07-18-2017, 09:00 PM
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-C...king-and-C
Quote:Which leads to the real question: what does this mean for the upcoming RX Vega product? While I know that testing the Frontier Edition in ONLY gaming is a bit of a faux pas, much of our interest was in using this product to predict what AMD is going bring to gamers later this month. It is apparent now that if the clocks are in the 1600 MHz range consistently, rather than dipping into 1400 MHz and below states as we found with the air cooler at stock, Vega in its current state can be competitive with the GeForce GTX 1080. That’s an upgrade over where it stood before – much closer to GTX 1070 performance.
The question is then can AMD provide that type of gaming experience at the $499 price point and will it require liquid cooling to do so? AMD probably isn’t holding back on some magic air cooler performance tricks it might have for RX Vega, so I don’t expect performance and clock consistency to change much. BUT, board partner cards that don’t design only for blower-style integrations will likely be able to add a lot of RX Vega performance and capability. This is clearly an instance where a better cooling solution can make a dramatic impact; in recent years and with current GeForce cards that isn’t the case. I do think we will see a liquid-cooled version of RX Vega but at a higher cost because of the complexity of the design used here. We might also see that HBM2 memory clocked up another 100 MHz or more, boosting things ever so slightly.
...
Despite the added performance, the Frontier Edition pricing scale leaves a lot to be desired. You are going to shell out $500 more for this version of the card, netting you at most 15% added performance for 50% added cost. Yes, the cooling solution design is impressive, and the card maintains an under 65C temperature in our testing at stock settings under full load, but it’s a steep price to pay. If the cooler really DOES cost enough to warrant that change, then it’s bad news for the potential for a water-cooled RX Vega card and its ability to stay within a reasonable price window to compare to GeForce products.
Before doing this testing, I had dismissed the liquid-cooled version of the Vega Frontier Edition completely, but the performance and improvement in clock rate/temperature we saw today gives me hope that RX Vega will be able to turn in a better-than-expected performance when it hits the scene. There are still plenty of ways that AMD could drop the ball, but if they can launch RX Vega at similar performance to the GTX 1080, as we saw here with the card in its 350-watt state, and prices it correctly, there will be a line up for buyers. And that is despite the obvious power efficiency disadvantage that AMD will have to accept.