Sizing Up Today’s Launch: RX Vega 64 & RX Vega 56

Now that we’ve gone through the architectural details of Vega, let’s size up today’s launch with the Radeon RX Vega 64 and Radeon RX Vega 56. While this isn’t quite a traditional one-two launch since Vega 56 doesn’t come out for another two weeks, it otherwise follows the usual pattern. That means a high-performance, fully-enabled card at the top, with its salvaged, lower-clocked, lower-priced counterpart below it.

AMD Radeon RX Series Specification Comparison
  AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X
Stream Processors 4096
(64 CUs)
4096
(64 CUs)
3584
(56 CUs)
4096
(64 CUs)
Texture Units 256 256 224 256
ROPs 64 64 64 64
Base Clock 1406MHz 1247MHz 1156MHz N/A
Boost Clock 1677MHz 1546MHz 1471MHz 1050MHz
Memory Clock 1.89Gbps HBM2 1.89Gbps HBM2 1.6Gbps HBM2 1Gbps HBM
Memory Bus Width 2048-bit 2048-bit 2048-bit 4096-bit
VRAM 8GB 8GB 8GB 4GB
Transistor Count 12.5B 12.5B 12.5B 8.9B
Board Power 345W 295W 210W 275W
(Typical)
Manufacturing Process GloFo 14nm GloFo 14nm GloFo 14nm TSMC 28nm
Architecture Vega
(GCN 5)
Vega
(GCN 5)
Vega
(GCN 5)
GCN 3
GPU Vega 10 Vega 10 Vega 10 Fiji
Launch Date 08/14/2017 08/14/2017 08/28/2017 06/24/2015
Launch Price $699* $499/599* $399/499* $649

First off of course is the Radeon RX Vega 64. Based on a fully enabled Vega 10 GPU, this card is AMD’s best foot forward on Vega 10 performance. As it lives up to with its name, the Vega 64 ships with all 64 of Vega 10’s CUs enabled, giving the card 4096 SPs and 256 texture units. These CUs are in turn paired with AMD’s now L2 cache-backed ROPs, with a complete set of 64 of them.

In terms of clockspeed then, the Vega 64 can reach clockspeeds significantly higher than AMD’s Polaris cards, never mind the 28nm Fury X. In fact clockspeed is the single greatest resources AMD has for improving performance in existing games relative to Fury X, as while the architecture optimizations we talked about earlier do help performance in specific situations, nothing else has the raw potency and consistency of Vega’s much greater clockspeeds.

To this end the base clock is admittedly a bit low at 1247MHz, however the boost clock is at 1546MHz. As a reminder, AMD is taking a more NVIDIA-like stance with clockspeed advertising, so whereas Fury X’s boost clock was its highest attainable clockspeed (throttling when it couldn’t sustain it), RX Vega’s boost clock is the average clockspeed AMD expects the card to be able to sustain under gaming workloads. The card itself can actually boost even higher than this given a low-powered workload (e.g. something compute-heavy), with both of our sample cards boosting up to 1630MHz.

All told then, relative to its Fury X predecessor, on paper Vega 64 offers 47% higher shader, texture, geometry, and ROP throughput. These numbers don’t factor in Vega’s architecture enhancements, and in practice the actual performance gain will depend on what clockspeeds that the Vega 64 can attain, and conversely how much a given workload benefits from those aforementioned architectural improvements. So as with past architecture launches, the specs are only half of the story and the benchmarks will play the rest.

Paired with the Vega 10 GPU is 8GB of HBM2 memory, in the form of a pair of 4-Hi 4GB stacks. The two stacks are connected to Vega 10 via a 2048-bit wide memory bus running through the silicon interposer, and coupled with HBM2’s improved clockspeeds, gives Vega 10 GPU a lot of memory bandwidth in little space. AMD has clocked the memory at 1.89Gbps, giving the Vega 64 484GB/sec of memory bandwidth. With the original goal for the flagship card being a 2Gbps data rate (for a total of 512GB/sec) this does put Vega 64 at a slight disadvantage versus the previous Fury X. Which means that from an architectural perspective, AMD has to do more with slightly less.

Moving on, for better or worse the Vega 64 is a high-powered card in all senses of the word. AMD’s official board power specification for the card is 295W. Board power is a bit of a new metric for AMD; in previous generations they have published the typical board power of a card, whereas the 295W value here is no longer considered typical. Truthfully I don’t have a full grasp of the difference, but given our data and the fact that this value is higher than the Fury X’s typical board power of 275W, and this seems to function closer to a maximum for AMD. Which means that depending on the scenario a card can draw less than 295W, however as virtually all GPU-bound scenarios are also power-bound scenarios, it’s as good a number as any for a full load power specification.

For AMD, a high board power specification isn’t especially new. Fury X, Fury, and the R9 290X all shipped with high TBPs as well. But it means buyers should set their expectations accordingly for how the card will compare to past cards and the competition in terms of power consumption, and what acoustics might be like on this blower-based card.

Finally, while we’re not reviewing it today, AMD also has the RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled edition. AMD is wisely not treating this card as the “baseline” performance of the Vega 64, but rather an enhanced enthusiast edition. This card has a boost clock rating of 1677MHz – 131Mhz above the air cooled card – and should perform a bit better than its non-liquid counterpart. However power consumption has more than gone up to match, with a 345W board power rating. This is going to be a low-volume halo part for enthusiasts who want the fastest Vega 64 possible, regardless of what it means for pricing or power consumption, and AMD is treating it accordingly.

Radeon RX Vega 56

Second on deck for today’s review embargo and arguably the focus of AMD’s promotional efforts is the Radeon RX Vega 56. The lower-tier counterpart to the RX Vega 64, the RX Vega 56 is the obligatory cut-down version of the RX Vega family. This features the same Vega 10 GPU as the Vega 64, however as accurately described in the name, only 56 of the 64 CUs are enabled on this card, leaving it with 3584 stream processors and 224 texture units.

Clockspeeds have also been cut down for the Vega 56, leading to the card shipping with a 1156MHz base clock and 1471MHz boost clock. On paper then, it offers 83% of the RX Vega 64’s compute and texturing performance, and 95% of the Vega 64’s ROP and geometry performance. Consequently, how the Vega 56 will perform in games has the potential to swing anywhere between a solid step below AMD’s flagship card, and something that gets a bit too close for comfort.

Meanwhile like its high-tier counterpart, the Vega 56 gets 8GB of HBM2 memory. Like its GPU clockspeed, memory clockspeeds have also been reduced to a less aggressive frequency here, leading to AMD shipping the card with a 1.6Gbps data rate. All told then, this gives the Vega 56 410GB/sec of memory bandwidth to work with, about 85% of Vega 64’s. Given that Vega 56’s compute/shading throughput is also about 85% of Vega 64’s, you can see how this memory configuration is a good match for Vega 56’s GPU configuration.

The upside of pulling back on performance is that AMD has also been able to pull back on power consumption. Vega 56 shaves 85W off of its board power rating, bringing it down to 210W. Which considering that on paper Vega 56 should deliver 85% of the performance of Vega 64, doing so at 71% of the power consumption looks very tantalizing in its own way.

The one catch specific to the Vega 56’s launch however is that it isn’t. Only the Vega 64 is launching today, while the Vega 56 will not be for sale until August 28th, making this a bit of a paper launch.

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  • Makaveli - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    https://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...

    Air cooled Vega 64 for $839 CAD I don't think so.

    When you can pay $659 CAD for the 1080?

    I prefer AMD cards over NV but even I'm not dumb enough to do this.

    $180 extra for the same performance and must higher heat output.
  • mapesdhs - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    That was exactly my point, real pricing is way out of whack for the Vega64 to make any sense atm. Can you check, is it possible to buy a 1080 Ti for the same price as the cheapest Vega64/Liquid? This is the case in the UK, where the 64/Liquid is basically 700 UKP, same as a Palit Jetstream 1080 Ti.
  • Makaveli - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    @mapesdhs

    Liquid Vega 64 is $979 CAD

    1080 TI air is in the $924-$984 CAD.

    Liquid 1080 Ti's are in the $1,014-$1,099 range.

    And the 1080 Ti will still be faster and using less power....
  • zodiacfml - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    AMD is truly an underdog. Fighting Nvidia and Intel at the same time but I could see that they are doing their best based on their designs. Their unique position is what made them successful in gaming consoles. Can't wait to see the performance of Raven Ridge parts.
  • Frenetic Pony - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    Regarding FP16 game use, Devs are already using it because it's supported on the PS4 Pro. While the specific "Checkerboard" rendering used in Mass Effect Andromeda and Battlefield 1 are PS4 Pro only due to hardware oddities, it still uses FP16 optimizations. And since both PS4 and Xbox One have FP16 register capabilities it's an easy target for optimization there, and easy to bring over to PC.

    Frankly I'd expect it to be adopted fairly quickly. Register pressure alone is reason enough for high end games to call for explicit FP16 where applicable, and porting such to the PC is relatively easy.
  • BaroMetric - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    Vega is already sold out and the bundles on newegg require you buy gpu, cpu, mobo etc. You can't just pay the extra hundred dollars you actually have to purchase the other components. Which is not what we were lead to believe
  • Azix - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link

    need to include clock speed profiles. should be basic information reviewers include nowadays. put performance in context. This is nearly useless without it.
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link

    Ask and you shall receive. Check the power/temp/noise page.=)
  • HollyDOL - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link

    It was all good... until I reached power consumption/noise part of the review.
  • Outlander_04 - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link

    Now go and work out what that extra power will cost you if you game 2 hours a day for a year.
    The answer is NOTHING if you heat your house with a thermostat controlling temps,
    And a very small amount if you don't.
    Now go turn off a couple of lights. You know you want to.

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