ASUS STRIX Vega 64 trades blows with reference Vega 64

ASUS details its new Radeon RX Vega 64 card, in STRIX flavor.

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2 minutes & 14 seconds read time

Update: ASUS reached out to me about this article to clarify some of the going-ons of this benchmarking. I will put ASUS' replies under each one of the points they addressed, so you have the entire picture.

AMD is struggling with the launch of Radeon RX Vega, but it won't help that custom RX Vega cards are suffering from WORSE performance than the reference cards... something that is now being tested.

ASUS STRIX Vega 64 trades blows with reference Vega 64 06

The new ASUS STRIX RX Vega 64 has been sampled out to a few reviewers so far, with the sites testing the new STRIX card. ASUS' latest Radeon graphics card has a 260W TDP, which is massive - even compared to the already large 240W+ on the reference card. This increased TDP allows for higher clock speeds than the reference card, but does it result in more performance? Nope. Actually, less performance.

ASUS: "This is totally incorrect. In this generation, AMD made the overclocking a lot easier, where if you raise the "GPU power limit", it will do its job automatically and overclock the GPU clock automatically. If the power limit (TDP) is raised, there is no way a card can underperform another card of the same GPU provided it has not thermally throttled. By the way, AMD stock power limit should be 200W and 220W for VEGA 64, depending on the profile used.".

ASUS STRIX Vega 64 trades blows with reference Vega 64 07

At stock frequencies, the Radeon RX Vega 64 reference card loses to the ASUS STRIX RX Vega 64, but when RX Vega 64 reference card is overclocked to its maximum clocks, it BEATS the overclocked and custom ASUS STRIX Vega 64 card.

The ASUS STRIX RX Vega 64 does beat the reference RX Vega 64 in most tests, but it's not by much at all. The entire system power consumption is way more on the custom card, coming in at 455W compared to 411W.

ASUS: "Again corrections needed. In this part you are comparing our stock power limit with the maximum OC result achieved on the RX Vega 64 reference card by Computerbase.de. Whereas when referring to power consumption, you are referring to our stock against reference stock, which misleads your readers by far."

The temperature of the ASUS STRIX RX Vega 64 is better because of its triple-fan cooling set up, with AMD's own card hitting 85C under gaming loads, while the custom ASUS card hits 'just' 74C.

ASUS: "Simple triple fan setup cannot cool this beast that well. The main contribution are from our newly designed heat sink. We even have room to expand with the FanConnect II headers. Again we are comparing reference card hitting 85C at 220W power limit against our card hitting 74C at 260W power limit."

We will be doing more testing on Radeon RX Vega, with custom cards coming very soon - although, it doesn't look like it's going to help AMD at all.

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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