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

[tential]

Please tell me those power consumption numbers are SYSTEM power right?

 

[PeterScott]

Please tell me those power consumption numbers are SYSTEM power right?

No, that is just card power. Before it was locked, the author of the review answered that question himself to clarify.

 

[tential]

No, that is just card power. Before it was locked, the author of the review answered that question himself to clarify.

AMD better pray this is some kind of mistake and that other reviews don't show similar results. 500 Watts from the card to compete with a GTX 1080 FE? In the LIQUID form?
The only card I wanted is locked behind a bundle, draws 500 watts in the mode that actually allows it to compete with a GTX 1080 FE...

This card will be going up against the GTX 2060... Poor Volta....

 

[cytg111]

500 watts ... holy smokes! Thats just... Alot.
I dont care if its 500watts but I want the compute that goes with it ... if they could make a 1080ti-ti that ate 500watts and yielded another 30% I would be all over that.

 

[french toast]

I remem the 2900xt, that was bad, this feels worse, much much worse.
How can this be consuming so much power? Perf/watt has actually gone down since Fiji? Two year later with a heavy redesign and essentially a mature two node jump?

I would have thought this impossible but AMD just pulled it off, I don't get all this must be enabled by software crap either, they should have brute forced the current code so it performed well in current games, but that doesn't explain the crazy power consumption, madness.

They would have been better off just shrinking fiji and adding more rops?

 

[R0H1T]

AMD better pray this is some kind of mistake and that other reviews don't show similar results. 500 Watts from the card to compete with a GTX 1080 FE? In the LIQUID form?
The only card I wanted is locked behind a bundle, draws 500 watts in the mode that actually allows it to compete with a GTX 1080 FE...

This card will be going up against the GTX 2060... Poor Volta....

Let's see ~

The GTX x80 generally have been the most efficient parts since Kepler IIRC, Vega will probably need lots of tuning & better drivers to get the best performance out of them. Kinda like 7970 GHz edition with a hard powercap, unless OCed.

 

[PeterScott]

Reviews are live now. I only read the HardOCP one:
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/14/amd_radeon_rx_vega_64_video_card_review/17

It is very Meh. Card needs DX12/Vulcan to compete with GTX 1080, and that really only levels the field.

AA methods seem to choke it, better textures seem to choke it, and it uses a lot of power.

Coming 15+ months after GTX 1080, it's a pretty poor showing.

 

[raghu78]

A good example of Vega regressing wrt Fiji in terms of perf/clock. GTA V at 1080p and 1440p. perf gains of 5% at 1440p and 12% at 1080p when clocks are atleast 35% higher show there are some serious bottlenecks with GCN in its current form.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-and-56-review/14

ROP count has stayed at 64 ROPs from Hawaii launch in 2013 Oct upto date. Anti aliasing performance is very bad when compared against the competition.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/14/amd_radeon_rx_vega_64_video_card_review/5
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/14/amd_radeon_rx_vega_64_video_card_review/7

DX11 performance is miserable
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/14/amd_radeon_rx_vega_64_video_card_review/14
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/14/amd_radeon_rx_vega_64_video_card_review/13
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/08/14/amd_radeon_rx_vega_64_video_card_review/15

 

[tential]

Like I said in the review threads the hardocp review is by far the lowest quality of all the reviews out that I've seen

 

[UglyDuckling]

That power consumption is just **** stupid.

Swearing is not allowed in the technical forums. -Shmee

 

[UglyDuckling]

Oh well DOA.

 

[Qwertilot]

True. Maybe why they're rather hiding the water cooled edition away?

I'm sure the architecture isn't that bad - it is seemingly being clocked to within an inch of its life to try and goose the performance leading to a totally stupid power draw rather than a merely inefficient/gently lower performing card. AMD doing this honestly annoys me a little.

 

[UglyDuckling]

True. Maybe why they're rather hiding the water cooled edition away?

I'm sure the architecture isn't that bad - it is seemingly being clocked to within an inch of its life to try and goose the performance leading to a totally stupid power draw rather than a merely inefficient/gently lower performing card. AMD doing this honestly annoys me a little.

It looks lazy to me.

On top of that welcome back to Fermi days.

 

[Face2Face]

 

[Arachnotronic]

So I think it's safe to say that Vega is a dud. >1 year after 1080, much larger die, consumes way more power, for similar perf.

Kind of funny to see the reviewers, fearing being cut off by AMD for future review samples, dance around these facts in their conclusions.

 

[UglyDuckling]

 

[raghu78]

So I think it's safe to say that Vega is a dud. >1 year after 1080, much larger die, consumes way more power, for similar perf.

Dud is an understatement for Vega. imo its the worst GPU ever to have launched. Not even NV30 or R600 were as bad as this one. barely matches GTX 1080 ref in DX12 , gets massacred in DX11 while drawing close to 2x the power. I doubt any GPU in history regressed in terms of perf/watt , perf/sq mm and perf/clock over its predecessor (Vega vs Fiji) even with the help of a full process node jump. This is without a doubt RTG's Bulldozer. AMD needs a clean sheet GPU design going forward.

 

[UglyDuckling]

Vega is bottlenecked, the clock differences and CU changes make little to almost no difference.

It seems they pushed GCN too far.

Kepler was Fermi but drastically redesigned, then out came something completely changed which was Maxwell then Pascal was a mutation on top of that.

GCN has been going far too long and needs to mutate so to speak.

 

[NTMBK]

So I think it's safe to say that Vega is a dud. >1 year after 1080, much larger die, consumes way more power, for similar perf.

Kind of funny to see the reviewers, fearing being cut off by AMD for future review samples, dance around these facts in their conclusions.

Eh, depends on what your perspective is. From a purely technical perspective, yeah, AMD's offering is much less impressive than what NVidia has. But from a consumer point of view, you get 1080 performance at a lower price, in return for crazy high power consumption. It's a tradeoff, albeit not one I personally would make.

If you're the kind of person who could put up with Fermi back in the day, this might be the card for you.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Eh, depends on what your perspective is. From a purely technical perspective, yeah, AMD's offering is much less impressive than what NVidia has. But from a consumer point of view, you get 1080 performance at a lower price, in return for crazy high power consumption. It's a tradeoff, albeit not one I personally would make.

If you're the kind of person who could put up with Fermi back in the day, this might be the card for you.

Fermi had a performance edge at least. This really isn't better than the 1080 in any way.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Dud is an understatement for Vega. imo its the worst GPU ever to have launched. Not even NV30 or R600 were as bad as this one. barely matches GTX 1080 ref in DX12 , gets massacred in DX11 while drawing close to 2x the power. I doubt any GPU in history regressed in terms of perf/watt , perf/sq mm and perf/clock over its predecessor (Vega vs Fiji) even with the help of a full process node jump. This is without a doubt RTG's Bulldozer. AMD needs a clean sheet GPU design going forward.

We are in near perfect agreement; I still think NV30 was worse

 

[french toast]

On a plus note, jarred Walton at PC gamer got his Vega 56 up to 1900mhz! (Locked at 1900) and could match Vega 64 perf with memory and core OC, matched power consumption as well

But the added frequency above Vega 64 added no performance, none. Just added power consumption, odd very odd.

There is a huge memory bottleneck going on here I feel, maybe a fault with memory controller?
The uarch certainly can reach Pascal type clocks, especially when you consider the non optimal low power process it was baked on, seems power consumption and IPC are the issues here, a huge memory issue might be the IPC issue, alongside drivers and game optimisations, the 14nm LPP bursting at its seems and overclocked hbm might go some way towards explaining the power consumption.
Vega 56 is actually pretty decent, more power efficient than Rx 580, not exactly saying much but is a start, Vega 64 and liquid look horrendous!.

 

[UglyDuckling]

Vega is bottlenecked, the clock differences and CU changes make little to almost no difference.

It seems they pushed GCN too far.

Kepler was Fermi but drastically redesigned, then out came something completely changed which was Maxwell then Pascal was a mutation on top of that.

GCN has been going far too long and needs to mutate so to speak.

On a plus note, jarred Walton at PC gamer got his Vega 56 up to 1900mhz! and could match Vega 64 perf with member and core OC, matched power consumption as well

But the added frequency above Vega 64 added no performance, none. Just added power consumption, odd very odd.

There is a huge memory bottleneck going on here I feel, maybe a fault with memory controller?
The uarch certainly can reach Pascal type clocks, especially when you consider the non optimal low power process it was baked on, seems power consumption and IPC are the issues here, a huge memory issue might be the IPC issue, alongside drivers and game optimisations, the 14nm LPP bursting at its seems and overclocked hbm might go some way towards explaining the power consumption.
Vega 56 is actually pretty decent, more power efficient than Rx 580, not exactly saying much but is a start, Vega 64 and liquid look horrendous!.

 

[Rifter]

This is a complete disaster. The power usage is just insane. They can salvage this with pricing as some people will still buy if priced right, IMO thats $350 absolute max for vega 64, its just not worth more than that with that insane power usage. And anyone who cares at all about efficiency will never buy this regardless of price.

Very disappointed.

 

[beginner99]

Vega 64 is even worse than expected. It eclipses even BD in terms of failure. Full note jump to finfets and yet the manage to loose performance/watt. That's really an achievement. I can only repeat. This i swhat you get when you fire your good, expensive crew and replace them with cheap hires. "If you think experts are expensive, wait and see what amateurs will cost you".

I really dont like NV but at this point, I can't come up with any reason to buy an AMD GPU. RX480/580 barley beat my 290x and 1070/1080 are plain superior to Vega.