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VegaRX1

After months of waiting and speculation, AMD has finally taken the lid off its RX Vega series, its clock speeds, capabilities, and pricing. All of these characteristics have been hotly debated of tardily, with readers asking for (and making predictions about) how information technology would compare with Nvidia's year-old Pascal GPUs like the 1070 and 1080.

We now accept some preliminary answers to some of those questions, but by no ways the entire picture. So here'southward how this is going to work: If yous want a "regular" GPU, you lot'll be able to buy the Vega 56 (56 active CUs) for $399. If y'all want the full Vega 64 chip (the air-cooled variant) you'll be able to buy that for $499. I will admit to being reasonably correct in one regard — I predicted that a 1.7GHz base of operations clock for RX Vega fabricated good sense if Vega FE was a 1.6GHz scrap. The actual heave clock on the water-cooled version of RX Vega is 1677MHz.

Here's where things start to get a petty wonky. If you desire an air-cooled Vega 64 or 56, you'll be able to buy those direct. If, on the other hand, you want the liquid-cooled Vega 64, you'll have to purchase it every bit office of a packet. So, for instance, the package toll on the Vega 64 LC is $699 — just for that $699, you become a coupon for $200 off a Samsung CF791 34-inch WQHD Curved FreeSync monitor, a $100 discount on a Ryzen 7 CPU + motherboard bundle, and two free games (Wolfenstein Two and Prey in Northward America).

RXVega

I'one thousand non sure this bundle idea is the best way to move product. Don't go me incorrect; $300 in coupons for quality hardware is a worthwhile bonus, equally are the 2 solid games — just but if you were already planning to build a new organisation in the first identify. That Ryzen 7 CPU + motherboard bundle is still going to toll you over $200, and even the sale price on the CF791 is $749. If you're planning to drop serious greenbacks on a new rig, these offers are helpful. Otherwise, not and then much. In fact, I call back AMD knows information technology, and has deliberately made the liquid-cooled Vega a bundle-only part precisely considering it knows information technology either can't sell plenty cards at that price to brand any money or because they're only planning a very express run in the kickoff place.

What Almost Performance?

Performance is… non what people were hoping for. AMD didn't reveal a lot of details, only they mainly focused on emphasizing minimum frame rates and overall frame charge per unit smoothness. Both of these are good qualities for a chip, but people expected RX Vega to be some kind of super GTX 1080 Ti killer. And… well, it isn't. AMD has stated that they expect the RX Vega to trade blows with the GTX 1080, and the overall pricing reflects that expectation. And so hither's how this breaks downwardly:

Vega10

RX Vega 56: 1156MHz base clock, 1471MHz boost, 64 ROPs, 224 texture units, 3584 shader cores, 2048-scrap memory coach, 410GB/due south memory bandwidth, 8GB of HBM2, and a 210W TDP.

RX Vega 64 (Air): 1247MHz base clock, 1546MHz Heave, 64 ROPS, 256 texture units, 4096 shader cores, 2048-bit memory bus, 484GB/due south of memory bandwidth, and a TDP of 295W.

RX Vega 64 (H2o): 1406MHz base of operations clock, 1677MHz boost clock, 64 ROPs, 256 texture units, 4096 shader cores, 2048-bit memory motorbus, 484GB/s of memory bandwidth, and a 345W TDP.

From this point forrad, air-cooled and water-cooled volition be referred to as Ac and WC for the sake of my sanity.

As always, nosotros'll hold on last judgment until we have aircraft, tested silicon, but these are non the kind of figures people were hoping for. The GTX 1080 Ti has a TDP of 250W. Anyone who says "TDP doesn't equal power consumption" is absolutely, 100 percent right, just TDP ratings tend to at to the lowest degree point in the general direction of power consumption, and a rating of 295W for the Air conditioning Vega and 345W for the WC version tells united states of america a lot nigh how these chips handle clock rates.

Consider: The RX Vega 64 Air conditioning is clocked 8 percent higher (base) and 5 percentage higher (boost) than the RX Vega 56, and has 15 percent more than cores. Still the TDP difference between the two fries is enormous, with Vega 64 Air conditioning drawing 1.4x more power than Vega 56. Now, as we've frequently discussed before, power consumption in GPUs isn't linear — it grows at the square or cube of the voltage increase, and clock speed or memory clock increases will only make that worse.

Being able to compare with RX Vega 64 LC makes the problem a bit easier to meet. The Air conditioning and LC variants of Vega just differ in clock speeds. RX Vega LC's base clock is 1.13x higher than Vega Air conditioning, with a boost clock gain of 1.08x. But those gains come at the cost of an boosted 1.17x TDP. In other words, at these frequencies, Vega's power consumption curve is now rise faster than its clock speeds are.

We're not preemptively calling this Nvidia'south game, not past a long shot. But AMD's pricing, packet, and overall function positioning seem to imply the RX Vega 56 will compete confronting the GTX 1070 while the Vega 64 competes against the GTX 1080. And if yous care nigh power consumption, unless AMD has some crazy last minute optimizations upward their sleeve, we'll exist watching the company'due south new GPU face off with Nvidia'south May 2016 flagship, not the more recently launched GTX 1080 Ti.