KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Overclocking support is very flaky with Vega at the moment. Our Vega64 testing showed that the performance driver for the card had a bug which made it seem like the card could overclock above 1900MHz but the frequency never actually operated on the GPU.
The OC-specific driver sent over by AMD looks to be holding the GPU at its intended frequency. However, clock speeds rarely seem to increase as high as they should given the % increases quoted in WattMan.
We started our brief overclocking session using WattMan by increasing the power target to 50%, setting the fan to around 78%, and using default voltage. This allowed us to hit a frequency increase of 10% with stability.
Clock speeds throughout the five runs of Fire Strike Ultra Stress Test were in the region of 1480-1500MHz (mainly around 1480MHz). During the Fire Strike Ultra benchmark run, the core speed was around 1530-1570MHz (mainly around 1530MHz) and performance increased by around 6%. Power draw from the wall increased by around 80W to around 480W when overclocked.
Unless board partner cards or more stable drivers from AMD can aid the limited overclocking performance, Vega56 may become less appealing against GTX 1070s that can overclock very well.
If… this Vega56 could be had not (as now) this blower edition, could be bought in the market without the profiteering inflicted on it… And this is the biggest, if there were 1440p monitors with FreeSync and those weren’t marked-up well beyond the mainstream 1440p. Only then might this have viable appeal.
At this time plunking down the “overage” to move into such upgrade levels of hardware is not a move many should be looking toward. 1440p feels almost past its’ prime or seems bowled-over by a more robust infusion of 4K. So you you’ll be ahead to hold and wait, entry 4K is not that far off with close to a similar cash out-lay of such inflated hardware.
I wish reviewers would stop benching GTA5. It’s ancient and no longer graphically demanding but most importantly, it doesn’t seem to be optimized at all for AMD cards.
As for the power profiles, if the 56 is anything like the 64, the ‘balanced’ mode should only effect performance by 5% but reduce power consumption by 10-30W.
People127s
Office66s
But GTA5 is a really popular game still, and prospective buyers want to see how the card performs on a game they play.
And @LukeHill are you going to reduce the rating of this card after it was revealed that AMD’s introductory price was nowhere near the actual price, thus making the 56 not so much of a great deal for price/performance?
I’m an AMD fan and plan on buying a Vega 56 Monday (Aug 28) if possible. I still play it so it matters to me. I am aware GTAV does significantly worse on AMD though, which is exactly why it won’t deter me from purchasing Vega.