.

The Vega 56 should have functioning DCC, which should give it a leg up on Vega FE.

 

[tviceman]

GCN in working just fine, Polaris 10 is very competitive against Pascal in DX-12 games. There is something not working correctly or not working at all on VEGA in games, there is no way they spend all those transistors just for higher clocks when they could spend them for more SPs, ROPs, TMUs etc etc.

Not looking too competitive to me. Efficiency in this range isn't such a huge deal for desktop usage, but extending into SFF, notebooks, and scaling up the architecture without needing extreme amounts of power are characteristics of "competitive" and "good" architectures. RX 580 is a little faster than a GTX 1060, but if Nvidia wanted to re-release and over-volt GP106 like AMD did with RX 580, I'm sure it'd have no problem catching back up and still consume less power. Nvidia's architecture is simply in a class of it's own being able to do the same amount of work with less transistors, less bandwidth, and less power consumption.

edit: Just double Polaris 10, add HBM 2 and you have higher than GTX1080 performance with a smaller die and less TDP than VEGA.

Nope, still wouldn't work. Even in fairy tales of everything scaling 100% linearly (which it never, ever does), outright doubling both RX 480 and RX 580 come up short in GPU limited situations vs 1080 TI, let alone Titan Xp. Furthermore, 2x RX 480 with true 100% scaling would be consuming 320+ watts while RX 580 would be consuming 400 watts. Back to the drawing board!