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AMD Launches Radeon RX Vega 64 and Vega 56, Taking On GeForce GTX 1080 and 1070 (hothardware.com)

Posted by msmash on from the competition-heating-up dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD has finally launched its Radeon RX Vega series of graphics cards today, based on the company's next generation Vega 10 GPU architecture. There are three base card specs announced, though there are four cards total, with a Limited Edition air-cooled card as well. Three of the cards have 64 NGCs (Next Generation Compute Units) with 4096 stream processors, while Radeon RX Vega 56 is comprised of 56 NCGs with 3584 SPs. Base clocks range from roughly 1150 to 1400MHz, with boost clocks from 1470MHz to 1670MHz or so. All cards come with 8GB of HBM2 and sport 484GB/sec of memory bandwidth, except for Vega 56, which has a bit less, at 410GB/s. They are power-hungry as well, ranging from the 345 Watt liquid-cooled Radeon RX Vega 64, to the 295 Watt air-cooled RX Vega 64 and 210 Watt Radeon RX Vega 56. Performance-wise, Radeon RX Vega 64 is neck-and-neck with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080, winning some and losing some, with flashes of strength in DirectX 12-based games and benchmarks. Vega 64 also maintains generally better minimum frame rates versus GTX 1080. Radeon RX Vega 56 is a more credible midrange threat that handily out-performs a GeForce GTX 1070 across the board. In DX12 gaming, Radeon RX Vega 56 stretches its lead over the similarly-priced GTX 1070. Both cards, however, are more power-hungry, louder and run hotter than NVIDIA's high-end GeForce GTX 1080. Radeon RX Vega 64 cards will retail for $499 (Liquid Cooled cards at $699), while Radeon RX Vega 56 drops in at $399. All cards should be available at retail starting today.

2 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. only 15months late by arbiter1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Only took AMD 15 months to finally get out a gpu to compete. Which means nivida has had 15months to develop a new gpu to stomp on them.

    1. Re:only 15months late by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, the basic consensus seems to be...

      The 56 isn't a bad card. In theory a bit pricier than the 1070, but we'll see what the miners do to the respective prices when it actually hits the shelves. Performance is mid-way between the 1070 and 1080. Power consumption is high, but if you're not worried about that, then this is a gaming card that for certain given budgets will be the rational purchase.

      The 64 aircooled is in theory pricier than the 1080. It offers a very similar level of performance to the 1080, but with much higher power consumption. There doesn't seem to be any reason to buy it beyond brand loyalty to AMD, should you be so inclined.

      The 64 watercooled looks like an absolute disaster. Prices are comparable to the 1080 Ti, but with a level of performance only very slightly better than the base 1080. In addition, various sites have reported issues with the sample cards they were sent. PCGamer's had nasty coil-whine. Eurogamer reported that their card was overloading a 1000W PSU and that they had to switch to a 1200W to keep it stable. God only knows why anybody would want to pay almost as much as you pay for a 1080 Ti for a card with significantly lower performance and possible "issues".

      Nvidia's Volta cards probably aren't coming out tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the first wave of consumer cards in 6 months time.