Introduction & History Lesson on Vega
I spent a last week re-benchmarking and testing some of AMD's flagship graphics cards from the last 5 years, starting with the Fiji-based Radeon R9 Fury X with its 4GB of HBM memory, and then the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition which I have here today.
AMD launched the Vega-based Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition alongside both the Radeon RX Vega 56 and Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics cards in August 2017, but gave their all into the RX Vega 64 LCE. It packed a Vega 10 GPU made on the 14nm node, and higher GPU clocks than the air-cooled Radeon RX Vega 64 reference card from AMD.
Vega ran hot -- like, really hot. It kinda forced AMD to release a watercooled version of Vega 64, similar to the watercooled Radeon R9 Fury X (by default). AMD didn't offer a Fury X without the AIO cooler, but offered the option of an air-cooled Radeon RX Vega 64 and the watercooled Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition.
The Radeon RX Vega 64 reference card was a traditional black and red design from AMD, while the company went with a special edition style with the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition graphics card.
This meant we got a super-slick silver and red theme, with a glowing "R" in the corner of the card.
AMD allowed an additional 50W to flow through the card (295W TDP on the RX Vega 64 air, 345W TDP on the RX Vega 64 LCE) which paved the way for the Vega GPU clocks to climb up a little higher.
If you wanted the ultimate in performance from what Vega 10 and its 8GB of HBM2 could offer, the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition was it. You got this because you were a huge AMD fan, wanted the absolute best Radeon on the market at the time (and simply didn't want to go with a GeForce card at the time), or you were a reviewer.
AMD kept the same HBM2 clocks on both the RX Vega 64 air and RX Vega 64 LCE, with the 8GB of HBM2 clocked at 945MHz or 1890MHz effective. We have the 8GB of HBM2 sitting on a wider 2048-bit memory bus that provides 483GB/sec of memory bandwidth. At the time, this was pretty kick ass -- it still is pretty kick ass.
Vega 64 air:
- Base GPU clock: 1247MHz
- Boost GPU clock: 1546MHz
Vega 64 LCE:
- Base GPU clock: 1408MHz
- Boost GPU clock: 1668MHz
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History Lesson on AMD
History Lesson on AMD -- The Last 5 Years of Radeon
We've seen AMD move away from its head-first dive into the world of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), which it moved from Fiji to Vega and used HBM2, but then from Vega to Navi we saw the company shift to GDDR6 memory. This has been a big deal for the company, along with the huge change from the GCN (GraphicsCore Next) architecture to the RDNA architecture that powers Navi (and the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles).
I exclusively reported back in June 2018 that AMD would be powering the next-gen Sony PlayStation 5 console with a semi-custom design based on the Zen CPU and Navi GPU architectures. AMD since then, has really turned things around -- but a history lesson up until that point is below.
AMD has since gone from having its CPU range go from 'not really bothering with, Intel is so much more superior' to 'uh yeah, so which Ryzen CPU did you buy this time'. Oh how life has changed for AMD -- now commanding over 50% of premium CPU sales worldwide, and it's not just Ryzen -- it's Threadripper and EPYC knocking down door after door at Intel.
Radeon on the other hand? This is where the idea for re-looking at the Radeon R9 Fury X (my review here) came from. It has been nearly 5 years to the day that AMD released the Radeon R9 Fury X -- and the world has changed (in so many other ways, too). NVIDIA has been completely dominant since 2015 -- hell, even more so.
NVIDIA has gone from stride to stride with its graphics card launches, no matter the hype and anger at pricing of the Turing-based GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (my review here). They flew off shelves because gamers were, and will always be, thirsty for the best of the best. AMD hasn't had a best of the best graphics card for a very long time -- and at the time, the Radeon R9 Fury X was meant to be just that -- the best of the best.
And we all know how that played out.
The Radeon R9 Fury X was a $649 mess, muddled with pre-installed AIO cooling because the card ran so hot -- and a million other issues. It was a good performer, but it didn't keep NVIDIA up at night either. NVIDIA responded, and kept responding, pushing AMD into Vega.
We all know how Vega went.
AMD released the Radeon RX Vega 56 and Radeon RX Vega 64 (my review here) and the launch was so-so at best. They weren't popular, and really only dominated in cryptocurrency mining. Which, at the time, was absolutely exploding. The crazy HBM2 tech (my thoughts on HBM2 from August 2016 here) on the Vega GPU was not really utilized well, and then GDDR5X and eventually GDDR6 came and knocked its doors down.
NVIDIA kept responding, and kept responding -- and kept pushing harder down on AMD until the company nailed the next-gen console contracts. The semi-custom design win allowed AMD to have flex some of its muscle with RDNA and the Navi GPU architecture. The shift to GDDR6 was a big win for graphics card fans and enthusiasts, as well as gamers -- as it will be the lifeblood of the next-gen consoles and the next few waves of graphics cards.
NVIDIA is already pushing the boundaries of near 20Gbps on current GDDR6 tech, and we should expect AMD to get far closer to that with RDNA2-based Navi 2X graphics cards later this year.
But at the time, AMD pushed and pushed that HBM was going to be the savior of everything -- and that HBCC would knock our socks off.
Once again, we all know how that went -- it was all marketing BS.
Or was it?
HBCC has no benefits to PC gamers outside of a few benchmarks and resolutions where it provides a few % more performance, but now we're seeing something very similar play out on next-gen consoles. The mix of PCIe 4.0 connectivity with a super-charged NVMe SSD and super-fast GDDR6 acting as huge chunks of ridiculously fast cache? That sounds like HBCC... or something at least close to it.
NVIDIA is also rumored to unveil something called NVCache, which sounds much like HBCC, with its next-gen Ampere GPU-based GeForce RTX 3080 Ti -- and other RTX 3000 series cards, later this year when it unveils the new family of graphics cards in September 2020.
AMD after that shed most of its Radeon Technologies Group team -- a team that was created to shield themselves from AMD as a whole. The team disbanded after Vega didn't make the waves it promised after Fiji (and the Radeon R9 Fury X that I'm about to look at today).
RTG disbanded and most of them went off to work with Intel -- the largest of which being GPU architect Raja Koduri -- and its new adventures into discrete GPUs with its new Xe architecture. Some of those folks eventually left AMD to work for other companies after a few months, and now we have a new team at AMD that hasn't really had the band together -- and won't get the chance because of COVID-19.
AMD will have a mystery release later this year for RDNA2 (more on that here) and its new, and what should eventuate in the Radeon RX 6000 series cards. My sources have told me there will be no media event for this release, the first time in over a decade (or more) that no media event will be held for a new family of graphics cards being released.
But right now with Navi, the company is firing on (nearly) all cylinders.
The Radeon RX 5700 XT is a great card, and while it's not a flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti killer -- it does the job. But the more mid-range Radeon RX 5600 XT is a seriously kick ass card for the money, so too is the lower-end Navi-based Radeon RX 5500 XT.
AMD is finally offering a slew of graphics cards that are worth your money, unlike the lackluster releases of Fiji and Vega. We saw next to no custom cards, firstly because AMD tightly controlled how many Fiji and especially Vega GPUs left their factories (for many reasons).
But secondly, AIB partners didn't have huge demand from gamers to buy custom Fiji or custom Vega graphics cards. Things really changed with Navi and AMD wanted to deliver a near-unlimited stream of custom Navi-based Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards.
I've tested a bunch of them so far and still have a few to get through, which has been a much better family of GPUs released from AMD compared to Fiji (virtually no custom cards) to Vega (a handful of custom cards) to Navi (lots of custom cards).
Without further ado, let's move into the rest of our re-look at the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition (LCE) graphics card and see how it keeps up in 2020.
Benchmarks - Synthetic
GPU Test Rig Specs
Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.
We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.
Anthony's Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 (buy from Amazon)
- CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz (buy from Amazon)
- Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO (buy from Amazon)
- Memory: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933 (buy from Amazon)
- SSD: 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2 (buy from Amazon)
- SSD: 512GB Toshiba OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2 (buy from Amazon)
- Power Supply: InWin 1065W
- Case: InWin X-Frame
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (buy from Amazon)
Additional Images
3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark Fire Strike - 4K
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark TimeSpy
3DMark TimeSpy Extreme
Heaven - 1080p
Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.
Heaven - 1440p
Heaven - 4K
Benchmarks - 1080p
1080p Benchmarks
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.
Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.
Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.
1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts
Starting at 1080p we have the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition performing well, with 123FPS average in Shadow of War. This is 2FPS faster than the RX 5700, 4FPS slower than the RX 5700 XT and GTX 1080 Ti, and 38FPS slower than the RTX 2080 Ti.
The RX Vega 64 LCE holds its own in Metro Exodus with 66FPS, more than enough for gaming in 2020. At 66FPS average, it is just 1FPS faster than the RTX 2060 SUPER, 6FPS away from the RX 5700 XT, and 35FPS away from the RTX 2080 Ti and its brute strength.
Far Cry New Dawn is pretty much maxing out at 1080p on the RX Vega 64 LCE, while Shadow of the Tomb Raider performs well with 126FPS average. This is 3FPS better than the air-cooled Vega 64, 2FPS slower than the RX 5700, and 24FPS slower than the flagship RTX 2080 Ti.
Benchmarks - 1440p
1440p Benchmarks
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.
Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.
Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.
1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts
The Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE holds its ground at 2560 x 1440, where in Shadow of War it reaches 82FPS average -- the same as the Navi-based RX 5700. It's 9FPS slower than the GTX 1080 Ti and RX 5700 XT, and nearly 50FPS slower than the RTX 2080 Ti which is just absolutely stomping here at 1440p in Shadow of War.
Metro Exodus has the RX Vega 64 LCE at 53FPS average, an identical result to the RTX 2070 and 1FPS away from the RX 5700, although there's a huge 27FPS gap between the RX Vega 64 LCE and RTX 2080 Ti here at 1440p.
Far Cry New Dawn hums along with 93FPS alongside the RX 5700 with the same result, while the RX 5700 XT is ahead at 98FPS and the RTX 2080 Ti stretching the limits at 110FPS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is smooth at 90FPS average, 1FPS better than the RX 5700 and 14FPS slower than the RX 5700 XT -- which sees the RTX 2080 Ti far out and ahead with 44FPS more than the RX Vega 64 LCE with 134FPS average.
Benchmarks - 4K
4K Benchmarks
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.
Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.
Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.
4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts
This is what I'm here for: 4K or 3840 x 2160.
AMD packs the Radeon RX Vega 64 (and Liquid Cooled Edition) with Vega 10 and 8GB of HBM2, which is far better configuration than the Fiji XT and 4GB of HBM on the Radeon R9 Fury X. Hence, it stands up more and takes a beating at 4K thanks to the large 8GB framebuffer.
Starting with Shadow of War which is hard on memory bandwidth, the RX Vega 64 LCE holds strong with 50FPS average -- 1FPS better than Navi 10 and 8GB of GDDR6 on the Radeon RX 5700. It loses by 5FPS to the higher-end RX 5700 XT, and GTX 1080 Ti by 8FPS. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti just leaps out ahead with 87FPS, 37FPS more than the RX Vega 64 LCE.
Metro Exodus is another hard game but the RX Vega 64 LCE continues to punch above its weight, with 34FPS average beating out the Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards -- but not able to beat the GTX 1080 Ti with its 36FPS (although, there's only 2FPS between them). 51FPS on the RTX 2080 Ti is just bliss at 4K.
53FPS average for Far Cry New Dawn beats the RX 5700 by 1FPS, equal the RTX 2070, and loses to the RX 5700 XT by 4FPS. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is way out and ahead with 81FPS here at 4K.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is hard on the RX Vega 64 LCE, pushing it down to 50FPS average -- although, this is still equal to the Navi-based RX 5700 and Turing-based RTX 2060 SUPER. But man, the RTX 2080 Ti just doesn't give up with 82FPS average -- 32FPS superior at 4K.
Benchmarks - Synthetic (Radeon Only)
3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark Fire Strike - 4K
3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.
3DMark TimeSpy
3DMark TimeSpy Extreme
Heaven - 1080p
Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.
Heaven - 1440p
Heaven - 4K
Benchmarks - 1080p (Radeon Only)
1080p Benchmarks
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.
Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.
Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.
1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts
I decided to spend many more hours on benchmark charts for you guys, so I could illustrate in the previous pages how the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition stacks up against ALL of the graphics cards -- but in these charts, I've used only AMD Radeon graphics cards to see how the RX Vega 64 LCE stacks up against its own Radeon brethren.
The Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE really has aged well against AMD's latest and greatest graphcis cards, including the Vega 20 + 16GB HBM combo in the Radeon VII and new Navi 10 + 8GB GDDR6 combo on Radeon RX 5700 XT.
As I said in April 2018... Navi was just as bad as AMD, it's just power efficiency, clock speeds, and a shift to the RDNA architecture, the use of GDDR6 and jumping to the 7nm node. AMD really needed all of these stars to align to even get a card like the Radeon RX 5700 XT to beat the Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE two years later.
In all of the games tested above you can see that the Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE is very close to the performance of the newer Vega 20-powered Radeon VII and Navi 10-powered Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards. Vega 10 and 8GB of HBM2 are ageing well in 2020.
Benchmarks - 1440p (Radeon Only)
1440p Benchmarks
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.
Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.
Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.
1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts
I decided to spend many more hours on benchmark charts for you guys, so I could illustrate in the previous pages how the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition stacks up against ALL of the graphics cards -- but in these charts, I've used only AMD Radeon graphics cards to see how the RX Vega 64 LCE stacks up against its own Radeon brethren.
The Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE starts to lose a little more ground to the Radeon RX 5700 at 2560 x 1440, but it still holds strong and up there with the two very best Navi-based cards AMD has in its arsenal.
Metro Exodus is the same, with the RX Vega 64 LCE just 1FPS away from the RX 5700 -- and within 6FPS of both the RX 5700 XT and Radeon VII. It's holding up well even in a game like Metro Exodus at 1440p.
The same goes with Far Cry New Dawn where the RX Vega 64 LCE ties with the Radeon RX 5700, whereas it beats it (by a single FPS) in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Benchmarks - 4K (Radeon Only)
4K Benchmarks
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.
You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.
Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.
Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.
4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts
I decided to spend many more hours on benchmark charts for you guys, so I could illustrate in the previous pages how the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition stacks up against ALL of the graphics cards -- but in these charts, I've used only AMD Radeon graphics cards to see how the RX Vega 64 LCE stacks up against its own Radeon brethren.
4K gaming is hard on any card on Ultra settings and pushing 60FPS, especially AAA titles. The RX Vega 64 LCE continues to do well, even at 3840 x 2160.
We have 50FPS in Shadow of War, which is 1FPS better than the RX 5700 -- while Metro Exodus has the RX Vega 64 LCE beating the RX 5700 XT and losing to the Radeon VII. Not a bad result, and while there are just 1FPS between the RX Vega 64 LCE and RX 5700 XT, there's 3FPS between the air-cooled RX Vega 64 and LCE model.
Far Cry New Dawn at 4K sees the RX Vega 64 LCE beating the RX 5700 by 1FPS once again, while the Radeon VII scales well here and beats the RX Vega 64 LCE by 11FPS at 64FPS average.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is 1FPS faster than the air-cooled RX Vega 64 on the LCE model, and ties at 50FPS with the RX 5700. The Radeon RX 5700 XT is a bit faster at 56FPS, while the Radeon VII takes it for AMD with 59FPS.
Temps & Power
Temps
AMD used an AIO liquid cooler on its Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition (you can, uh, kinda tell by the name) which helps drive these temps down. We have 65C which at the time might have been good, but the mid-range GTX 1660 sits there, and hell even a custom GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER from COLORFUL is the same 65C with its air cooler.
Power Consumption
Wow.
450W of power consumed with the Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE is kinda nuts, considering it offers Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT levels of performance where those cards come in at under 300W.
Final Thoughts
I still remember flying out to San Francisco for the Vega reveal and NVIDIA completely eclipsing AMD with a secret last-minute media event for the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. At the time, NVIDIA had the GeForce GTX 1080 which the Vega 64 ended up beating, but man did the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti lay the KO blow to Vega completely.
NVIDIA revealed the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti at the absolute worst time for AMD, but the best possible time for itself -- beating the Radeon RX Vega 64 (in both air and LCE forms). There were plenty of custom cards available post-launch, with a bunch of custom GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards revealed from the likes of ASUS, MSI, EVGA, ZOTAC, and others.
AMD had... well... a few custom Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics cards but it simply couldn't compete with the sheer avalanche of custom GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards that NVIDIA and its AIBs had on the market at launch.
Vega was born, and just like any star given millennia -- they will die, except in this case Vega died just as quick as it was born.
AMD's use of 8GB of HBM2 memory was one of the biggest shining points of Vega, but so too was the engineering feat. NVIDIA at the time and still even today, doesn't have a consumer graphics card with HBM. Back in 2017, we had AMD pushing out graphics cards onto the market with a GPU and VRAM on the same silicon through an interposer.
It was kinda revolutionary at the time and as a geek I still love what AMD was able to achieve as the massive underdog it was, kinda pushed into a small office space in the corner of AMD while the company turned focus into SoC (system-on-a-chip, semi custom designs for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5) and the re-birth of AMD kicking ass in CPUs against with Ryzen.
Vega was a misfire from then-GPU chief Raja Koduri, who has now joined Intel and will soon give birth to the Xe GPU architecture. We will see how that goes later this year, and more so in 2021-2022 and beyond.
Fast forward to today and we have AMD moving away from the ageing GCN architecture, or GraphicsCore Next -- and into the warm arms of the RDNA architecture. RDNA was born through the creation of Navi, and will be the life force driving the next generation consoles and upcoming next-gen Radeon graphics cards.
AMD has a pretty big winner on its hands with Navi and the current Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards, with the Radeon RX 5700 XT, Radeon RX 5700, Radeon RX 5600 XT, and Radeon RX 5500 XT.
But even in 2020, the older Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE still swings a pretty powerful punch against Navi -- competing with the Radeon RX 5700 XT for the most part and keeping up with it. It's not too far behind the RX 5700 XT, but that's what Navi was always meant to be -- a much more refined Vega, something I exclusively revealed a few years ago now.
What comes next will be what hopefully blows the doors off of Camp Radeon for the first time since the Radeon R9 295X2 days, where AMD actually pushed the envelope hard -- it wanted to be the champion.
That blood is in AMD now with CEO Dr. Lisa Su saying the company wants to disrupt the 4K gaming market with NVIDIA, like it did to the CPU market with Intel and its phenomenally successful Ryzen range of CPUs.
The next 6 months are going to be like a David and Goliath battle, a Batman v Superman fight that will see gamers and enthusiasts worldwide feel each punch. There will be release after release in September onwards between AMD and NVIDIA and their respective RDNA 2 / Navi 2X and Ampere graphics cards.
And I can't wait.