AMD Radeon RX Vega 64: Bundles, Specs, And Aug. 14 Availability

[Mestas]

Most likely DOA. Why would you invest in Vega. Older, uses more power. Nvidia will probably release Volta in 2018 which would make Vega obsolete. People are playing down the power consumption, but I think it's pretty huge. Your new card can "just" compete with year+ old tech with a higher power draw. Even for the fanbois, take the name stickers off each card, in a blind taste test which would you choose?

And you don't think that AMD isn't already working on their 2018 releases? Working on driver improvements, etc?

You honestly think driver improvements can compete with a new generation of cards? Seems unlikely, but to that point maybe Nvidia does not release Volta in 2018, since really they don't have too.

If Vega's power requirements were inline with what Nvidia is offering I would think there is still something to be positive about, but they are not. Nvidia's power footprint keeps getting better, AMD is just staying the same.

 

[Joseph Jasik]

Whew, am I glad I did not wait for this. Said, "enough is enough" and upgraded my rigs about 3 months ago. With all the hype, I waited thinking this may be a better 4k card, but all the red flags were there. Shame, I wanted this to push Nvidia to release faster cards, but now, they can just take 5 and relax.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

Most likely DOA. Why would you invest in Vega. Older, uses more power. Nvidia will probably release Volta in 2018 which would make Vega obsolete. People are playing down the power consumption, but I think it's pretty huge. Your new card can "just" compete with year+ old tech with a higher power draw. Even for the fanbois, take the name stickers off each card, in a blind taste test which would you choose?

And you don't think that AMD isn't already working on their 2018 releases? Working on driver improvements, etc?

You honestly think driver improvements can compete with a new generation of cards? Seems unlikely, but to that point maybe Nvidia does not release Volta in 2018, since really they don't have too.

If Vega's power requirements were inline with what Nvidia is offering I would think there is still something to be positive about, but they are not. Nvidia's power footprint keeps getting better, AMD is just staying the same.

Power is only part of the equation. Drivers are a part too... and you ignored the part about AMD working on their 2018 releases. AMD isn't exactly sitting still. (As to NVidia, it would be pretty dumb for them to sit still for a season as that would be a golden invitation to out-do them,)

 

[Spock_rhp]

We're going to need some testing to reveal potential bottlenecking as well. And not only for these Vega gpus, but for the Threadripper cpus as well .... and not just only AMD gpu coupled to AMD cpu.

 

[quilciri]

You do realize that AMD doesn't owe you anything,right? They can sell their cards for whatever the market will bear. They can set an MSRP and provide no further incentives. And then retailers can sell those items for over MSRP. And then the market takes over, miners buy up everything and the retailers and AMD make a ton of money by continuing to raise the price. And they will sell you a liquid cooled full Vega and nothing else. You just may have to buy it at the price that everyone else in the world is willing to pay. Nobody going to sell you anything for MSRP if there are others willing to pay more for it. That's what everybody has been doing with e mining craze.

I know it sucks to be ready to upgrade and for the market to be crazy. I'm still playing on a !*#(@!*&# GeForce GTX 570 and I'm tired of playing 3-5 year old games. I get it. But you can't be mad at AMD or retailers for selling their product at a price the market will bear. Because if they sell it for less, they are STILL going to sell out and you won't get one anyway.

You've responded to what you thought was a knee jerk post with one of your own, but your logic falls down on a couple of points.

They only bundled the most expensive card. Assuming the Vega is at least as efficient at mining ethereum as the 480/580...the two other Vega cards will be gone or overpriced immediately. I'm sure AMD is well aware of that so their choice makes me question their motive.

No company owes its customers anything, but unless you're a major ISP, you don't get away with treating your most loyal customers poorly for long.

 

[caustin582]

Yeah I'm going to have to jump on board and say that this is all pretty disappointing. Even if the price : performance ratio matches or slightly beats some of Nvidia's higher end cards, there are two major things that bother me about Vega:

-This came along way too late. Nobody should be patting AMD on the back for matching Nvidia when they've had well over a year to play catch up. These new cards should be a distinct level above the Geforce 10 series. Instead we have something that's probably about as good, maybe a bit better, and it's still not even out yet. That's just sad.

-The TDP is disturbingly high. Aside from the fact that this means these cards will run hotter and louder (and have a bigger impact on your electricity bill), this really concerns me about AMD's design approach. It seems their current solution is to just create a gigantic die, crank up the GPU and memory frequencies, and say to hell with efficiency. Card running too hot? You should have just bought the water cooled version! Meanwhile Nvidia is cranking out high end cards that can be put into laptops, no watered down mobile version required. This isn't really competition; it's just the brute force approach.

I really want AMD to start competing again, but Vega looks like it's shaping up to be a pretty sad release. The fact that they've been hyping it to hell and back for the past several months just makes the whole ordeal even more pathetic.

 

[bit_user]

It seems their current solution is to just create a gigantic die, crank up the GPU and memory frequencies, and say to hell with efficiency.

Where did they ever say that?

This article highlights two significant efficiency improvements:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vega-architecture-new-features,33265.html

And there are more, if you care to search out other articles and blog posts about Vega.

Honestly, I wonder why their power efficiency has been worse than Nvidia, since Maxwell. But I don't think it's due to a complete lack of effort, on AMD's part.

And FYI, a bigger GPU @ lower clocks will tend to be more power efficient than a smaller GPU at higher clocks.

 

[DocBones]

I like the idea of the packs - but pricing is going to be an issue. Are we talking real money off, or money off of imaginary MSRP numbers?

 

[BigBoomBoom]

What most people forget is that these are MSRP. GTX 1080 MSRP is $499 and GTX 1070 MSRP is $349.

Also there's no way GTX 1080 can draw 310w for most models. FE and even custom card like my Gigabyte G1 uses only 1 x 8 pin cable, how on earth is it going to draw 310w without blowing up? For reference my GTX 1080 boost to 2050mhz consistently at 225w limit.

 

[Kelavarus]

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a shame it's not better. However, to everyone harping on AMD being behind... You DO realise that they just released Ryzen, which is a pretty good product, are releasing Threadripper and EPYC fairly soon, which are pretty impressive products, and Vega here quite soon... And they're doing it with R&D spending at the high $200M for the last few quarterly reports, whereas Nvidia is in the high $300M and last quarter low $400M, and Intel is at $3.3B.

That's pretty impressive, isn't it? I would love better too but I would say looking at the big picture they're doing a respectable job.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

^ regarding that, AMD is doing the best it can for sure. But the reality is, it's still playing catch up with Nvidia.

 

[Joe Black]

I get the idea behind the packs, but I fear support for the "freebies" will be limited in my country.

Oh well...

 

[jimmysmitty]

So basically Vega is 10% stronger than a 1080 GTX FE. It's not bad, but obviously too little too late.

Anyway, it will sell, but the real thing is the Vega core in APUs for laptops coming around next year. 1080p 60 fps on a laptop without mxm looks really nice.

So long as they can keep the power in check, yes.

However I am curious as to why the top end water cooled GPU has such a high TDP. I mean that is insane. Just going off that you would need a 1Kw PSU to handle two and a decent CPU and other hardware to go with it.

Of course that's just for people who use SLI or CFX but even a single GPU is pushing you to 700W territory.

I doubt the water cooler is adding 115W to the power draw of the card.

I guess the 14nm LPP is not that great for GPUs compared to the 16nm that NVidia is using.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

So basically Vega is 10% stronger than a 1080 GTX FE. It's not bad, but obviously too little too late.

Anyway, it will sell, but the real thing is the Vega core in APUs for laptops coming around next year. 1080p 60 fps on a laptop without mxm looks really nice.

So long as they can keep the power in check, yes.

However I am curious as to why the top end water cooled GPU has such a high TDP. I mean that is insane. Just going off that you would need a 1Kw PSU to handle two and a decent CPU and other hardware to go with it.

Of course that's just for people who use SLI or CFX but even a single GPU is pushing you to 700W territory.

I doubt the water cooler is adding 115W to the power draw of the card.

I guess the 14nm LPP is not that great for GPUs compared to the 16nm that NVidia is using.

PCper already overclocked the Frontier Edition. 125% power made it suck down 440 watts. ( for a 7% performance increase )

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-Vega-Frontier-Edition-16GB-Liquid-Cooled-Review/Overclocking-and-C

And it seems they are not supporting Crossfire with Vega?

https://www.techpowerup.com/235699/amd-giving-up-on-crossfire-with-rx-vega

Which is terrible news for all those people with 1500w power supplies who are waiting on a couple of these.

 

[InvalidError]

And it seems they are not supporting Crossfire with Vega?

Since CFX/SLI require some degree of hardware-specific support in games and driver support to work correctly most of the time, can't say I blame AMD and Nvidia for slowly backing out of baked-in multi-GPU hacks in favor of explicit multi-GPU in DX12.

 

[BigBoomBoom]

That's funny because the other day a guy was arguing with me that at least AMD supports Crossfire unlike NVIDIA. And then they dropped the news.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

So this effectively shuts down all rumors about the dual gpu Vega like the r9 295x? That's a shame. There is no 1080ti killer then.

 

[blppt]

"That's funny because the other day a guy was arguing with me that at least AMD supports Crossfire unlike NVIDIA."

Hope you won that one---AFAIK the only thing AMD supports better than Nvidia *was* CFX in more than 2 cards (Nvidia dropped official support for more than 2 with the 10 series), and mixed GPU CFX (i've successfully run a 290x and a regular 290 from two different brands with no ill effects in the past). Their actual CFX driver profile support has been horrendous in the past, though lately they seem to be mostly on par for the new AAA releases. So, really, the "more than 2 cards" advantage meant nothing if even 2 cards struggled with the CFX profiles (or didnt have any at all) compared to Nvidia.

Personally, I'd be all for ditching AFR multi-card if it meant we didnt have to use a new friggin' driver package every time a new game comes out, and DX12's much better solution takes over. Remains to be seen if either of those things actually happens.

 

[ddferrari]

Ok so when do the pre-orders start?

Why? Are you seriously going to buy one of these things without even waiting a few weeks for reviews? Bad move.

 

[Olle P]

... if it meant we didnt have to use a new friggin' driver package every time a new game comes out, ...

Can't say I've ever had that problem.
I fail to see a correlation between a new game being released and the functionality of the (older) games I play...

 

[Rogue Leader]

Ok so when do the pre-orders start?

Why? Are you seriously going to buy one of these things without even waiting a few weeks for reviews? Bad move.

Because it looks like the performance will be around GTX 1080 level. Its not going to be a complete piece of trash. And my system is Ryzen and I want to keep up the all AMD look. Yeah its a stupid vanity thing, but if the RX Polaris cards have proved anything, AMD cards only get better over time. The RX 480/580 has made significant improvements over the past year in driver updates alone.

 

[Questors]

Know what it is - Feels just like you open your main Big Christmas present - and it's not what you dreamed it would be =(

As a child, I didn't get everything I wanted, sometimes pretty much nothing I thought I wanted as Christmas presents. There was never a time that I was disappointed. Receiving gifts at Christmas is a symbolic gesture of the gifts given to the Christ Child in his honor. If you understand the reason for the giving in the first place, it isn't actually about you. It's about the "good heart" and willingness to give of the giver. It is appropriate to be thankful and appreciative of what others do for you. It may be there best effort. That's not say cruelty and deliberate misgiving is appropriate...again, that speaks to the giver.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas one year, I had a string of acting out. My parents gave me a stocking full of coal and two gift boxes with coal. I has hurt, but at myself because I knew the reason. It was my fault for my purposeful negative behavior. When I turned to my parents with tears in my eyes, hugged them and sincerely apologized (it wasn't fun, but I accepted the results), they waited about a half an hour, then brought out several gifts for me to open containing some new clothes and one very nice toy...a train set that made my entire next several years and beyond. It became a hobby. It was much less than my siblings had received both in quantity and dollar value, but I deserved less. Approach things with a thankful, appreciative attitude and you might be amazed. You (as in general you - anyone) are not entitled to receive everything you want at Christmas or in life.

 

[blppt]

"Can't say I've ever had that problem."

Then you've yet to experience the joy of a multi-card CFX and/or SLI setup for new games.

I agree that most times for a single card setup you can use any driver, but there are some cases (namely new GameWorks saturated titles) where AMD has to fix issues with their drivers being "buggy" when using Nvidia game library titles. I put buggy in quotes because while AMD cards may have incompatibilities, its not their fault generally that a Nvidia-built technology doesnt work perfectly on an outsider's card perfectly out of the box.

 

[Marshall_111]

seriously packaged deal to get the vega liquid cool pushes your build to $2k+ , i already have the asus x370 $120, ryzen 1600x $230, why would i wanna spend another $1,700+ so i can my sweaty hands on a vega liquid cool by itself for $700 ? sorry AMD , as much as I Love to support You : bundled deals like this blows butt, already have the rx480 8gb for $270 with a intel i7-6700k quad core 4ghz, air cooled, stock, no oc, asus md with 16gb, ssd, about a $1,200 rig , going to buy nvidia 1080 until u 2 duke it out with price war , not to mention all the vegas r power hogs, better have the engineers go do some more serious engineering work , sigh