OntarioTL

Um how could Vega 56 go up in price when it's not even released yet? It's not out until the 28th. Vega may not beat a 1080Ti, but it's not trash. Power consumption is always an AMD Achilles heal. Since he is with a 290 setup, I don't think power consumption will be an issue as it will be less than a 290 using a Vega 56. Back to Pico's question So if you want to stay with an AMD eco system, the Vega 56 is a good buy as long as prices don't spike like they did with the Vega 64. And my advice is to jump on it on day one of release if you can before prices may spike. Limited stock and miners cleaning up stock is the issue lately. I know you want to get a third party cooler edition, but the fan on my Vega 64 isn't that bad. No where near a jet sound when I game compared to the 290 OEM fan. Sounds like you are willing to wait for an aftermarket cooler. If you are running in 1080p, the 290 is still a good gaming card that can tide you over. Although if mining is a big craze where you are, you probably can get the best selling price for your 290 at the moment. Well a month ago it went through the roof for used 290's. Remember, Vega 56 just came out with beta drivers that don't show the complete performance of the GPU. Nvidia's already ringed out the best performance of the 1070 since its one year old and Nvidia usually has the best driver performance from the get go. AMD improves over time hense the fine wine tag line. So even though 1070 is just barely worse in performance, where is it going to stand in 6 months? Plus Vega has tech that hasn't been explored yet. As for price, Nvidia will be jumping in cost as well since GDDR memory is going up in price as well. I already noticed the rise in cost of the 1080ti since I was debating a Vega64 or going back to Nvidia. So either mining or rising parts for cards is not good for either a Nvidia and AMD consumer. So the answer to your question is just get either card that will make you happy if you have no desire to stay in a particular manufacture eco system. No choice is a bad one as it's your money and decision. Just remember you still own a capable card if you are running in 1080p. And since you've owned the card for 3 years, Vega could possibly have that longevity as well. Either card you decide however, If you are indeed running in 1080p, you might want to considrer upgrading to a 1440p to stretch these newer cards legs. Freesync for AMD or GSync for Nvidia is a good option as well.

I finally installed the card tonight after some benchmarking of my old 290x's in crossfire to compare what I got myself into. Plus, I wanted to share my results with an Ultrawide as there isn't much posted results for us who own one. This should help who are curious what Vega 64 can do with a few titles at the moment. Sorry for the crude chart, but it should give an idea of the frame rates and power draw I got from the wall. What have I learned from this? Well it looks like it's true that balanced mode is the best setting to use for the most part. And for the record, I did not fuss with power limits or anything like that. I kept it all at the default settings to show the performance without any tweaks. These aren't the best drivers, it's not called beta for nothing. I can see they concentrated on a few games and others really need work such as Tomb Raider. This card is in dire need of a water block. Heat wasn't that bad really, reached a max temp of 82c, but I rather keep the clock speed at the ceiling for the setting I chose. Not bounce all over the place. As expected the power used is not spectacular. AMD has never been great in this regard since it became part of the discussion for GPU's for sometime now. It was nice when it was all about brute force and who gives a shit how much power it sucks. Well since my 290x was another power hungry GPU, it's good to see at least Vega 64 not toppling over power draw when crossfire was enabled with the 290x. Speaking of crossfire, damn wish recent games would support the damn option. Looking from the graph I could have kept going on with my almost 4 year old cards. Now I did come across coil whine. I can happily say it only happened during the load intro screen for Doom as it was running at 5400 fps. Besides that, no other time did I experience coil whine. Not even close to what the 290x's had. Fan noise is a big improvement for me compared to the 290x OEM fan. It wasn't a distraction at all. Thank god I watercooled the 290x's soon after the install. Even though Vega's fan doesn't bother me, I still want it watercooled nonetheless. So am I happy with the purchase? Yes and no. Plus is I can game with one card that has great avg frame rates and minimum frame rates that would stay in the LG's Freesync range. And have everything cranked to boot. PUBG looks so good on high and it's now thankfully playable instead of all low settings. That's why I really wanted to upgrade to stay within the monitors freesync range even after modding it to have a range of 35-75 instead of 55-75 without flicker. Tomb raider has a deceiving low minimum record as there is one second glitch that freezes during benchmarking that of course is recorded. If I had recorded different score from the 3 scenes for benchmark it would have been better, but it seems like that scene is the norm for testing. With that said by the way, oh boy did I miss freesync during the testing. Watching the benchmarks in between watching the kill-a-watt meter I couldn't stand the tearing and perceived studdering. I can't live without Freesync. I've even debated about upgrading from the 75hz LG to one of those Korean 100Hz panels. Looks like Vega can utilize some of the frames above 75hz, but not by much for some games. Hopefully that improves soon. The no part of the equation is I wish crossfire was properly supported. With Freesync and the results of the benchmarks, I can clearly see two 290x's can beat a single Vega 64. That saddens me. It's great that I get better performance with a single Vega, but come on! I really thought Vega would beat out a crossfired 290x setup especially when I paid the same for a pair of 290s compared to just one Vega. I guess that's a no for the moment with Ultrawide. The other is no DVI for my Korean 1440p secondary monitor. Sure I don't overclock it to 120hz anymore but now its dark on the wall on top of my ultrawide monitor. Guess I'll have to hunt down a dual link DVI to HDMI cable. It's a damn shame that more people can't own one with all the BS going on with price gouging and miners taking most of the limited stock again. Whether Vega 64 is mocked for not beating a 1080ti and going back and forth with a 1080 with more power usage. We all should have the right to at least take a chance on buying one and discuss what you bought instead of bitching about availability and the price rising. Now just waiting for a waterblock and better drivers.

Yes

Nah, already explained why I stuck with RED. Don't need green. Already have one in my HTPC which does fine with that task as it really doesn't game anymore. My 290x's did well for almost 4 years and I could have left it a little longer, but I want better minimums for freesync.

I was about to pull the trigger on the liquid version on Newegg only I took too long to add to cart and they were gone in a matter of minutes. Then I pre-ordered at another online store as it said ETA of the 15th. I decided to get the liquid edition as I really didn't want to put on another aftermarket waterblock. I thought I would go the easy route this time. However, stock didn't arrive as planned (really no surprise) and they had no idea when. I decided to hang on to hope until late last night. I check my local store for real time stock and they had the black air cooled in stock (4 of them). This morning I get up head over to stand in front of the door before opening and well......they now have 3 in stock and the liquid order is cancelled. I will just get a EK wb when it comes out. I'm a proud owner of a year delayed card I am a little salty with the pricing in my own backyard enough that I seriously thought about going green with a 1080ti and a gsync monitor. However, owning a freesync ultrawide monitor already I'm in with the red eco system. To replace with a Gsync ultrawide is probably more cost prohibitive than it looks on paper. Sure I can get more performance with a Ti but besides the extra cost for another monitor for G-Sync, another reason that compelled me to stick with AMD is the reason below. I took a chance on pair of R9 290 cards when they first came out even though everyone *****ed about how power and heat where through the roof and kept telling me I should have bought a 780ti instead. I just used waterblocks to ease that pain and for almost 4 years they have served me well especially when I was able to flash them to a 290X easily. I certainly hope Vega can repeat at least 3 of those years. Thinking back if I had of bought a 780Ti, I probably would have upgraded at least 3 more times in that period. Sure Nvidia still has the performance crown, but being happy with a card that lasted almost 4 years while my wallet fattened up makes up for it. Yes I paid the same for 2 290's almost 4 years ago for just one card this time, but at least I don't have to worry about xfire anymore. I'm going to do some ultrawide 1440p benchmarks with my old 290(x)'s xfired if possible along with a killawatt meter and then compare it to the Vega card shortly. I'm really curious to see what I get.

I'm curious as well to what cooler you are planning to install as well. It would seem to be ridiculous to have screws that long below the motherboard.

The easier way is to just remove the motherboard to install whatever you are thinking of using and placing it back in the original case. The hole is just an easier access point for what you wish to do. Older cases didn't even have this option. Another way to put it, you have to remove the motherboard to make the cut anyways. So why go all through that hassle to cut, then reinstall motherboard just to install the new backplate after the fact? Skip the cutting part I'd say.

Yes, according to asus website it supports the 7700 with the version 3016 bios and beyond.

My bad. I thought this motherboard had the usb flash button that would wok without a cpu installed. Guess that option is on higher end mb's from Asus. Yes you are right M.A.P. Again, I guess that feature is still on higher end mb's. Yes, that should work if it is indeed the need for flashing the bios and not a fault of the motherboard. The signs lean toward a flash though.

Your friend might be on the right track. Have you tried flashing the bios to the latest? I realize it is the for the 6th gen, but an update to the bios supports the 7700 series. Since the board supports ezflash, you should be able to just use a usb stick to update without the need for cpu installed.

Glad you figured it out.

Sorry, to me it seems like this makes no sense. You claim everything inside the PC works, but no visual. So does that mean you get a post screen then no windows boot screen? My second question is why were you trying to get into safe mode in the first place. We are trying to help but you seem to be leaving some information out that might flick a light bulb in our mind and suggest a helpful tip.

What O/S are you using? Does the PC even post and just has a black screen, or do you even get to see the post screen?

I'd say wait for Vega. Even if you have your heart set on a GTX1080, and Vega beats it in price and performance you know Nvidia will drop the price to compete.

The choice is up to you. If you are in a hurry to build, then buy all at once. Jnkokseby does have a point about buying piece by piece as things may drop in price. However, if you find it on sale at a deep discount, that is pretty much a wash. The only thing that may have some merit to dropping in price while you pick piece by piece is the GPU. Since it's likely Vega wont be out until at least July now, any drops wont come soon enough. CPU's probably wont drop much further as AMD brought out Ryzen which already has a good price, and it seems like Intel is sticking to their guns of staying the course of their SKU pricing. RAM, well that's a whole different story. It's like electronic oil. Prices are never predictable with the RAM consortium (mafia).