Amd radeon pro vega 56 review năm 2024

As a rule, the top-end performers on the PC-component front get the most attention. In AMD's world in 2017, that's been processors such as the beastly Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and the Ryzen 7 1800X, as well as its long-awaited Radeon RX Vega 64 ($999.77 at Amazon) graphics card. But it's often the products one or two steps down the stack that offer the better value, delivering most of the performance of the costliest video cards or processor chips, but at a much-reduced price.

Take, for example, our favorite AMD Ryzen CPU of the moment, the Ryzen 5 1600X. We think it's the best value among the AMD Ryzen processors we've tested (11 so far this year!), in part because it delivers the same clock speeds (3.6GHz to 4GHz stock) of the top-end mainstream AMD Ryzen 7 1800X. Its six cores are a slight downtick from the Ryzen 7 1800X's eight, but with that 25 percent downstep in physical cores comes a nearly 50 percent reduction in price. When we wrote this, the Ryzen 5 1600X was selling for about $235, compared to about $460 for the Ryzen 7 1800X.

In many ways, the Radeon RX Vega 56 that we're looking at here occupies a similar spot in AMD's new-for-2017 lineup of Vega enthusiast-grade graphics cards. As its name implies, it has 56 compute units to the higher-end card's 64. And you get the same 8GB of high-bandwidth HBM2 memory running on the same "Vega 10" chip that powers the Vega 64. At its $399 MSRP, it is $100 less than the Vega 64.

In this price range, $100 is a lot of money when considering one card versus another, and the target card on the Nvidia side, in the case of the Vega 56, is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 in its various forms. In a broader sense, the Vega 56 does a somewhat better job of outperforming that competing card than the Radeon RX Vega 64 does of besting its own Nvidia nemesis, the GeForce GTX 1080.

Of course, performance doesn't all hinge on compute units and memory allotments. Clock- and memory-speed differences make a difference, too, as we'll see in the Performance Testing section of this review later on. And it's also important to note that the Vega 56 still faces the same power, heat, and efficiency deficits of the Vega architecture in general, although the disparities here are less than with the Radeon RX Vega 64 card we tested. The Vega 56 is rated to 210 watts, while Nvidia rates the GTX 1070 at 150 watts. Note, though, that the way competing companies calculate these kinds of things often differs. So don't take these watt differences as hard "apples-to-apples" numbers. Still, it's clear that Nvidia has an edge on the power/efficiency front.

All that being said, on the whole, we'd say the Radeon RX Vega 56 is a better card value than the Vega 64 given its price and intended usage: 1440p gaming, or 1080p games at high refresh rates. Like the GTX 1070, though, it's just shy of a good pick for gaming at 4K (3,840x2,160) resolution. If you're aiming for 4K gaming, you'll definitely want something more powerful than this card (at least a GTX 1080, or the Vega 64), unless you're happy to dial down some in-game detail settings to keep your resolution high.

Whether or not this card is a better choice than the competing Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 in particular comes down to details. So let's dig in and start filtering through the finer points of AMD's more-affordable new Vega card.

AMD Radeon Vega: A Quick Card Breakdown

Rather than rehash the full details of AMD's new Vega line here, including the three cards and various optional "Radeon Pack" bundles, we're going to point you to the review of the Radeon RX Vega 64 for the full rundown. Here, we'll go over the specs of the Vega 56, and briefly touch on how they relate to the rest of the cards in the line.

Here's a chart of the primary specs of AMD's three new Vega cards, direct from AMD...

Note that the Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, with its external radiator, is a bit of an oddball/outlier, because you can't actually buy it as a stand-alone card, but only in a bundle, which includes a pair of games and some discounts on other hardware for $699. (Again, see our review of the Vega 64 for further details on the Radeon Packs.)

But compared to the air-cooled Vega 64 that we tested and reviewed, the Vega 56 sticks reasonably close to its higher-end sibling—at least on paper. It has 87 percent of the Stream Processors and about 85 percent of the memory bandwidth of the higher-end air-cooled Vega 64. And the Boost GPU clock, which should be close to the average real-world performance when gaming, according to AMD, only differs by about 5 percent between the two cards.

As noted up top, AMD rates the board power for the Vega 56 at 210 watts. That's a drop of close to 30 percent compared to the Vega 64. But Nvidia rates its GTX 1070 at just 150 watts. In the United States, where power rates are relatively low, that's not going to make much of a difference in your electric bill (unless, maybe, you're using the card for 24/7 coin mining). But the higher power ratings of the AMD cards mean more heat output, and so generally a bit more fan noise, too.

Though the board-power ratings may not be apples-to-apples comparisons, Nvidia's and AMD's power-supply recommendations are. The recommended minimum power supply (PSU) for the Radeon RX Vega 56 is 650 watts, compared to Nvidia's recommendation of at least a 500-watt PSU for the competing GTX 1070. If you're building a system from scratch, or your existing power supply isn't up to the task, opting for the Vega 56 may mean springing for a slightly more expensive PSU.

The power differences translate to the supplementary power connectors on Vega 56, as well, which we'll get to in the next section.

AMD Radeon Vega 56: The Specifics

In terms of dimensions and exterior design, the stock versions of the Vega 64 and the Vega 56 that AMD sent our way for review are effectively identical—to the point that we wouldn't have been able to tell them apart without the small green sticker on their backplates. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 look about the same, too, and all these cards are about 10.5 inches long.

Here's a look at the Radeon RX Vega 64 next to the Radeon RX Vega 56. If you can tell the difference, you've got a better eye than we do.

Unlike the Vega 64, the Vega 56 only comes in basic-black (at least until board partners such as Asus and PowerColor launch custom variants). The plastic shroud and single-fan blower cooler (which pushes warm air out the back of the card) is similar to what AMD has been using on its reference designs for years. There is a metal backplate here, as well as on the RX Vega 64, but aside from the light-up "RADEON" logo on the top thin edge, the AMD card has no flashy flourishes or busy design elements like the angled metal shell on Nvidia's competing GeForce GTX 10-series cards.

The AMD and Nvidia cards in this class are effectively identical, though, in size. The GTX 1080, GTX 1070, Radeon RX Vega 64, and RX Vega 56 are all dual-width cards, occupying two expansion slots (as are virtually all cards above the lowest-end options, these days).

Because of the previously mentioned power-rating differences, though, there are major differences in the power requirements of the two cards. The GTX 1070 Founders Edition has a single eight-pin auxiliary power connector, and Nvidia recommends a minimum 500-watt power supply for a system running that card. AMD's Radeon RX Vega 56 requires a pair of eight-pin power connectors, and published specs say you'll need a 650-watt power supply, at minimum, for a system based around that card. So make sure the PSU you own or are considering buying has enough power leads and meets the wattage minimum.

As for ports, on the Vega 56 you get a trio of DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and a single HDMI 2.0 port, just like on the Vega 64. Unlike with the GTX 1070, the Vega 56 has no DVI connectors. If you have an older monitor, you'll need an adapter or a converter cable.

Of course, the port selection, card length, and cooling apparatus could all change if you opt for a non-stock version of the card from one of AMD's partners. So be sure the specific card you're considering has what you need before buying.

Performance Testing

As we've mentioned in other recent video card reviews, things are in flux these days when it comes to testing graphics cards, because two key technologies—despite being available in some form for more than a year now—are proving difficult to test definitively.

The first of these is DirectX 12 (DX12). DX12 is just now starting to become common in AAA titles, though there are still relatively few real-world benchmarks for it. Still, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the future, and this card was designed to last for, at the very least, a few years. So it's important to know if a card can handle DX12 well before buying. We tested the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 with the newest DX12-capable games we had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Tom Clancy: The Division, as well as Futuremark's DX12 benchmark, 3DMark Time Spy. We tested a bunch of games using DirectX 11, too, because that API will still be in wide use for the foreseeable future as well.

The second technology that's a little tricky to test, at present, is support for virtual reality. At this writing, there are two major competing VR headsets, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with more coming to market soon, and it's difficult to establish a lone test that is applicable to all VR scenarios. At the moment, we're using Futuremark's new VRMark test to measure VR capability. It consists of an "Orange Room" test designed to measure a card's ability to handle today's games, and a "Blue Room" test for theoretical extremely demanding future titles. The Blue Room test is so tough, no card we've tested to date gets a passing grade in it. So, for the moment, we'll only report Orange Room results. At the moment, baseline VR support for those headsets starts with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. On the AMD side of things, it is the AMD Radeon RX 480, or that card's successors, the Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 570. Therefore, the Vega 56 should be more than adequate for today's VR experiences with the two leading headsets.

As noted earlier, AMD is aiming the Radeon RX Vega 56 straight at Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070, while the Radeon RX Vega 64 is targeting the GeForce GTX 1080. It seems that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will remain in a league of its own for the time being. We factored those three competing cards into our performance charts below. Aside from those cards, we also included the GeForce GTX 1060 and AMD Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 480 to show what stepping up over more mainstream offerings to the Vega 56 will get you in terms of higher frame rates. And to see how AMD has progressed since 2015, we also included the previous-generation high-end AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

We started off our testing with Futuremark's 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite's Fire Strike Ultra subtest. Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance, and the Ultra version of it is meant to simulate the stresses of game graphics rendering at 4K.

In our first test, the Vega 56 finished about 3 percent ahead of the GeForce GTX 1070. It also bested AMD's 2015 flagship card, the R9 Fury X, by about 6 percent. The Vega 56 is mostly meant to compete with the 1070, as demonstrated by the GeForce GTX 1080's commanding 20 percent advantage over it. The GTX 1080 and Vega 64 also cost about $100 more.

We also tested the cards with the lesser 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme subtest, which tests a card at a less-demanding 2,560x1,440 resolution.

The gap between the Vega 56 and GTX 1070 held at about 3 percent at the lower resolution, which is a good sign for AMD. The Vega 56 also once again bested the R9 Fury X, this time by about 10 percent.

Tomb Raider (2013)

Let's start our game testing with some older games. Here, we fired up the 2013 reboot of the classic title Tomb Raider, testing at the highest detail preset ("Ultimate") and three resolutions.

In our first real-world benchmark, we see GTX 1070 convincingly beat the Vega 56 at 1080p and 1440p, while maintaining a slimmer 4fps lead at 4K. The Vega 56 did maintain its edge over the older Radeon R9 Fury X here, although the two cards nearly tied at 4K.

Sleeping Dogs

Next, we rolled out the very demanding real-world gaming benchmark test built into the older title Sleeping Dogs...

Once again, the Vega 56 lost to the GTX 1070 at lower resolutions; this time by 26fps at 1080p and 16fps at 1440p, with a smaller 3.5fps deficit at 4K. The Radeon R9 Fury X also edged out the Vega 56 at all three resolutions here. This test definitely wasn't the Radeon RX Vega 56's finest hour.

Bioshock Infinite

The title Bioshock Infinite isn't overly demanding, but it's a popular one with stellar good looks. In its built-in benchmark program, we set the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF)...

This title was the first real-world victory for the Vega 56 over its rival GTX 1070, and it impressively even bested the GeForce GTX 1080 at 1080p. However, it was not a total victory for the newer card, since the Radeon R9 Fury X managed to edge out the Vega 56 at 1440p and 4K.

Hitman: Absolution

Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still pretty hard on a video card. The 8x MSAA we employ is an especially harsh setting.

Hitman: Absolution was not kind to either Vega card, as the GeForce GTX 1060 was able to keep pace with both of them, while the GTX 1070 stomped them both at all three resolutions. The Radeon R9 Fury X also managed to beat both Vega cards at 1080p and 1440p. These results were rather unusual, so we attempted reinstalling the drivers for the Vega 56 to correct any potential problems. However, this didn't change the numbers, and the results were consistent across many runs of this test.

Since these results are well out of sync with all the other test results we got, we're chalking them up to an anomaly with this particular title. Hopefully a future patch fixes the performance with this game. But you shouldn't be overly concerned with these results when considering this card for purchase, unless for some reason you intend to spend lots of time playing this 2012-era title.

Far Cry Primal

Next, we moved to a more recent game, released in 2016. Ubisoft's latest open-world first-person hunting game is one of the most demanding titles we use, thanks to its lush foliage, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments. We'll start by taking a look at the Ultra Preset test...

The Vega 56 performed much better on this test, slightly outpacing the GTX 1070 at the two higher test resolutions. It also managed to edge out the Radeon R9 Fury X at all three test resolutions.

Tom Clancy's The Division

Our latest DirectX 12-supporting game-benchmark addition is Ubisoft's popular third-person open-world RPG shooter. It's set in a near-future New York City in the midst of a pandemic. We use the Ultra preset at each test resolution.

Here we saw the Vega 56 outpace the GTX 1070 at all three resolutions, although by just 4fps at 1440p and 2fps at 4K. AMD's lesser Vega card also bested the Radeon R9 Fury X at all three resolutions by slightly larger margins.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft rises once again in the early 2016 iteration of Square Enix's long-running action franchise. As our hero works to unfold an ancient mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) ahead of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather system and Lara's wind-tousled hair add to the game's visual complexity. We're using the Very High preset here, under DX12...

Here we have another hotly contested round of testing. The GTX 1070 edged out the Vega 56 at all three resolutions, but by just a few frames in each case. The Vega 56 beat the Radeon R9 Fury X at all resolutions, although at 4K it's close enough to call a tie.

Hitman (2016)

The newest game in the Hitman franchise finds Agent 47 turning over a new leaf, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery as a teacher at a school for underprivileged children. Just kidding, of course; he kills loads of people in this one, just like the rest. It does offer gorgeous graphics in both DX11 and DX12 varieties, though.

Even though DX11 and DX12 look effectively the same in this benchmark, in our experience, we decided to use the DX12 setting only here, because no matter how much you're spending, you're going to want to know how well your new card will perform on the latest settings.

In another close competition, the GTX 1070 once again edged out the Vega 56 at all three test resolutions, but again, just barely. Indeed, as with many of our test games, you'd need to run a controlled benchmark session to make out the difference. The Radeon R9 Fury X was right behind the Vega 56 at 1440p, and it managed to edge out the newer card at 4K, despite having half the high-bandwidth memory.

This is the first Futuremark 3DMark test using DirectX 12. Per the developers, "With its pure DirectX 12 engine, built from the ground up to support new features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is an ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards."

Back to synthetic benchmarks for our last DX12 test, and we essentially have a tie between the Vega 56 and the GTX 1070, with less than a percentage-point difference between the two. The Radeon R9 Fury X trailed the Vega 56 here by about 7 percent, indicating AMD's newer architecture is better suited to the newer API—which we'd expect.

From the maker of 3DMark comes its first VR benchmark. No headset is required to run the trial, if you'd like to test your own rig before jumping into a VR-headset investment.

VR has high hardware requirements, so this test is designed to show overall capability for VR. As we mentioned earlier on, we ran the Orange Room subtest.

This time, the GTX 1070 scored about 6 percent higher than the Vega 56, while the Vega 56 in turn finished about 18 percent higher than the R9 Fury X. Still, since the baseline for VR on the AMD side of things is the RX 480 or the newer RX 580 and 570, the Vega 56 should be able to handle current VR games easily, as well as those of the near future.

Conclusion

In the end, we're left feeling much the same way about the Radeon RX Vega 56 as we did about the higher-end Vega 64. This lesser Vega card did a somewhat better job trading jabs with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 in our tests than the Vega 64 did against the GTX 1080. But the two cards were close enough to call it a tie on raw performance—especially if you have a particular monitor in mind that favors one company's card or the other (FreeSync for AMD, or G-Sync for Nvidia).

Beyond that, while the Vega 56 has the same power/efficiency issues compared to current-generation Nvidia cards as the Vega 64 does, the differences with this card are less drastic. Just know that you still may need a higher-wattage power supply if you opt for a Vega over a GTX 1070. There's a 150-watt disparity in suggested minimum power supplies for the two cards. AMD's cards are definitely power-hungrier.

A possible big X-factor here for some small subset of buyers could be the "Radeon Red Pack" bundle that AMD is offering around the Vega 56. The Radeon Red Pack is a $100-uptick option (it costs $499) versus buying the card alone ($399), and it can certainly sweeten the deal. With the Red Pack, you get two free games (Prey, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, in the United States), a $200 discount on the 34-inch ultrawide Samsung CF791 FreeSync monitor ($986.41 at Amazon) , and $100 off certain Ryzen 7 processors and motherboards, bought together. You need to buy any of this hardware from the same retailer that sells you the Red Pack, and at the same time in the same purchase.

If you were considering a high-end monitor and a new AMD-based PC build from the ground up, $300 in hardware savings, plus about $120 in free games, means the Radeon RX Vega 56 purchase (in its bundle form) technically could more than pay for itself. But just be sure to shop carefully. Because (a) you'll need to make all those purchases at the same time of purchase to get the discounts, and (b) if the monitor, CPU, or motherboard (or any combination of those three) wind up being cheaper somewhere other than where you buy the bundle, that seemingly sweet Red Pack could leave you with some sour-apple aftertaste if you don't do your research before clicking the buy button.

Can Vega 56 run 4K?

Yes I can do 4K@60 8-bit RGB 4:4:4.

Is the Radeon Vega 56 good?

the Vega 56 gets my seal of approval for its 1080p. performance it's still killing it at 1080p. yes it's not going to run every game at Ultra you will have to lower some settings to get 60 FPS in the newer AAA games.

How old is the RX Vega 56?

The Radeon RX Vega 56 is a high-end graphics card by AMD, launched on August 14th, 2017.

What is the Vega 56 equivalent to?

Performance-wise, the RX Vega 56 is comparable to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070, and thus best categorized as upper middle-class.