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Radeon RX Vega thread

P

papersleeves

Member
FairXchange said:
Why are you in a Vega thread with this? If it's a joke I apologize, otherwise no need for that. I didn't ask which gpu runs it better.
Click to expand...

Indeed, comments like this aren't needed. I mean, I have a 1080 TI but I'm actually glad to see some competition on higher-end cards from AMD. Vega 56 appears to be a stunning product so far. This whole "under-volting means better results" is really intriguing.
 
DemonCleaner

DemonCleaner

Member
some questions i always asked myself about the GPU market:

1. why do amd/nvidia always design such lousy reference cards?
2. why don't they (especially amd) implement automatic undervolting in their designs to improve power efficiency (shouldn't be such a monumental problem with them monitoring voltage stability at high frequencies already)
3. how big are the retailer margins on graphic cards (20%? is that depend on the customer segment? less for low end more for high end?)
 
DemonCleaner

DemonCleaner

Member
papersleeves said:
Those results from hardwareluxx.de look rather suspicious. The Vega 56 beating the 1080 in Witcher 3 @1440p?

DF says otherwise:

QR5M0Mm.jpg


Edit: I see. It's undervolted. It's really strange though. I'd like Gamersnexus to test this.
Click to expand...


undervolted vega 56 runs around 15% faster than stock (gamersnexus has tested this, see 1,5h undervolting video)

72,9 * 1,15 = 83,8
 
J

joesiv

Member
DemonCleaner said:
some questions i always asked myself about the GPU market:

1. why do amd/nvidia always design such lousy reference cards?
Click to expand...

I don't know about the other ones, and I am only guessing about this one, but what would be the point of AIB cards if the stock cards were amazing? AMD and Nvidia need he AIB market so giving them a reference for low effort cards and room to improve on them with custom coolers seems like a good system.
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
ZOONAMI said:
Does it improve benches though? What's surprising is performance increasing with power draw also going down, which is generally not how things work.
Click to expand...

It improves perf/watt which is the main point of such comparisons. Hardwareluxx should've done undervolting on Pascal cards as well if they aimed to make a point there. Otherwise it just shows that Vega can be undervolted - but we knew this already.

Generally, undervolting is as much of a silicon lottery as overclocking, and you have to be prepared to run into stability issues when you undervolt. So it's nice and all but there's a reason why AMD/NV are running the chips on stock voltages.

SRG01 said:
It's because it doesn't thermal throttle...
Click to expand...

Actually, I think that in case of Vega it's more because it doesn't hit the power limit as often after lowering its power consumption through undervolting. Vega seems to be universally power limited. You can probably get the same results by just upping the power limit - but of course without the benefit of lower heat/noise.
 
S

SRG01

Member
dr_rus said:
Actually, I think that in case of Vega it's more because it doesn't hit the power limit as often after lowering its power consumption through undervolting. Vega seems to be universally power limited. You can probably get the same results by just upping the power limit - but of course without the benefit of lower heat/noise.
Click to expand...

Mmm yes, the power limit would do that too. I'd need to see more graphs/data to make a more concrete statement though.
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
FairXchange said:
Why are you in a Vega thread with this? If it's a joke I apologize, otherwise no need for that. I didn't ask which gpu runs it better.
Click to expand...
Thank you......There are also people here just to say "why not buy a 1080 or 1080ti"..."glad I bought a 1080ti months ago etc"...fine... you bought what you wanted, let people buy what they want now....


OTOH
Gamernexus did some great work with overclocking and a bit of undervolting today, however he said that he is not satisfied with his undervolting so far...He basically got the vega 56 to GTX 1080 levels of performance with 406watts.... I'm not sure he is aware of hardwareluxx's results via undervolting though, which is a GTX 1080's performance at a much lower powerdraw...I would assume with better cooling hardwareluxx may even do better.....

I also look forward to all these guys taking Vega 64 through it's paces with OC's and undervolting.....When the AIB's land it will be very interesting to see what they cpme up with as it relates to perf, temps and powerdraw...
 
L

LelouchZero

Member
Vega 56 is looking pretty good after being undervolted, and it was looking pretty good at stock too. Hopefully it's priced well when it's readily available.

I'm interested in seeing what the AIB models will perform like.
 
X

x3sphere

Member
Got my Vega 64 WC installed.

Is there any reason I shouldn't have the pump/radiator mounted horizontally at the top? Apparently this wasn't recommended with the Fury X in the official manual (they said to keep it positioned vertically), but people did it without issue. No manual came with the Vega card. Regardless I have it mounted at the top and it's fine, temps are around 60 C under full load.

hA2c.png
 
T

TC McQueen

Member
x3sphere said:
Got my Vega 64 WC installed.

Is there any reason I shouldn't have the pump/radiator mounted horizontally at the top? Apparently this wasn't recommended with the Fury X in the official manual (they said to keep it positioned vertically), but people did it without issue. No manual came with the Vega card. Regardless I have it mounted at the top and it's fine, temps are around 60 C under full load.

hA2c.png
Click to expand...
From what I understand, the Fury X had that warning because the pump was in the radiator, but Vega has the pump inside the cooler shroud.
 
S

SRG01

Member
thelastword said:
Thank you......There are also people here just to say "why not buy a 1080 or 1080ti"..."glad I bought a 1080ti months ago etc"...fine... you bought what you wanted, let people buy what they want now....


OTOH
Gamernexus did some great work with overclocking and a bit of undervolting today, however he said that he is not satisfied with his undervolting so far...He basically got the vega 56 to GTX 1080 levels of performance with 406watts.... I'm not sure he is aware of hardwareluxx's results via undervolting though, which is a GTX 1080's performance at around the same powerdraw...I would assume with better cooling hardwareluxx may even do better.....

I also look forward to all these guys taking Vega 64 through it's paces with OC's and undervolting.....When the AIB's land it will be very interesting to see what they cpme up with as it relates to perf, temps and powerdraw...
Click to expand...

All this 56 talk makes me wonder if they should undervolt the 64 instead. Performance is near 1080 already, HBM has higher voltage, etc.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I managed to get one from Newegg for $599 + zero sales tax. I was planning to buy Wolfenstein and Prey anyway, although I'm sure I would have paid around half price for both if I waited, so I guess it works out to close to $499 + sales tax for the solo card.

It's a nice card. Been doing a bit of gaming on my new Ryzen 1700x machine at 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160 resolutions and it performs quite well. My monitor has FreeSync at 60hz and it definitely works, but the implementation doesn't seem quite as nice as my 144 hz 1080p G-Sync monitor.

Anyway, I'm getting a weird issue where my mouse cursor will sometimes lock up a bit when an image or video is being loaded, but only after my computer has gone into sleep mode and woken up from it at least once. This never happened with the GTX 970 I was using before this, so I'm fairly certain it's the card. Hopefully it's just a weird driver issue.
 
F

FairXchange

Member
Zefah said:
I managed to get one from Newegg for $599 + zero sales tax. I was planning to buy Wolfenstein and Prey anyway, although I'm sure I would have paid around half price for both if I waited, so I guess it works out to close to $499 + sales tax for the solo card.

It's a nice card. Been doing a bit of gaming on my new Ryzen 1700x machine at 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160 resolutions and it performs quite well. My monitor has FreeSync at 60hz and it definitely works, but the implementation doesn't seem quite as nice as my 144 hz 1080p G-Sync monitor.

Anyway, I'm getting a weird issue where my mouse cursor will sometimes lock up a bit when an image or video is being loaded, but only after my computer has gone into sleep mode and woken up from it at least once. This never happened with the GTX 970 I was using before this, so I'm fairly certain it's the card. Hopefully it's just a weird driver issue.
Click to expand...
I am experiencing that too. I'm not too worried.
 
DemonCleaner

DemonCleaner

Member
joesiv said:
DemonCleaner said:
some questions i always asked myself about the GPU market:

1. why do amd/nvidia always design such lousy reference cards?
2. why don't they (especially amd) implement automatic undervolting in their designs to improve power efficiency (shouldn't be such a monumental problem with them monitoring voltage stability at high frequencies already)
3. how big are the retailer margins on graphic cards (20%? is that depend on the customer segment? less for low end more for high end?)
Click to expand...

I don't know about the other ones, and I am only guessing about this one, but what would be the point of AIB cards if the stock cards were amazing? AMD and Nvidia need he AIB market so giving them a reference for low effort cards and room to improve on them with custom coolers seems like a good system.
Click to expand...

ruining your day one reviews just for catering to your AIB partners? really doesn't seem too smart to me. especially in the case of vega where the AIB models seem months away.
 
llien

llien

Member
SRG01 said:
All this 56 talk makes me wonder if they should undervolt the 64 instead. Performance is near 1080 already, HBM has higher voltage, etc.
Click to expand...

You certainly should, it boosts 64ths performance same way as with 56.
The main difference being that perf/watt is worse than that of 56 (which basically matches 1070's perf/watt while being faster)
 
Locuza

Locuza

Member
Ryan Smith from Anandtech:
Ryan Smith said:
Quick note on primitive shaders from my end: I had a chat with AMD PR a bit ago to clear up the earlier confusion. Primitive shaders are definitely, absolutely, 100% not enabled in any current public drivers.

The manual developer API is not ready, and the automatic feature to have the driver invoke them on its own is not enabled.
Click to expand...
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1997699/

Ryan Smith said:
AMD is still trying to figure out how to expose the feature to developers in a sensible way. Even more so than DX12, I get the impression that it's very guru-y. One of AMD's engineers compared it to doing inline assembly. You have to be able to outsmart the driver (and the driver needs to be taking a less than highly efficient path) to gain anything from manual control.
Click to expand...
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1997709/
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
SRG01 said:
All this 56 talk makes me wonder if they should undervolt the 64 instead. Performance is near 1080 already, HBM has higher voltage, etc.
Click to expand...
Yes, and they will...too bad buildzoid does not have these cards to test and OC.....RX vega 64 has a lot of power on the table and undervolting that card should show some serious gains...but I fear some driver issue may still be holding the Rx Vega 64 back, the way it's handling MSAA is a big issue atm.....It's just clear that the extra 8 NCU's should be doing much more for Vega 64 at this point...I'm not sure if the difference in memory chips is somewhat attributable... but I'm sure AMD is looking into it.

The primitive shaders are currently off including DSBR and HBCC, all of these will push some gains. With primitive shaders on alone, you're looking at 17-18 primitives per clock instead of 4 or so..... That means they're sitting on huge gains if this is properly utilized by your typical graphics pipeline, though, it should beneift games quite a bit without any specific programming tbh....DSBR will show some solid gains as well and HBCC may benefit games moreso tailored to it, but it should also prove quite beneficial for future pipelines, high rez gaming and help significantly with higher minimums in current games...when it's turned on of course ;)...perhaps games like farcry will make use of it....


So yes, as it stands, an undervolted Vega 64 is on par with a GTX 1080ti as far as powerdraw is concerned, so that's pretty good. Perf is what AMD has to work on to at this point. As it relates to compute, the Vega 56+64 are very good cards for workstation work, however drivers is what's holding it's compute performance back a tonne as noted by techgage, we can also expect to see signiifcant improvements in a few weeks time on that front....or at least in the next 2-3 months..
 
Locuza

Locuza

Member
thelastword said:
[...]
The primitive shaders are currently off including DSBR and HBCC, all of these will push some gains. With primitive shaders on alone, you're looking at 17-18 primitives per clock instead of 4 or so..... That means they're sitting on huge gains if this is properly utilized by your typical graphics pipeline, though, it should beneift games quite a bit without any specific programming tbh....DSBR will show some solid gains as well and HBCC may benefit games moreso tailored to it, but it should also prove quite beneficial for future pipelines, high rez gaming and help significantly with higher minimums in current games...when it's turned on of course ;)...perhaps games like farcry will make use of it....
[...]
Click to expand...
The DSBR is active and the HBCC can be activated with currently mixed results.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=246685328&postcount=2767
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=246250260&postcount=2533
 
S

Sir Abacus

Member
dr_rus said:
Yeah, saw this today as well. It's kinda hints at geometric throughput not being an issue on Vega even without primitive shaders but it will be interesting to see what will change once they'll start enabling them.
Click to expand...

Geometric throughput hasn't been an issue on any card for a decade and a half.
 
Papacheeks

Papacheeks

Banned
x3sphere said:
Got my Vega 64 WC installed.

Is there any reason I shouldn't have the pump/radiator mounted horizontally at the top? Apparently this wasn't recommended with the Fury X in the official manual (they said to keep it positioned vertically), but people did it without issue. No manual came with the Vega card. Regardless I have it mounted at the top and it's fine, temps are around 60 C under full load.

hA2c.png
Click to expand...

HONestly I would remove the 5.25 rack in your case if it's removable and install the radiator there.
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
Locuza said:
The DSBR is active and the HBCC can be activated with currently mixed results.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=246685328&postcount=2767
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=246250260&postcount=2533
Click to expand...
I saw the slide on DSBR but I don't think that's confirmation that these improvements have made it to the public drivers yet. I think AMD is still working on these tbh....but they're surely showing the improvements it will bring.

As for HBCC, I've seen some tests, those on Guru3D, the one you posted and have gone through techgage's article on it, I don't think the feature is ready yet, there are some hooks for these features, but they're not fully operational or optimum. so the tests done so far are really not conclusive or give a proper picture. As a matter of fact, AMD suggests that HBCC is for the future, so perhaps they will properly unleash it when the first game that supports it come out... (maybe farcry 5).

This is the techgage article on hbcc...

https://techgage.com/article/a-look-at-amd-radeon-vega-hbcc/
 
F

FairXchange

Member
Zefah said:
Glad to know I'm not alone. Any ways to fix it that you know of other than simply rebooting the computer?
Click to expand...
I get it when using youtube on a fresh boot. It doesn't last too long so I haven't spend too much time looking into it. Hoping it gets fixed in a driver update though.
 
J

joesiv

Member
FairXchange said:
I get it when using youtube on a fresh boot. It doesn't last too long so I haven't spend too much time looking into it. Hoping it gets fixed in a driver update though.
Click to expand...
I think I get the same thing. I recently moved from a nvidia card, and since moving to a polaris based card, I get strange mouse hiccups, where it doesn't respond, or is jerky. But after a few seconds it resolves its self.

Might be the same...
 
I

icecold1983

Member
thelastword said:
I saw the slide on DSBR but I don't think that's confirmation that these improvements have made it to the public drivers yet. I think AMD is still working on these tbh....but they're surely showing the improvements it will bring.

As for HBCC, I've seen some tests, those on Guru3D, the one you posted and have gone through techgage's article on it, I don't think the feature is ready yet, there are some hooks for these features, but they're not fully operational or optimum. so the tests done so far are really not conclusive or give a proper picture. As a matter of fact, AMD suggests that HBCC is for the future, so perhaps they will properly unleash it when the first game that supports it come out... (maybe farcry 5).

This is the techgage article on hbcc...

https://techgage.com/article/a-look-at-amd-radeon-vega-hbcc/
Click to expand...

Ryan from anandtech was told by AMD that DSBR is active
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
DemonCleaner said:
looks like 56 has HBM from hynex while 64 has HBM from samsung. these modules don't have the same height, which leads to problems on the AIB side, because they can't use the same cooling solution on both cards.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Radeo...623/News/AMD-Packages-Custom-Designs-1236698/
Click to expand...

There's actually 3 different packages of dies for Vega. I can't remember where it was but some site had 3 cards and each one was slightly different. One uses a molding around the HBM and GPU Die which basically insulates the damn thing. The other has no molding, and a third with no molding which looks like it was glued together by a blind person. A glaring flaw with Vega was AMD's inability to make sure the GPU and HBM were the same height. that cannot be good for heat dispersion...
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
That's about 20% behind on average, and I highly doubt that any AC card, AIB or not, will be able to reach WC performance. And again these DX12 results make little sense for GeForce cards as they would likely be faster in DX11 in the same games while providing the exact same graphics output.

Let it go. Vega 10 cards will never reach 1080Ti performance level. It may become some percents faster than 1080 in the long run which would already be a win here.
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhtS5rFbJOQ

This is the worse review I've seen in my life, it's so bad it's funny...I don't usually post stuff like this, but I saw a link to it (with a catchy name) after watching hardware unboxed new benchmarks...This guy is so uninformed, makes a mountain of mistakes and prefaces his diatribe with "I'm the biggest AMD fanboy.tm).....It's like I've seen this before, pretty much an NV fan posing...trying to sell people a pascal card for crying out loud....smh....He got many people to un-subscribe too, and was torn a new pie-hole in the comment section..,.I mean, how can a so called tech reviewer be so un-informed, be so biased and have no idea what he is talking about. He has no idea the difference between a GTX 1080 and 1080Ti.....sigh...


Having watched Hardware unboxed reviews though, very impressive benches for stock vega cards...Vega 64LC is a beast, if that card is undervolted and memory and core overclocked with powerlimit increased, it will come very close to a 1080ti and beat it in some games...Things look extremely good, because vega 56 undervolted and OC'd with a good AIB cooler will likely surpass the gtx 1080, even moreso with improved drivers....

As I've said about Vega 64 air, there's a problem there, it's performing on par with a Vega 56 in too many games, these extra 8 Ncus, bigger powerdraw and higher voltage limit on the Vrm should do much more, something is holding it back and AMD should fix it... Well that pertains to all vega cards atm, but especially the Vega 64 air...
 
S

SRG01

Member
thelastword said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhtS5rFbJOQ

This is the worse review I've seen in my life, it's so bad it's funny...I don't usually post stuff like this, but I saw a link to it (with a catchy name) after watching hardware unboxed new benchmarks...This guy is so uninformed, makes a mountain of mistakes and prefaces his diatribe with "I'm the biggest AMD fanboy.tm).....It's like I've seen this before, pretty much an NV fan posing...trying to sell people a pascal card for crying out loud....smh....He got many people to un-subscribe too, and was torn a new pie-hole in the comment section..,.I mean, how can a so called tech reviewer be so un-informed, be so biased and have no idea what he is talking about. He has no idea the difference between a GTX 1080 and 1080Ti.....sigh...


Having watched Hardware unboxed reviews though, very impressive benches for stock vega cards...Vega 64LC is a beast, if that card is undervolted and memory and core overclocked with powerlimit increased, it will come very close to a 1080ti and beat it in some games...Things look extremely good, because vega 56 undervolted and OC'd with a good AIB cooler will likely surpass the gtx 1080, even moreso with improved drivers....

As I've said about Vega 64 air, there's a problem there, it's performing on par with a Vega 56 in too many games, these extra 8 Ncus, bigger powerdraw and higher voltage limit on the Vrm should do much more, something is holding it back and AMD should fix it... Well that pertains to all vega cards atm, but especially the Vega 64 air...
Click to expand...

The 64 shouldn't exist period. They've already proven that the 56 could be tweaked to 1080 levels, so why was that not their flagship card?

Release the 56, a cut-down 56 (lol), and release a properly developed/optimized high-end down the road.
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
R7 1700k OC'd to 3.9 GHz + Vega 56 (3000 Mhz Ram)

battling

i7 7700k OC'd to 5.0 Ghz + GTX 1070

Video



R7 1700k OC'd to 3.9 GHz + Vega 64LC (3000 Mhz Ram)

battling

i7 7700k OC'd to 5.0 Ghz + GTX 1080Ti

Video

Interesting results...Hmmmm......Man these Vega cards are just begging to be undervolted and overclocked...
 
P

PFD

Member
thelastword said:
R7 1700k OC'd to 3.9 GHz + Vega 56 (3000 Mhz Ram)

battling

i7 7700k OC'd to 5.0 Ghz + GTX 1070

Video



R7 1700k OC'd to 3.9 GHz + Vega 64LC (3000 Mhz Ram)

battling

i7 7700k OC'd to 5.0 Ghz + GTX 108TI

Video

Interesting results...Hmmmm......Man these Vega cards are just begging to be undervolted and overclocked...
Click to expand...

The 1080ti results are way closer than I expected
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Seems about right. Pretty much a "don't buy unless you really want FreeSync or hate Nvidia for whatever reason" card.
 
F

FairXchange

Member
Zefah said:
Seems about right. Pretty much a "don't buy unless you really want FreeSync or hate Nvidia for whatever reason" card.
Click to expand...
It has drawbacks that are well known at this point but it's a good card nonetheless if you can find it at msrp. I have a freesync display and tended toward AMD products in the past so I waited for Vega. I'm really happy with the performance I'm getting with it.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
FairXchange said:
It has drawbacks that are well known at this point but it's a good card nonetheless if you can find it at msrp. I have a freesync display and tended toward AMD products in the past so I waited for Vega. I'm really happy with the performance I'm getting with it.
Click to expand...

Same, I've got a Sapphire RX Vega 64. Got it for $599 and no tax from Newegg with the two games bundled in. I'm quite happy with it. Runs almost all of my games great at 2560 x 1440 at max settings (AA solutions aside, of course) and some at 3840 x 2160 quite well, too.

I was, of course, hoping for 1080 Ti or better performance before the reviews came in, but that just wasn't in the cards. I wanted a good card to go with my FreeSync 4K monitor and it's certainly filling that role admirably.

I really hope they fix this Internet browser GPU acceleration bug, though. Hate how it randomly locks up for seconds at a time seemingly at random.
 
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