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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 take been hotly debated of late, with readers asking for (and making predictions virtually) how information technology would compare with Nvidia'south year-old Pascal GPUs like the 1070 and 1080.

We now have some preliminary answers to some of those questions, just by no means the entire picture. So here's how this is going to work: If you want a "regular" GPU, yous'll be able to buy the Vega 56 (56 active CUs) for $399. If you desire the full Vega 64 scrap (the air-cooled variant) you'll be able to buy that for $499. I will admit to being reasonably right in one regard — I predicted that a ane.7GHz base of operations clock for RX Vega made good sense if Vega FE was a ane.6GHz flake. The actual boost clock on the water-cooled version of RX Vega is 1677MHz.

Here's where things commencement to go a little wonky. If you want an air-cooled Vega 64 or 56, y'all'll be able to buy those direct. If, on the other hand, you want the liquid-cooled Vega 64, you'll have to buy information technology equally part of a bundle. Then, for case, the package price on the Vega 64 LC is $699 — but 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 costless games (Wolfenstein Two and Casualty in North America).

RXVega

I'm non certain this bundle idea is the best fashion to movement product. Don't get me wrong; $300 in coupons for quality hardware is a worthwhile bonus, as are the 2 solid games — merely just if you were already planning to build a new system in the first place. That Ryzen vii CPU + motherboard package is still going to toll you lot over $200, and even the sale price on the CF791 is $749. If you're planning to drop serious cash on a new rig, these offers are helpful. Otherwise, not so much. In fact, I call back AMD knows it, and has deliberately fabricated the liquid-cooled Vega a bundle-only part precisely because it knows it either tin't sell enough cards at that price to make any money or because they're but planning a very express run in the first place.

What About Performance?

Performance is… not what people were hoping for. AMD didn't reveal a lot of details, but they mainly focused on emphasizing minimum frame rates and overall frame rate smoothness. Both of these are good qualities for a chip, simply people expected RX Vega to be some kind of super GTX 1080 Ti killer. And… well, information technology 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. So here's how this breaks down:

Vega10

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

RX Vega 64 (Air): 1247MHz base clock, 1546MHz Boost, 64 ROPS, 256 texture units, 4096 shader cores, 2048-flake memory passenger vehicle, 484GB/southward of retentiveness bandwidth, and a TDP of 295W.

RX Vega 64 (Water): 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 forward, air-cooled and water-cooled volition be referred to as AC and WC for the sake of my sanity.

As always, we'll hold on terminal judgment until we have shipping, 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, but TDP ratings tend to at least signal in the general direction of power consumption, and a rating of 295W for the AC Vega and 345W for the WC version tells us a lot about how these fries handle clock rates.

Consider: The RX Vega 64 Air-conditioning is clocked 8 percent college (base) and five percent higher (heave) than the RX Vega 56, and has fifteen percentage more than cores. Yet the TDP difference between the ii fries is enormous, with Vega 64 Air conditioning drawing 1.4x more power than Vega 56. Now, as nosotros've ofttimes discussed earlier, power consumption in GPUs isn't linear — it grows at the foursquare or cube of the voltage increment, and clock speed or retentiveness clock increases will simply make that worse.

Being able to compare with RX Vega 64 LC makes the problem a bit easier to see. The AC and LC variants of Vega only differ in clock speeds. RX Vega LC's base of operations clock is 1.13x college than Vega AC, with a boost clock gain of one.08x. But those gains come up at the cost of an additional 1.17x TDP. In other words, at these frequencies, Vega'southward power consumption curve is at present rising faster than its clock speeds are.

Nosotros're non preemptively calling this Nvidia'due south game, non by a long shot. Merely AMD'south pricing, bundle, and overall role positioning seem to imply the RX Vega 56 will compete against the GTX 1070 while the Vega 64 competes against the GTX 1080. And if you intendance about ability consumption, unless AMD has some crazy last infinitesimal optimizations up their sleeve, we'll be watching the company'due south new GPU face off with Nvidia'southward May 2022 flagship, not the more recently launched GTX 1080 Ti.