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 ESTAshes of the Singularity: Escalation
A veteran from our 2016 game list, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation continues to be the DirectX 12 trailblazer, with developer Oxide Games tailoring and designing the Nitrous Engine around such low-level APIs. Ashes remains fresh for us in many ways: Escalation was released as a standalone expansion in November 2016 and was eventually merged into the base game in February 2017, while August 2017's v2.4 brought Vulkan support. Of all of the games in our benchmark suite, this is the game making the best use of DirectX 12’s various features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threaded work submission and high batch counts. While what we see can’t be extrapolated to all DirectX 12 games, it gives us a very interesting look at what we might expect in the future.
Settings and methodology remain identical from its usage in the 2016 GPU suite.
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BOBOSTRUMF - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
well, I was expected lower performance compared to a geforce 1080 so this is one of the few plusses. Now NVIDIA only has to bump the base clocks for the Geforce 1080 while still consuming less power. Competition is great but this is not the best product from AMD, on 14nm the gains should be much higher. Fortunately AMD is great now on CPU's and that will hopefully bring income that should be invested in GPU research.Good luck AMD
mapesdhs - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
NV doesn't have to do anything as long as retail pricing has the 1080 so much cheaper. I look foward to seeing how the 56 fares.webdoctors - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
It looks like the 1080 MSRP is actually less! Other sites mentioning the initial price included a $100 rebate which has expired :( and the new MSRP has taken effect....https://pcgamesn.com/amd/amd-rx-vega-rebates
mdriftmeyer - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Remember your last paragraph after the game engines adopt AMD's architecture and features, of which they have committed themselves in doing, and already partially in development. When that happens I look forward to you asking what the hell went wrong at Nvidia.Yojimbo - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
The whole "game engines will adopt AMD's architecture" thesis was made when the Xbox One and PS4 were released in 2013. Since then, AMD's market share among PC gamers has declined considerably and NVIDIA seems to be doing just fine in terms of features and performance in relevant game engines. The XBox One and PS4 architectures account for a significant percentage of total software sales. Vega architecture will account for a minuscule percentage. So why would the thesis hold true for Vega when it didn't hold true for Sea Islands?Besides, NVIDIA has had packed FP16 capability since 2015 with the Tegra X1. They also have it in their big GP100 and GV100 GPUs. They can relatively easily implement it in consumer GeForce GPUs whenever they feel it is appropriate. And within 3 months of doing so they will have more FP16-enabled gaming GPUs in the market than Vega will represent over its entire lifespan.
Yojimbo - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
That means the Nintendo Switch is FP16 capable, by the way.mapesdhs - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Good points, and an extra gazillion for reminding me of an awesome movie. 8)stockolicious - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
"the Xbox One and PS4 were released in 2013. Since then, AMD's market share among PC gamers has declined considerably "The problem AMD had was they could not play to their advantage - which was having a CPU and GPU. The CPU was so aweful that nobody used them to game (or very few) now that Ryzen is here and successful they will gain GPU share even though their top cards dont beat Nvida. This is called "Attach Rate" - when a person buys a Computer with an AMD CPU the get an AMD GPU 55% of the time vs 25% of the time with an Intel CPU. AMD had the same issue with their APU - the CPU side was so bad that nobody cared to build designs around them but now with Raven Ridge coming Ryzen/Vega they will do very well there as well.
Yojimbo - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
I wouldn't expect bulldozer (or whatever their latest pre-zen architecture was called) attach rates to hold true for Ryzen. There were probably a significant percentage of AMD fans accounting for bulldozer sales. If Ryzen is a lot more successful (and by all accounts it looks like it will be), then only a small percentage of Ryzen sales will be by die hard AMD fans. Most will be by people looking to get the best value. Then you can expect attach rates for AMD GPUs with Ryzen CPUs to be significantly lower than with bulldozer.nwarawa - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
*yawn* Wake me up when the prices return to normal levels. I've had my eye on a few nice'n'cheap freesync monitors for awhile now, but missed my chance at an affordable RX470/570.Make a Vega 48 -3GB card (still enough RAM for 1080P for me, but should shoo-off the miners) for around $250, and I'll probably bite. And get that power consumption under control while you're at it. I'll undervolt it either way.