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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Stuka87 - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
So my question is, can these be under-volted like Polaris can for some pretty decent power savings, and what is the power usage like when you enable AMD's Chill mode. They had stated you get about 90-95% of the performance but at a significantly lower power usage.tamalero - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Does this means that all the future of VEGA 64 will rest in the hands of FINEWINE(tm)'s optimizations and boosts?Because right now Vega 64 is nothing but a disappointment.
Chaser - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
This is a letdown. I don't understand why AMD chooses to lag behind Nvidia. The market is ripe for a competitive alternative to Nvidia. AMD hasn't been it. I am very pleased with my GTX 1080 purchase in January. Hopefully, come my next GPU upgrade time, AMD will have something better to consider.Stuka87 - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
They don't "choose" to. They had the money to either make an amazing CPU, or an amazing GPU. And the CPU market is larger, so they chose to push R&D budget into Ryzen (Which has payed off big time).TheinsanegamerN - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
They chose to split their resources between two GPUs (polaris and vega) rather then focusing on one line of chips. They chose to rebrand and resell the same chips for 5 years.AMD isnt rich, but they make quite a few boneheaded decisions.
Aldaris - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Actually, that looks like it paid off for them in market share. Also, Polaris was always out of stock (irrelevant as to the reasons why. It's still money in AMD's pocket).mapesdhs - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
That's a good point; whatever the buyer, a sale is still a sale. However, perhaps from AMD's pov they'd rather sell them to gamers because when Etherium finally crashes there will be a huge dump of used AMD cards on the market that will at least for a time stifle new card sales, whereas gamers tend to keep their cards for some time. Selling GPUs to miners now is certainly money in the bag, but it builds up a potential future sting.mattcrwi - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
I would never buy a used GPU that has been run at full throttle 24/7 for months. I'm sure some people won't understand what miners do with their cards or will be enticed by the prices anyway.wolfemane - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
I own a wide range of 290s and 290xs I picked up at the end of the last mining craze for great prices. Purchased all off miners. They all still work to this day with 0 issues. I've also purchased and sold 10x that quantity across 280 - 290x. Of those only one failed and sapphire replaced it under end of warranty.I look forward to the new craze ending. Will get some great cards for dirt cheap, and a vast majority still under warranty.
Nothing wrong with buying them.
nintendoeats - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
I have been running Folding @ Home on the GPU for several years now. I have yet to find any reason to believe that running a card 24/7 is a problem. What I would be more concerned about is heat cycles, which aren't an issue when you just run the card hot all the time.