The release of the Radeon RX Vega 64 was a major milestone for AMD. The video card turned out to be ambiguous, but finally the company managed to release a full-fledged top-end product with high performance for the most demanding users. Let the novelty not claim the laurels of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, but the position of the GeForce GTX 1080 can shake. Previously, we analyzed the features of the new Vega architecture and conducted a series of gaming tests. Let’s continue to explore the potential of the Radeon RX Vega 64. This article is an updated version of the previous test. The number of gaming applications has been increased, tests have been added in 4K format. In total, testing was carried out in 23 test applications, including many games and special benchmarks for DirectX 11, DirectX 12 and the Vulkan API. Games will be tested at 2560×1440 and 3840×2160 resolutions.
Let us briefly recall the test participants and proceed to the description of the methodology.
Characteristics of the tested video cards
| Video adapter | Radeon RX Vega 64 | GeForce GTX 1080 |
|---|---|---|
| Core | Vega 10 | GP104 |
| Number of transistors, million pieces | 12500 | 7200 |
| Process technology, nm | 14 | 16 |
| Core area, sq. mm | 486 | 314 |
| Number of stream processors | 4096 | 2560 |
| Number of texture blocks | 256 | 160 |
| Number of render units | 64 | 64 |
| Core frequency, MHz: Base-Boost | 1274–1546 | 1607–1733 |
| Memory bus, bit | 2048 | 256 |
| Memory type | HBM2 | GDDR5X |
| Memory frequency, MHz | 1890 | 10010 |
| Memory size, GB | 8 | 8192 |
| Supported version of DirectX | 12_1 | 12.1 |
| Interface | PCI-E 3.0 | PCI-E 3.0 |
| Power, W | 295 | 180 |
Radeon RX Vega 64
The reference version of the air-cooled video card takes part in testing. A detailed description of it in a separate review.
Recall that there is also a Liquid Cooled Edition with water cooling and higher frequencies. But the option with a conventional cooler is cheaper and more affordable. It runs at around 1546 MHz core clock with a minimum base of 1274 MHz, fast HBM2 memory runs at 1890 MHz effective on a 2048 bit wide bus.
Due to the extremely high TDP level, overclocking such a video card is difficult. We managed to achieve stability at higher frequencies only with manual control of operating voltages and a slight decrease in them (more details here). However, this does not guarantee successful overclocking. If for the past testing this method proved to be effective, then during tests in 4K we already encountered instability.
And although we conducted tests with an increase in core frequencies by 2.5% and overclocking the memory to 2100 MHz, we would categorically not recommend such experiments to users of the “air” versions of the Radeon RX Vega 64.
GeForce GTX 1080
The competitor is the Founders Edition reference model with standard frequencies, which in Boost mode are very variable and depend on heating and power limit. The declared base value is 1607 MHz with Boost Clock 1733 MHz.
Overclocking for this video card is quite standard. This is a base value of 1802 MHz with a peak boost of up to 2088 MHz and a real frequency of about 2000 MHz. The memory was overclocked from 10010 MHz to 11434 MHz.
The exact technical characteristics of the participants are given in the table. Frequencies are in accordance with official specifications. But the graphs with the results show the full range of GPU frequencies, including the base and maximum values.