AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB Review
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Page 1:Introduction
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Page 2:Disassembly, Cooler & Interposer
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Page 3:Board Layout & Components
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Page 4:How We Tested AMD's Vega RX 56 8GB
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Page 5:Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation (DirectX 12)
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Page 6:Battlefield 1 (DirectX 12)
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Page 7:Doom (Vulkan)
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Page 8:Hitman (DirectX 12)
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Page 9:Metro: Last Light Redux (DirectX 11)
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Page 10:Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12)
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Page 11:Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (DirectX 11)
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Page 12:Tom Clancy’s The Division (DirectX 12)
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Page 13:Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III (DirectX 11)
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Page 14:The Witcher 3 (DirectX 11)
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Page 15:VR: Arizona Sunshine (DirectX 11)
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Page 16:VR: Chronos (DirectX 11)
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Page 17:VR: DiRT Rally (DirectX 11)
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Page 18:VR: Robo Recall (DirectX 11)
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Page 19:VR: Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope (DirectX 11)
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Page 20:Ethereum Mining
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Page 21:Power Consumption: Testing Eight Different Settings
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Page 22:Overclocking, Underclocking, Efficiency & Temperature
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Page 23:Fan Speed & Noise
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Page 24:Conclusion
Overclocking, Underclocking, Efficiency & Temperature
Frequencies & Corresponding Game Performance
Again, we're using The Witcher 3 at 4K for our worst-case scenario. This yields an average of 36.6 FPS at 1305 MHz using the Balanced mode's stock settings, giving us a good 100% baseline.
Switching to the secondary BIOS and dropping the power limit by 25% results in a 1101 MHz clock rate and surprisingly high 32.7 FPS average frame rate. For 85% of the default GPU frequency we measure 89% of the default configuration's performance. Not bad.
Conversely, pushing the card to its limit via overclocking gets us almost 1500 MHz and 39.6 FPS. So, a frequency increase of almost 15% yields just 8% more gaming performance.
From the lowest to the highest average clock rate, we observe an increase of 36.4%. However, gaming performance goes up by just 21.1%. That's not great scaling, but it's not terrible either. What's more important is the power consumption accompanying those numbers. Unfortunately, this is where the data gets ugly.
Using the secondary BIOS with a power limit reduced by 25% gets us 159.4W and 32.7 FPS. Compared to the stock settings, just 71.6% of the power consumption serves up 89% of the gaming performance.
Going back to a worst-case scenario, the overclocked card averages 39.6 FPS, but consumes 310.6W doing so. Trading 39.5% more power consumption for an 8%-higher frame rate isn’t acceptable. The efficiency curve drops off rapidly with increasing clock rates and the additional power those frequencies necessitate.
The spread between the lowest to the highest power consumption is a massive 94%, while gaming performance increases by only 21.1%. Almost double the power consumption for one-fifth more gaming performance is what we'd call catastrophic.
Efficiency & Sweet Spot
If all of the results we generated are combined, and the curves' start and end points are given a common basis, then we get an FPS/watt ratio illustrating the relationship between gaming performance and power consumption. The point at which the distance between both curves is at its greatest represents the so-called sweet spot. This is where the card operates at peak efficiency, right before it starts going the other direction.
Radeon RX Vega 56's sweet spot seems to be right around 188W to 190W, according to our measurements. Strangely, AMD placed three settings close to it, but didn’t place a single one right on.
GPU & Memory Temperatures
The temperatures are very similar across all six power profiles. This is due to the fan's aggressive controller, which responds quickly when power consumption increases. The combination of overclocking and a power limit adjustment of +50% proves to be too much, though. AMD's thermal solution can't keep up, and our measurements show an additional 10°C compared to the predefined settings.
At maximum load, the HBM2 averages up to an additional 6°C on top of the GPU temperature in question. Our overclocking efforts pushed it beyond the 90°C mark, leaving us a little nervous.
Primary BIOS Thermal Images
For each of the two BIOSes, we provide thermal images for all three driver-based profile settings. These show how the card’s power consumption and fan speed affects the temperatures of various on-board components.
- 01 BIOS 1 - Power Save
- 02 BIOS 1 - Balanced
- 03 BIOS 1 - Turbo
- 04 BIOS 1 - OC and plus 50 Percent Power Limit
As mentioned, though, all of the temperatures are fairly similar until we get to the overclocked configuration. This is due to the fan controller’s ability to maintain a target temperature between 74 and 75°C, regardless of what that means to our ears.
Secondary BIOS Thermal Images
We start with the underclocked settings, resulting in 160W of power consumption. At that level, we notice a deviation from the six driver profile-based average temperatures as well. The difference isn’t as pronounced as it was for the overclocked setting, though.
- 05 BIOS 2 - UC and minus 25% Power Limit
- 06 BIOS 2 - Power Save
- 07 BIOS 2 - Balanced
- 08 BIOS 2 - Turbo
Similar to what we observed from the primary BIOS, the other temperatures increase only slightly as power consumption rises; they're kept in check by an especially responsive fan.
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
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MORE: All Graphics Content
- Introduction
- Disassembly, Cooler & Interposer
- Board Layout & Components
- How We Tested AMD's Vega RX 56 8GB
- Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation (DirectX 12)
- Battlefield 1 (DirectX 12)
- Doom (Vulkan)
- Hitman (DirectX 12)
- Metro: Last Light Redux (DirectX 11)
- Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12)
- Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (DirectX 11)
- Tom Clancy’s The Division (DirectX 12)
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III (DirectX 11)
- The Witcher 3 (DirectX 11)
- VR: Arizona Sunshine (DirectX 11)
- VR: Chronos (DirectX 11)
- VR: DiRT Rally (DirectX 11)
- VR: Robo Recall (DirectX 11)
- VR: Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope (DirectX 11)
- Ethereum Mining
- Power Consumption: Testing Eight Different Settings
- Overclocking, Underclocking, Efficiency & Temperature
- Fan Speed & Noise
- Conclusion
Good job AMD, hopefully next gen you can make more headway in power efficiency. But this is a good card, even beats the factory OC 1070.
Some 'Other Guys' (Namer Gexus?) were experimenting on under-volting and clock-boosting with interesting results. It's not like you guys don't have enough to do, already, but an Under-Volt-Off Smack Down between AMD and nVidia might be fun for readers ...
https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/44084-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56-und-vega-64-im-undervolting-test.html&edit-text=
Yeah Tom's Hardware does objective reviewing. If there are faults with something, they will call them out like the inferior VR performance over the 1070. This is not the National Inquirer of tech review sites like WCCTF. There are more things to consider than raw FPS performance and that's what we expect to see in an honest objective review.
Guru3D's conclusion with caveats:
"For PC gaming I can certainly recommend Radeon RX Vega 56. It is a proper and good performance level that it offers, priced right. It's a bit above average wattage [consumption] compared to the competitions product in the same performance bracket. However much more decent compared to Vega 64."
Tom's conclusion with caveats:
"Even when we compare it to EVGA’s overclocked GeForce GTX 1070 SC Gaming 8GB (there are no Founders Edition cards left to buy), Vega 56 consistently matches or beats it. [snip] But until we see some of those forward-looking features exposed for gamers to enjoy, Vega 56’s success will largely depend on its price relative to GeForce GTX 1070."
^^And that's the truth. If prices of the AIB cards coming are closer to the GTX 1080, then it can't be considered a better value. This is not AMD's fault of course, but that's just the reality of the situation. You can't sugar coat it, you can't hide it, and you can't spin it. Real money is real money. We've already seen this with the RX 64 prices getting close to GTX 1080 Ti territory.
With that said, I am glad to see Nvidia get direct competition from AMD again in the high end segment since Fury even though it's a year and four months late to the party. In this case, the reference RX 56 even bests an AIB Strix GTX 1070 variant in most non-VR games. That's promising for what's going to come with their AIB variants. The question now is what's looming on the horizon in an Nvidia response with Volta. We'll find out in the coming months.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/109078-asus-radeon-rx-vega-64-strix-gaming/
Will any gamers buy this card ... will any gamers GET to buy this card? Hot, hungry, noisy and expensive due to the crypto currency mining craze was not what this happy R290 owner had in mind.
BTW:
You can undervolt it a little bit, but you have also to analyze the frame times! Only fps are saying simply nothing about the picture quality. With all this ups and downs you get a horrible, micro-stuttering result. About this effect I wrote a few times.
You're ignoring the Titan XP because it isn't really a consumer gaming card right? And the 1080 ti, because...reasons? There's an outside chance of taking the value crown. I'd go with that, assuming everyone in this thread who wants one is able to buy one today for <$400.
1080p benches for CPU without 1440p and 2160p counterparts just for example. This is manipulation that can drive sales.
Guy number 1: Check benches on Toms: "Oh Ryzen sux, I am not buying it for my next 1440p system".
Guy number 2: Check benches on kitguru: "Oh Ryzen is offering the same gaming experience at 4k than Intel... and they kick Intel butt all over the place in multi-threaded application... I am buying it for my next 1440p system".
See, I just proved you wrong.
This card is the strongest miner at the cheapest MSRP. It will sell really well... unfortunately for gamers.
I was wondering when you'd show up complaining. I guess you missed the Guru3D article of this GPU earlier this month and their generally SAME conclusions. Provide evidence to back up your assertions every time there's a single negative comment on a review of an AMD product that Tom's is biased against AMD. You cannot and you know you cannot.
And your 1080p benchmark argument is a fail, because EVERY major tech review website uses 1080p as a CPU gaming benchmark. This is not new either. You can go back TEN YEARS on Tom's Hardware, Guru3D, and others who ran a 1280x1024 CPU gaming benchmark resolution when the high end resolutions were the 2K of the time 1600x1200 and 4K of the time 1920x1080. The other reason your 1080p argument is a fail is because there are a lot of gamers out there with 144Hz 1080p monitors. The rest of your comment is just hypothetical nonsense with no statistical data to back it up, and you know it.
Isn't there a better way to measure the sweet spot that a "bulge"?
I'd be interested in seeing benchmark comparisons between a 1070 and a Vega 56 both OC'd to their max stable frequencies with the same temperature caps. Something tells me the 1070 will win by a long shot every time. I honestly wish AMD would put out something to get really excited about, but it looks like they just gave up and went with the brute force approach.
Well in all fairness to AMD, they don't have the resources to back development of both a new CPU and GPU simultaneously. Also remember that Nvidia is not making CPUs. They can focus solely on CPUs. Not so with AMD. AMD put most of their resources into Ryzen which was a good move. It is earning them much needed revenue.
But lackadaisical overclocking been the general pattern of AMD GPUs for quite some time. They are not near as overclock friendly as Nvidia GPUs. When Fury X came out, it was on par with a reference GTX 980 Ti. However, it had very little overclocking headroom as it was already near maximum clocks out of the factory. An AIB vendor overclocked 980 Ti beat it, and overclocked on top of that it destroyed the Fury X.
But if you want to get a hint of things to come, check out my Hexus link above in a previous post showing a pre-production ASUS Strix "ROG" Gaming RX 64 and comparisons with the reference RX 64:
(Reference vs. Strix FPS at 2560x1440)
Battlefield 1 - 71 vs. 75
Dues Ex - 55 vs. 60
Fallout 4 - 66 vs. 70
Warhammer - 100 vs. 103
Witcher 3 - 75 vs. 79
Now the last ASUS GTX 1080 Strix tested at Guru3D got this with the only same tested game, Dues Ex (reference vs. Strix vs. overclocked Strix at 2560x1440): 69 vs. 75 vs. 81.
Hexus tested on an overclocked 7700K overclocked to 4.6GHz and Guru3D with an overclocked i7-5960X to 4.4GHz so really there's no difference there at 1440p. My guess is the lower numbers of the pre-production RX 64 Strix was due to early drivers. But it does give you a comparative snapshot of reference vs. AIB aftermarket GPUs between Vega and Pascal - pretty close. They key as you said will be in what can the higher clocked AIB Vegas do overclocked beyond out of box.
It wasn't a surprise that it beat the 1070 in DX 12 and Vulkan games like Battlefield 1 and Doom but what was surprising to me is that it is essentially equal to the 1070 in DX 11 games like The Witcher 3. Unfortunately it was just a year to late for me and now that I've invested in a Gsync monitor I don't see how AMD can win me back in the foreseeable future.
The hardest part is finding it for a decent price, we've put up with worse in the past. Or does no one remember the gtx 480, the nvidia fx 5000 series, and radeon 2900 series, or the blowers on the x800 and x1800 / x1900 cards?