The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 & RX Vega 56 Review: Vega Burning Bright
by Ryan Smith & Nate Oh on August 14, 2017 9:00 AM ESTThe 2017 GPU Benchmark Suite & the Test
Paired with our RX Vega 64 and 56 review is a new benchmark suite and new testbed. The 2017 GPU suite features new games, as well as new compute and synthetic benchmarks.
Games-wise, we have kept Grand Theft Auto V and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. Joining them is Battlefield 1, DOOM, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, F1 2016, and Total War: Warhammer. All-in-all, these games span multiple genres, differing graphics workloads, and contemporary APIs, with a nod towards modern and relatively intensive games. Additionally, we have retired the venerable Crysis 3 as our mainline power-testing game in favor of Battlefield 1.
AnandTech GPU Bench 2017 Game List | ||||
Game | Genre | Release Date | API(s) | |
Battlefield 1 | FPS | Oct. 2016 | DX11 (DX12) |
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Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation | RTS | Mar. 2016 | DX12 (DX11) |
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DOOM (2016) | FPS | May 2016 | Vulkan (OpenGL 4.5) |
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Ghost Recon Wildlands | FPS/3PS | Mar. 2017 | DX11 | |
Dawn of War III | RTS | Apr. 2017 | DX11 | |
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided | RPG/Action/Stealth | Aug. 2016 | DX11 (DX12) |
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Grand Theft Auto V | Action/Open world | Apr. 2015 | DX11 | |
F1 2016 | Racing | Aug. 2016 | DX11 | |
Total War: Warhammer | TBS/Real-time tactics | May 2016 | DX11 + DX12 |
In terms of data collection, measurements were gathered either using built-in benchmark tools or with AMD's open-source Open Capture and Analytics Tool (OCAT), which is itself powered by Intel's PresentMon. 99th percentiles were obtained or calculated in a similar fashion: OCAT natively obtains 99th percentiles, GTA V's built-in benchmark include 99th percentiles, and both Ashes: Escalation and Total War: Warhammer's built-in benchmark outputs raw frame time data. Dawn of War III continutes to suffer from its misconfigured built-in benchmark calculations and so its native data cannot be used. In general, we prefer 99th percentiles over minimums, as they more accurately represent the gaming experience and filter out outliers that may not even be true results of the graphics card.
We are continuing to use the best API for a given card when given a choice. As before, we use DirectX 12 for Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, being natively designed for that API. For DOOM (2016), using Vulkan is an improvement to OpenGL 4.5 across the board, and for those not in-the-know, Vulkan is roughly comparable to OpenGL in the same way DX12 is to DX11. We also stick to DX11 for Battlefield 1, with the persistent DX12 performance issues in mind, and similar reasoning follows with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where DX12 did not appear to give the best performance for RX Vega.
In the same vein, we have used DX12 for Total War: Warhammer when testing AMD cards, but we are still sussing out the exact effects on the Vega cards. With Vega running Total War: Warhammer, neither API seems to be absolutely better performing than the other, and we are continuing to investigate.
2017 GPU Compute and Synthetics
We have also updated our compute and synthetics suites, which are now as follows:
- Compute: Blender 2.79 - BlenchMark
- Compute: CompuBench 2.0 – Level Set Segmentation 256
- Compute: CompuBench 2.0 – N-Body Simulation 1024K
- Compute: CompuBench 2.0 – Optical Flow
- Compute: Folding @ Home Single Precision
- Compute: Geekbench 4 – GPU Compute – Total Score
- Synthetics: TessMark, Image Set 4, 64x Tessellation
- Synthetics: VRMark Orange
- Synthetics: Beyond3D Suite – Pixel Fillrate
- Synthetics: Beyond3D Suite – Integer Texture Fillrate (INT8)
- Synthetics: Beyond3D Suite – Floating Point Texture Fillrate (FP32)
Testing with Vega
Testing was done with default configurations with respect to the High-Bandwidth Cache Controller (HBCC) and BIOS/power profiles. By default, HBCC is disabled in Radeon Software. As for power profiles, both Vega 64 and 56 come with primary and secondary VBIOS modes, each having three profiles in WattMan: Power Saver, Balanced, and Turbo. By default, both cards use the primary VBIOS' Balanced power profile.
GPU Power Limits for RX Vega Power Profiles | ||||
Radeon RX Vega 64 Air | Radeon RX Vega 56 | |||
Primary VBIOS | Secondary VBIOS | Primary VBIOS | Secondary VBIOS | |
Power Saver | 165W | 150W | 150W | 135W |
Balanced | 220W | 200W | 165W | 150W |
Turbo | 253W | 230W | 190W | 173W |
A small switch on the cards can be toggled away from the PCIe bracket for the lower power secondary VBIOS. In Radeon WattMan, a slider permits switching between Power Saver, Balanced, Turbo, and Custom performance profiles. In total, each card has six different power profiles to choose from. RX Vega 64 Liquid has its own set of six profiles as well, ranging from 165W to 303W. We don't expect Turbo mode to significantly change results: for Turbo vs. Balanced, AMD themselves cited a performance increase of about 2% at 4K.
The New 2017 GPU Skylake-X Testbed
Last, but certainly not least, we have a new testbed running these benchmarks and games. For that reason, historical results cannot be directly compared with the results in this review.
CPU: | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz |
Motherboard: | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 |
Power Supply: | Corsair AX860i |
Hard Disk: | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) |
Memory: | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
Monitor: | LG 27UD68P-B |
Video Cards: | AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (Air Cooled) AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 AMD Radeon RX 580 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition |
Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 384.65 AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2 (for non-Vega cards) AMD Radeon Software Crimson Press Beta 17.30.1051 |
OS: | Windows 10 Pro (Creators Update) |
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bcronce - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Exactly. I REALLY want to run my games in a VM guest.sutamatamasu - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
In RTG slide on architecture side. Vega have some MB SRAM. Can you tell me what this SRAM use for?DanNeely - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Various caches and internal buffers; on die memory is normally SRAM because it's several times faster than DRAM. (DRAM is several times denser since it only uses 1 transistor/bit vs the 4(?) for SRAM; which is why its used for main memory where total capacity is more important - and where the data bus is the main latency source anyway.) I'd be curious what the breakdown is since only 4MB if it's in the L2 cache.sutamatamasu - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Yes, same with me. Like we all know GCN 5 has no change on L2 Cache size but i am curious, AMD say this SRAM and L2 Cache size differently.extide - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
A lot of it is going to be in the low level L1 caches and stuff local to the shaders -- there are a lot of shaders, so it will add up fast. GCN 5 does have double L2 cache, at least according to this article, 4MB vs 2MB. AMD says there is a total of over 45MB of SRAM on there, which is pretty impressive for a GPU!ratbuddy - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
I'm disappointed that Vega Frontier results were not included in the benches :-/Ryan Smith - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
AMD did not sample that card, and there's not much of a reason for us to include it now when the RX Vega is faster.Nfarce - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Another Fury X fail. You'd have to be a hard core AMD fan to buy this over a GTX 1080, and that's not even taking into consideration the horrid power use compared to the 1080. Isn't that what AMD fans tell us is so important when comparing Ryzen to i7 CPUs in core/watt performance? Amazingly they are silent here.IchiOni - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
I do not care about power consumption. Only poor people care about power consumption. I will be purchasing an air cooled Vega 64.Hurr Durr - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
So Barnum was right in the end.