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 ESTDawn of War III
A Dawn of War game finally returns to our benchmark suite, with its predecessor last appearing in 2010. With Dawn of War III, Relic offers a demanding RTS with a built-in benchmark; however, the benchmark is still bugged, something noticed by Ian, as well as by other publications. The built-in benchmark for Dawn of War III collects frametime data for the loading screen before and black screen after the benchmark scene, rendering the calculated averages and minimum/maximums useless. While we used the benchmark scene for consistency, we used OCAT to collect the performance data instead. Ultra settings were used without alterations.
A note on the 1080p results: further testing revealed that Dawn of War III at 1080p was rather CPU-bound on our testbed, resulting in anomalous performance. Due to the extreme time constraints, we discovered and determined this very late in the process. For the sake of transparency, the graphs will remain as they were at the time of the original posting.
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Oxford Guy - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
This may be more of a shortcoming in the GloFo process than in the design of the chip. It would be very interesting to see how well it would do in PPW on TSMC's process.Exodite - Wednesday, August 16, 2017 - link
Of course, I were talking about the noise. :)The power consumption is, as I mentioned, a disappointment.
I'd be interested in seeing how the cards do with undervolting and other tweaks, the 480 actually gained performance in some situations due to the lower power draw resulting in more headroom.
Oxford Guy - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
A vapor chamber is hardly "terrible" in terms of quality. But a high power draw + a blower = physics of noise.Oxford Guy - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Also, if one wants to talk about terrible stock cooling one should never forget the GTX 480.mapesdhs - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
If one is in the UK, that would be a strange thing to do given it costs more than a 1080 Ti. It's priced 100 UKP higher than aftermarket 1080s with a 1759MHz base. Doesn't make sense. Factor in the power/noise, bit of a meh. If one is in the US where the price really is $500 (in the UK it's the equivalent of $750), well then maybe it's a bit more down to (irrational) brand loyalty, but still the power/noise issue doesn't make it an attractive buy IMO.The Vega56 looks far more interesting re price/performance and indeed performance, though it still has some power/noise issues. Perhaps aftermarket cooled versions will improve both cards, at least on the noise front.
mapesdhs - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Rats, that was supposed to be a reply to IchiOni. Why can't we edit??xfrgtr - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
You'd have to be a hard core AMD fan to buy this over a GTX 1080Glock24 - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
Also people that care about heat and noise care about power consumption.FourEyedGeek - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
Only poor people buy AMD Vega 64, buy 1080 Ti for better performance.tipoo - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
64 vs the 1080, yes.56 vs the 1070 is much more appealing, 100 dollars less for the same performance, plus a discount on Freesync monitors.