This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of employ.

AMD'south Radeon RX Vega GPU is the company's about significant consumer launch in at least two years. Loftier-end consumer cards don't own the mass market and they aren't as significant a profit center as professional GPUs, just they're important halo products in their ain correct. I user has begun posting 3D benchmark results for the new GPU — but they need to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Start and foremost, information technology'south of import to proceed in mind Vega's Frontier Edition is explicitly intended for professional markets, not gaming. This matters when because the GPUs current 3D gaming performance, because AMD's earliest driver iterations are going to be focused on the apps and programs where the card is expected to compete. For consumer cards, that'southward going to be games — but this is the outset GPU launch where AMD has led with a professional person carte du jour, and that means 3DMark optimizations probably aren't where the company is going to focus.

Radeon-Vega

2nd, previous comments from AMD take implied that Vega Frontier Edition is running at a lower clock than the consumer variants will. This is unlikely to have a huge bear on on the final product, simply if Vega Iron runs at i.6GHz and the consumer RX Vega is clocked at 1.7GHz, that could translate to a iii-half dozen% deviation in GPU operation depending on the game. Greater clock speed differentials will, of form, translate to larger performance gaps.

Define's own comments imply that ability direction may not be completely nailed downward in the latest commuter for the GPU merely that performance in professional applications is excellent, "almost on par with Quadro P6000 and P5000 with the same settings. Biggest difference is that VEGA Atomic number 26 price was £977 and is running in my PC and both Quadro benchmark results are taken from spec.org as follows: P6000 and P5000."

The P6000 is currently listed for betwixt $4,700 and ~$5,800 according to Google, while the P5000 is $1,849 – $2000. A £977 price for Radeon Vega Frontier Edition would work out to a $1,263 toll tag; a $999 list price is actually expected for United states of america cards. AMD is clearly playing a value angle hither, admitting at a high price point relative to the consumer market.

First, here's a table of all 3 sets of results (the two official SPEC runs and Define'south Vega FE tests. Keep in listen that every bit a professional GPU benchmark, ViewPerf is typically designed not to vary much based on CPU clock or core count, though this doesn't hateful some variation is incommunicable). Define does notation that he's using a different CPU than the official SPEC results (a Cadre i7-4790K), and that these tests are run at the official resolution of 1900×1060 as opposed to a 4K data ready that an updated version of the aforementioned examination might employ.

VegaFE-Chart1

While nosotros've accurately quoted Define above, I wouldn't actually agree that the FE is particularly well positioned against the P6000 on operation alone. The P5000 is the better point of comparison, so nosotros've gathered up this information and color-coded which GPU wins and by what margin.

VegaFE-Chart2

Once again, keep in mind that this is very early days for the Vega Atomic number 26 and driver updates could meaningfully improve these scores in the futurity.

What well-nigh gaming tests?

The only gaming results seem to be from FireMark (regular, Extreme, and Ultra). Overclockers3d study scores of 22,916, 9,449, and five,216. This would put the Vega Iron closer to par with a GTX 1080 every bit opposed to the GTX 1080 Ti. The 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra score of 5216 is roughly ane.32x faster than Fury X's performance in the same benchmark.

Simply again — with extremely early on drivers that haven't been optimized for consumer games, and a potential clock deficiency relative to the consumer function, I just wouldn't put a ton of weight on these scores. Pricing is besides going to be critically important to evaluating the consumer carte's overall attractiveness, and we don't accept any guidance on that upshot yet.

Overall, based on these early on figures, I'd say AMD has the beginnings of a potent GPU. Nosotros'll need to see how driver updates evolve the product, only it'south certainly better than anything Team Reddish has fielded since 2015. And we oasis't seen the menu stretch its legs in AI or HPC benchmarks, where GCN was historically a strong performer.

At present read: From Ryzen APUs to Vega: Thoughts on AMD'south Financial Analyst Day