Vega Thread

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rade...02-22.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rade...02-23.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rade...02-24.html

From the lowest to the highest average clock rate, we observe an increase of 36.4%. However, gaming performance goes up by just 21.1%. That's not great scaling, but it's not terrible either. What's more important is the power consumption accompanying those numbers. Unfortunately, this is where the data gets ugly.

Using the secondary BIOS with a power limit reduced by 25% gets us 159.4W and 32.7 FPS. Compared to the stock settings, just 71.6% of the power consumption serves up 89% of the gaming performance.

Going back to a worst-case scenario, the overclocked card averages 39.6 FPS, but consumes 310.6W doing so. Trading 39.5% more power consumption for an 8%-higher frame rate isn’t acceptable. The efficiency curve drops off rapidly with increasing clock rates and the additional power those frequencies necessitate.

The spread between the lowest to the highest power consumption is a massive 94%, while gaming performance increases by only 21.1%. Almost double the power consumption for one-fifth more gaming performance is what we'd call catastrophic.
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The difference in noise between the card running at its lowest and highest clock rate is a massive 12.3 dB(A).

We discussed this fan's acoustic profile in our AMD Radeon Vega RX 64 8GB Review. Beyond the secondary BIOS' Power Save mode, Radeon RX Vega 56's noise level is unacceptable as well. The reference Radeon R9 290X, which made it even further beyond the 50 dB(A) mark, is really the only graphics card that does worse.

If the fan speed limit was removed completely for our overclocking efforts, then the card would actually exceed 60 dB(A), compelling you to run the other direction.

The noise spectrum of the secondary BIOS' profiles appear in order of quietest to AMD's hurricane simulation.
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Radeon RX Vega 56 is a close derivative of Vega 64, so its behaviors largely carry over from AMD’s flagship. The company does cut this card’s board power rating by almost 30% through a combination of disabling eight Compute Units, dialing down the GPU’s frequency, and down-clocking its precious HBM2. But it’s ultimately still much more power-hungry, and consequently hotter and louder, than its primary competition, GeForce GTX 1070.

Performance-wise, Radeon RX Vega 56 fares well against the 1070. Even when we compare it to EVGA’s overclocked GeForce GTX 1070 SC Gaming 8GB (there are no Founders Edition cards left to buy), Vega 56 consistently matches or beats it. In the handful of scenarios where AMD is slower, the loss amounts to single-digit percentages. But whereas Vega 64 made a case for 4K gaming at dialed-back detail settings, it’s safer to think of Vega 56 as a solid solution for 2560x1440 displays at maximum quality in the latest games.

Our VR benchmarks are less conclusive. GeForce GTX 1070 is definitely faster than Vega 56 in Chronos and DiRT Rally. It’s technically quicker in Robo Recall as well, though the GeForce also suffers more dropped frames in that game. Serious Sam narrowly favors Vega 56 over GTX 1070, and Arizona Sunshine runs well on both cards.

There’s no way to be delicate about our environmental measurements, though. Despite a much lower board power than Vega 64, Radeon RX Vega 56 (using its default Balanced power profile) consumes ~220W in our typical gaming workload. You can overclock for nominal performance gains, but power consumption rises much faster, thrashing efficiency. Alternatively, you can drop Vega 56’s power limit, cut consumption dramatically, and retain most of the card’s performance. This just wasn’t an option for AMD’s shipping configuration—the company knew it had to beat GeForce GTX 1070 in the benchmarks, and it sacrificed the FPS/watt sweet-spot we calculated for a victory in the discipline gamers care about most: speed.

Beyond the tangibles—performance, power, heat, noise, and efficiency—it’s much more difficult to say whether Radeon RX Vega 56 should be your next graphics card. Weeks after its official debut, Vega 64 remains relatively rare. Those cards we do find in stock sell for ~$700—roughly 40% higher than AMD’s purported launch price and well beyond what any gamer should consider paying.
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There are still several Vega-specific features that could make this card faster or more capable in the future: Rapid Packed Math, primitive shaders, the Draw Stream Binning Rasterizers, and the HBCC. This is also a youthful product, and there are many examples of AMD’s driver team extracting more performance from new hardware over the course of months. Our Doom, The Division, and Warhammer benchmarks should be evidence of Vega’s potential. But until we see some of those forward-looking features exposed for gamers to enjoy, Vega 56’s success will largely depend on its price relative to GeForce GTX 1070.