AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 / Vega 56 Review Roundup

So, AMD have finally released their much anticipated but highly polarizing card. The new RX Vega hit the shelves on the 14th, and it seems that AMD may have proven the doubters right.

These cards are not what people hoped for many months ago when AMD started to drum up hype. My main worry for AMD is that the Vega comes some 14 months after the Nvidia 10 series, and is at best only trading punches with the GTX 1080. Performance wise the Vega 64 is around the level of the GTX 1080 which is a damn good level to be at, but unfortunately it is at the expense of a much higher power draw, meaning you need a much better PSU to run it, whilst also costing more as it requires more electricity to run.

To make matters worse, the AMD card costs roughly €100 more, but to be fair comes with two brand new games costing close to that amount anyway, but I would rather have €100 in my pocket than two games that I may not even get around to playing. The liquid cooled version comes in dearer than some of the lower priced GTX 1080ti, which is a no contest on which is the better choice. The only reason I would recommend this card is if you really want the two bundled games (Wolfenstein & PREY) and are going to make use of the £100 bundle offer and buy a Ryzen CPU + MB combo with it, or by already owning a freesync monitor to pair it with.

The silver lining for AMD seems to be the Vega 56 card, as it seems to be a lot more attractive; it tends to beat the GTX 1070 in a lot of cases. While it still has the same issues with power draw being notably higher than its Nvidia counterpart, it's not as bad as the 64 version. That being said, there is still no info on pricing over here; $399 is the announced price for the US, so it would be safe to assume that £399/€440 would be a rough estimate on the cost. If it can stay at those prices or lower, it will certainly be an option for those wanting an adaptive sync monitor but are reluctant to pay the g-sync premium. Unfortunately, the dark depressing cloud of cryptocurrency mining still looms over us all, and I already suspect that the majority of Vega 64 cards may well have been snapped up by eager miners who wanted to believe the rumour on Vega's mining performance. The good news is that this seems to be false with the Vega 64 mining performance being much lower than the rumors would have it. However, with the current shortages we are experiencing in the worldwide GPU department, wannabe miners will snap up the next best thing. If Vega 56 can be undervolted and keep up a respectable mining performance, expect them to go fast.

Radeon RX Vega Series
VideoCardz.com	RX Vega 64 Liquid	RX Vega 64 Limited	RX Vega 64 (Air)	RX Vega 56

GPU	Vega 10 XTX	Vega 10 XT	Vega 10 XT	Vega 10 XL
Cores	4096	4096	4096	3584
Compute Perf.	13.7 TFLOPS	12.6 TFLOPS	12.6 TFLOPS	10.5 TFLOPS
Base Clock	1406 MHz	1247 MHz	1247 MHz	1156 MHz
Boost Clock	1677 MHz	1546 MHz	1546 MHz	1471 MHz
Memory Clock	945 MHz	945 MHz	945 MHz	800 MHz
Memory (HBM2)	8 GB	8 GB	8 GB	8 GB
Memory Bus	2048-bit	2048-bit	2048-bit	2048-bit
TBP	345W	295W	295W	210W
MSRP	699 USD	599 USD	499 USD	399 USD


Media	Type	RX Vega 56 Air	RX Vega 64 Air	RX Vega 64 Limited	RX Vega 64 Liquid
4Gamer, #2
AnandTech
Bit-Tech
BitWit
Blunty
ComputerBase
Eurogamer
GamersNexus
Golem
Guru3D, #2
HardwareBattle
Hardware.fr
Hardware.info
HardwareLuxx
HardwareUnboxed
HotHardware
Hexus
JayzTwoCents
JokerProductions
KitGuru
Lab501
LegitReviews
LesNumeriques
LinusTechTips
MoreleTV
NordicHardware
Paul’s Hardware
PCGamer
PCGamesHardware
PCLab
PCPerspective
PCWorld
Phoronix
SweClockers
TechOfTomorrow
TechPowerUP, #2
TechReport
TechSpot
TechSource
TweakTown
XFastest

All credit for the very nicely formatted tables goes to WhyCry over at videocardz.com