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Conclusion
The same conclusions we reached in our Gigabyte Radeon RX Vega 56 Gaming OC 8G Review mostly apply here, too. This is another bread-and-butter board that exposes the best sides of Radeon RX Vega 64 without piling on features, gimmicks, and cost. It keeps Gigabyte in its financial comfort zone, rather than sucking up resources. And that seems to have been a good decision, given the availability of Vega-based packages. It's not always necessary to go overboard with extras to attract attention; sometimes a bit of common sense resonates more with enthusiasts.
If we consider the Radeon RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8G to be one of these no-frills models, then, Gigabyte actually does a number of things really well. This card wasn't meant to be a flagship. For its light weight, dimensions, and cooler technology, it's pleasantly quiet, even if it does suffer from a hot PCB caused by Gigabyte's layout choices. These heat levels are not enough to significantly harm the card, but the temperatures are still unnecessarily warm. Fortunately, a recent firmware update does help, and we're hoping that's made available to everyone soon.
The heat pipe direct touch cooler gets a special mention, too. Although it's typically used to minimize production costs, replacing a proper copper sink or vapor chamber, in an entry-level model like this one, the design works well and deserves praise. The slight difference in performance compared to Sapphire's Radeon RX Vega 64 Nitro+ is proof enough that building a less expensive product doesn't have to mean handicapping its abilities.
Frequencies and power consumption land exactly where we expected, elevating this card's gaming performance to an acceptable level. Brute-force overclocking doesn't make much sense unless you're willing to crank up the fan speeds and live with lots of noise. The better alternative is spending some time finding optimal settings for a stable undervolted configuration, even if a future driver or operating system update forces you to start over. Unfortunately, WattMan on its own is hardly sufficient for hardcore tweaking the way it works currently.
If only AMD wasn't having such severe issues with supplying Vega 10 GPU/HBM2 packages, Gigabyte's Radeon RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8G would enjoy ample availability and a reasonable price tag. Instead, the card is entirely unavailable in the U.S., and when Vega 64 boards do appear, they're marked up beyond what anyone should pay for one. The accountants at Gigabyte made sure that this obviously low-volume series doesn't cost more to make than it's worth in sales. You might even call that damage control.
Should supply see an unexpected surge in the future, Gigabyte can take its custom PCB and, with a few minor production changes, turn the Radeon RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8G into the Aorus-branded board it was designed to be.
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