AMD RX Vega 64 and Vega 56 Review

AMD RX Vega64 and Vega52 Review

Introduction

Normally when a new product is released we work through the night to ensure that you have the fastest possible review and thus the best possible knowledge upon which to base your purchasing decisions.

With the AMD Vega things worked out in such a way that we were unable to bring it to you on the day of release, but given what has happened with the pricing in the very brief time between the launch and now, it’s actually beneficial that we’re slightly delayed.

The first cards out the door were launched in extremely limited numbers with a rebate so enormous that AMD must have been making a loss on each card. Price is so much a part of how a graphic cards performance is measured – because of the alternatives available at similar price points – that those initial reviews gave a slightly false impression of the Vega capabilities because it was assumed that all retail models would cost that much. Obviously we now know the truth, thus we can take a genuine look at the Vega with the knowledge of the reality of the pricing.

Does it still provide fantastic value for money at its street price? Let’s find out.

Technical Specifications

The Vega is available in two main flavours, the Vega64 which has 64 Compute Units giving 4096 Stream Processors, and the Vega56, which unsurprisingly comes with 56 Compute Units leading to a total of 3584 Stream Processors. 

As you can see, like nearly every other graphics card we can think of there is a huge benefit to be had from a more robust cooling solution, as the air-cooled Vega64 boosts to 1546 MHz, but the water cooled option runs all the way up to 1677 MHz. This gives a beefy increase in the peak performance of a whole teraflop at full precision and two teraflops at half precision.

Lastly you can see from the bottom chart how the Vega stacks up to its predecessor the Fury X. The Fury X was always a little disappointing so perhaps the Vega is the card that finally unleashes the performance of a new Radeon RX.

We’ve only got the air-cooled in the office today, but that is in keeping with the majority of cards we test. Let’s take a closer look at the card, then some blurb before finally getting down to how it performs.

AMD RX Vega64 and Vega52 Review  
AMD RX Vega64 and Vega52 Review  
AMD RX Vega64 and Vega52 Review Â