Gadgetory

welcome back to her remarks for the start of our Radeon RX Vega coverage now I would like to just quickly point out that I only received my Vega sample yesterday so that was on a Sunday AMD ended up playing the role of the courier and hand-delivered it to me over the weekend because apparently the initial Vega 64 shipment got a bit lost along the way anyway those samples should be arriving later this week and if you are interested in a bit more detail about how I got this card here over the weekend check out the story in yesterday's unboxing boxes episode the good news is like most I was aware that Vega would be being released on the 14th so the second I was done testing thread repair quickly changed gears and began GPU testing all the data in this video is 100% fresh I've recorded at all over the last few days using the latest available drivers and as usual all the GPU testing has been conducted on my core i7 77 or HS machine clocked at 4.9 gigahertz for now I only have numbers for the geforce gtx 980ti 1080 1070 and 1062 Radeon rx 580 and fury X the good news though is we have results for the 1080p 1440p and 4k resolutions Before we jump into the benchmark results I'll quickly go over some specifications for all the Vega models without beating around the bush here's the lineup at the head of the family we have the liquid cool addition of the RX Vega 64 and this model features 64 compute units for a grand total of 4096 stream processors or cause this model will operate at a base frequency of fourteen hundred and six megahertz with a boost frequency of sixteen hundred and seventy-seven megahertz that's a far cry from the 1.9 to two gigahertz in videos GPUs boost up to but we all knew the Green Team would still come away with a clock speed advantage anyway even at this frequency the liquid cooled version of rx Vega 64 boasts a peak single precision throughput of 3.7 teraflops that's more than the eleven point three teraflops of the GT X 1080 Ti and roughly 60% more than the fury X cool model known simply as RX vega 64 has the same number of course they just clocked 11% lower at a base frequency of twelve hundred and forty nine megahertz and eleven percent lower for the boost of fifteen hundred and forty six megahertz as you might have guessed this has reduced the peak single precision throughput by eight percent then we have the cut down our x-value fifty six which i'm testing in this video it features 56 compute units for 3584 stream processors and that's a 13% reduction in coil count when compared to the 64 version all three models come fitted with a gigabytes of second generation high bandwidth memory which provides a band with a 484 gigabytes per second for vega 64 and 410 gigabytes per second for vega 56 the only concerning specification here is the board power rating which sees a liquid-cooled model slapped with a 345 watt rating 295 watts for the air-cooled model and just 210 watts for Vega 56 the base model black version of the Radeon rx Vega 64 is coming in at $500 u.s. and that's the current MSRP of the GeForce GTX 1080 and here AMD says it will become the new GPU King the limited edition air-cooled version will come in at a $50 premium so that's $550 all up meanwhile RX vega 56 will come in at $400 u.s. and that of course prices are alongside the gtx 1070 meanwhile the liquid cooled vegas 64 model will come in at $600 undercutting the gtx 980ti by $100 in my opinion the Radeon RX Vega 56 looks to be the best value proposition and as the most affordable model I'm kind of glad this is where we're starting so then I think it's about time to start looking at those blue bar graphs please note because I have tested 25 games at three resolutions there are 75 graphs in this video that being the case I will just focus on the 1440p results for my commentary so this video doesn't run for over an hour but 1080p and 4k results will quickly be shown first before discussing the 1440p numbers one last and very important note please be aware I'm no longer testing with AMD or Nvidia reference graphics cards where I can as I strongly recommend viewers avoid these models and thankfully most consumers do anyway so rather than test with the gtx 1070 founders edition i'm using the MSI gaming X model which is a little bit faster thanks to better cooling and a better factory overclocking anyway I'll list all the graphics card used in the video description right to the benchmarks first up we have Far Cry primal and here's a quick look at the 1080p and 4k results Vega 56 does trail the GTX 970 at 1080p but by the time we hit 4k it is able to pull ahead at 1440p the margins were slim whichever way you look at it but here the Radeon graphics card wasn't able to hit a leader of 5% moving on to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon wildlands we see that AMD is new mid-range to high-end contender trails the GTX 1070 though this time it matches it at the 4k resolution switching back to 1440p we see that performance is much the same technically vega 56 was a frame seller but you know margin of eronel so yeah pretty much the same performance in wild lands next up we have the hugely popular overwatch and this is a title that was historically favoring the green team and we find that yet again that is the case here when comparing the gtx 1070 and vega 56 GPUs the gtx 1070 comfortably beat the new Vega GPU at 1080p and 4k looking at the 1440p numbers we see that the 1070 is 9% faster on average which is a decent win for Nvidia when it comes to hardcore parkour Vega 56 gets around ok matching the gtx 1070 at 1080p though it did lose its grip at 4k looking at the 1440p results the 1070 was a few frames slower so a small win here for the red team whether you're mind controlling messenger pigeons or moonlighting as a tank driver either hobby is best enjoyed with Vega 56 we saw a nice little bump in performance at 1080p and a solid 13% gain at 4k for our resolution of choice of ager 56 offers 11% more performance over the gtx 1070 which is certainly a noteworthy gain and a great result for the red team in battlefield 1 AMD lacks the mad driver hacks they need to take the lead in watchdogs 2 as a result vega 56 full both 1080p and 4k I was actually very surprised to find the GTX 1070 providing 15% more frames at 4k that said even at 1440p things were starting to get away from the new radio and GPU as it was 7% slower with an average of 58 FPS so a bit of a disappointing result here typically titanfall 2 has been a game that's favored the red team in the past so I was quite surprised to see the gtx 1070 matching vega 56 in this title even at 4k the radio and GPU wasn't able to run away with it we see pretty much identical performance at 1440p so while not a bad result for AMD I had expected them to pick up a handy win here another game where I expected a me to do well was a Resident Evil 7 biohazard and this time they do indeed come away with a win that said Vega 56 wasn't that much faster than the fury X in this title at least at 1080p but fury X does fall away massively at 4k that's it before it's for gigabyte HBM buffer limits performance the fury x does look very mighty at 1440p and it's just a few frames slower than the new vega 56 GPU which seemed a little unlikely in any case a win here for AMD moving to Mass Effect Andromeda we find Vega 56 trailing the GTX 1070 at both 1080p and 4k which is a little disappointing looking at the 1440p numbers there isn't much in it but still Vega 56 comes in a few frames slower typically AMD is very competitive in this title so another worrying sign for Vega unlike Mass Effect Andromeda I found that in the past AMD's not super competitive in Dishonored 2 and we certainly see that here when we compare Vega 56 and the GeForce GTX 970 at 1080p and 4k looking to the 1440p results the gtx 1070 was 14% faster and that's quite a big margin more crucially where is the 1070 averaged well over 60 fps Vega fell short of that desired frame rate looking back to Witcher 3 Wild Hunt we see that Vega is competitive in this title but at the same time it's not really beating the much older gtx 1070 either it edged ahead at 1080p and 4k but the results weren't really well anyone meanwhile at 1440p vega 56 a few frames faster but again doesn't really offer anything new at the $400 price point the dawn of war three results are very much a mixed bag and we see that here when looking at the 1080p and 4k results the radio and GPU was slightly slower at 1080p while it pulled into the lead at 4k quite shockingly though it puts forth by far its best result of 1440p where it matched the gtx 1080 this is a somewhat baffling result but having retested it twice I was faced with the same confusing results not sure what's going on here but I'm keen to look into it a bit more shortly do it for threw up some more highly confusing numbers so again please take these with a grain of salt until I have more time to confirm them further or confirm them with another source rather than just disregard these results i retested vega 56 as well as the geforce ten series cards and i kept finding the exact same results all the quality settings were the same and visually Vega looked like it was rendering everything so again I'm not quite sure how to explain these ones for whatever reason though Vega 56 was able to beat the GeForce GTX 1080 at 1440p and even crushed the GTX 1082 s minimum result this goes against everything we've seen so far so again take these with a grain of salt until I can confirm them with at least one other source prayers yet another game where Amy typically does very well and yet we find again Vega 56 struggling against the gtx 1070 here it's the minimum frame rate all those 1% lows that look particularly bad at 1080p though by the time we get to 4k the margins are much the same again we see this time at 1440p that the minimum frame rate result is an issue for Vega despite the average looking reasonably good Vega 56 and the GTX 1070 again go head-to-head and deliver pretty much the same results this time in for honor that said while it was a dead heat at 1080p but 1070 pulled ahead at 4k at 1440p we start to see the 1070 edged ahead but really we are talking just a 1 or 2 FPS difference at this realistic resolution for these mid-range to high-end GPUs quite champions is a game I've decided to include last minute and this is the first time I've actually benchmarked this title here we see some very competitive results from AMD at 1080p those things become a bit too over well for Kay backing down the 1440p we find mixed results Amy had the better 1% low while NVIDIA peaked a little higher overall performance was much of a muchness so really another draw here you can't do a 20 plus gaming benchmark series these days without including player unknowns battlegrounds could you just imagine the comment section I mean so many guys still can't let go of GTA 5 they'll no doubt be many many comments asking why that title wasn't included anyway a bit of a bloodbath here aim D clearly has some driver development work to do for gtx 1070 storms ahead at 1080p delivering 27% more frames Vega kind of comes back at 4k but at this point the frame rates are so low it doesn't really matter meanwhile at 1440p ver 1070 was 24% faster making this a very convincing win for NVIDIA he's another new game I've added to the list he'll blade sinuous sacrifice unfortunately as this is a new title and it does use the Unreal 4 engine aim D has some work to do with their drivers Vega 56 was 10% slower at 1440p when compared to the gtx 1070 and again it was just a few percent faster than the old fury x another old game that i've brought back for this one is Crysis 3 and despite its age aim they also have some driver work to do here as well shockingly Vega 56 was actually slower than the fury X at 1080p though it did pull ahead at 4k that said it still trailed the fury X at 1440p as it turned in GeForce GTX 1060 light performance okay so now we're getting into the low level API testing and first that we have the division using DirectX 12 here Vega 56 looks very impressive racing ahead at 1080p and maintaining that strong lead even at 4k this is also sent 1440p where vega 56 delivered an impressive 94 FPS on average making it 18 percent faster than the gtx 1070 the hitman results are interesting as vega 56 looks great at 1080p but when we jump to 4k things settle down and now AMD is only able to match the gtx 1070 this is also true for the 1440p resolution as both vega 56 and the gtx 1070 the same 117 FPS the only Vulcan title to be included is of course doom and here we see at 1080p Vega 56 is able to hit the 200 FPS cap at least for the average framerate even at the 4k resolution the framerate still remained above 60 fps at all times an AMD takes the win looking at the 1440p results we see Vega is able to deliver 10% more performance which isn't bad though given the rx 580 is almost 20% faster than the GTX 1060 I was expecting a bit more to be honest Deus Ex mankind divided is another title of live test using dx12 and these hands the advantage to Vega aim d1 quite comfortably at Cheyney P and remained ahead for the 4k testing as well meanwhile 1440p the Vega 56 car was 12% fast and the GTX 1070 though shockingly just 8 percent faster than the fury X total war Warhammer was also tested using the DirectX 12 API and here Vega 56 again beat the GTX 1070 by a decent margin in fact Vega was 17% faster at 1440p though just 9% faster when comparing the minimum frame rate finally we have rise of the Tomb Raider and again testing was conducted using dx12 that said keep in mind this is an Nvidia sponsored title and as such it tends to favor the green team even when using the low-level api at 1440p performance is much the same and both Vega 56 and the GTX 1070 average 64 fps I haven't had time to do a full battery of temperature tests but after monitoring temperatures for around 20 minutes Vega 56 seemed to peak at 75 degrees and the fans span up to just 40% which actually wasn't that bad for those wondering overclocking appears very limited at the moment and I'm not 100% sure if this is issued with the reference card or it's a software problem it might actually be a software related issue but as I said I haven't really had time to work it out anyway for a reference card it actually works quite well but as always I'm more keen to check out the board partner models alright now it's time to see just how power hungry Vega really is well at least the cup down 56 model anyway granted Vega 56 does push total system consumption 13% high when compared to the GTX 10 7 it's actually a small improvement over the RX 580 which I wasn't really expecting to see so Vega 56 isn't going to make your power supply sweat or smoke or whatever it is they do when they're under pressure well that was interesting it seemed like for the most part Vega 56 was either able to match the GeForce GTX 970 or was at best only slightly faster so yeah anyway let's take a look at the average results across the 25 games tested before we move on to that examine of the full performance breakdown on a per game basis right so 1080p up first and yes this is exactly like what I was expecting to see overall Vega 56 delivered the same experience as the gtx 1070 which is let's discuss that shortly at 1440p we find almost exactly the same thing this time though Vega 56 is slightly faster we're talking about a two and a half percent margin here though meanwhile Vega 56 was 18 percent Fast and the Furious which is a decent step up especially when you consider that total system consumption was reduced by 8% finally at 4k we again find similar performance between Vega and the 1070 Vega did edged ahead here ever so slightly but again we're looking at pretty much the same experience all right let's move on to see how they compare on a per game basis this certainly gives us a much better picture of what's going on and how well Vega 56 really stacks up firstly there is that suspicious win in dirt 4 but even if you remove that result it doesn't really change much Vegas still 1% faster overall so not exactly a parenting but it's not slower either I guess what's worth noting is that Vega found success in most of the modern low-level API titles with SolarWinds in the division total war Warhammer DOS ex mankind divided and doom it also did well in dawn of war 3 battlefield 1 and Resident Evil 7 where Vega 56 really seen the struggle was crisis and player unknowns battlegrounds and both games clearly lacked driver optimization so we're seeing here should be possible to correct the frame rates in Crysis 3 were all over the place but I don't think a fix will be two involved battlegrounds is obviously a big one and AMD will want to address the performance here very promptly overall performance looks quite solid and RX Vega 56 is certainly a gtx 1070 contender even if it has rocked up to the fight banging its chest over a year late a MDL like better late than never am i right it is good that we finally have some competition at these higher price points but I feel like if you're going to come to the party an entire product cycle late you kind of have to hit it out of the park and that's certainly not what AMD have done here as we've just seen there is still much more to discuss though more testing with these to be done and as usual probably a bit of time that needs to pass before we can really put our finger on what it is Vega is offering consumers for example we've seen previously where the RX for 80 was around 15% slower than the GTX 1060 upon release months later that gap was closed to basically nothing and AMD's offering became considerably more attractive whereas Vega 56 is currently matching the gtx 1070 across a wide spread of games i can quite easily imagine it being around 10% faster before too long but as a consumer should you bang Cano Vega becoming faster ups of maybe 10% faster and take the plunge or instead go with a known quantity in the geforce gtx 1070 right now it is hard to discuss value so pricing since the gtx 1070 is selling for well over the MSRP and even then availability is really quite poor speaking of which i hate to imagine what availability of vega is going to be like over the next few weeks if not months so in a way you might actually be forced to wait and see how well vega matures anyway on that note i'm going to wrap this up for now i realize there is much more testing to discuss but since i've only had the card for around 36 hours now this is all we have time for expect more testing shortly along with a good look at vega 64 as I complete more testing I'll give you guys my honest opinion on Vega but for now it's not looking particularly exciting I suppose that's not really a shock given what we already knew about Vega they expect more will coverage soon I'm you're exhausted how you save time for a nap