Vega 56 or 1070ti

[Bananamuffin]

I'm thinking about upgrading my GPU towards the end of Jan 2019 and I'm trying to decide between 1070ti and Vega 56. 

 

Currently Vega 56 is @ £360 for strix edition. 

Cheapest 1070ti is @ £370/80 but the more appealing/beefier versions are @£409 ish. 

 

Either one I pick I'm going to need a new PSU, currently got a 500w 80+ gold by Silverstone (I believe). 1070ti would just get by on it but it's cutting it too close for my liking. 

 

PSU will be an additional ~£70-80

 

Pros for 1070ti: it is undoubtedly faster

Cons for 1070ti: it'll cost £400 +PSU

 

Pros for Vega: it's cheaper, comes with 3 free games, freesync

Cons: it's not as powerful

 

Either card will be paired with a ryzen 1600x @4ghz and 16gb ram @3000mhz

I have a 1080p freesync panel but range only goes up to 72hz

 

Which should I pick? I could get away with not getting a new PSU for the 1070ti but I will have no choice with Vega. 

 

Currently all Vega reviews are back dated for when the Vega was completely overpriced due to mining. 

 

Sorry if formatting is horrible; on Mobile. 

 

Thanks!

[Quadriplegic]

Vega 56 Pulse can be found for around 320 pounds and is better card than Strix. Strix is one of the worst after market Vega cards, all you pay for is Asus tax.

Vega 56 also has more tweaking room, it can match performance of 1070 Ti. 

Getting another Freesync monitor will be cheaper than Gsync monitor

[Bananamuffin]

8 minutes ago, Quadriplegic said:

Vega 56 Pulse can be found for around 320 pounds and is better card than Strix. Strix is one of the worst after market Vega cards, all you pay for is Asus tax.

Vega 56 also has more tweaking room, it can match performance of 1070 Ti. 

Getting another Freesync monitor will be cheaper than Gsync monitor

I had no idea that the strix one was just Asus tax :0 thank you for pointing that out

[Jurrunio]

10 minutes ago, Quadriplegic said:

Vega 56 Pulse can be found for around 320 pounds and is better card than Strix. Strix is one of the worst after market Vega cards, all you pay for is Asus tax.

How is Strix worse in performance? I'm interested for someone to make bold claims like that. Strix boards are more of a joke than being good, but not cards as far as I'm aware.

[Bananamuffin]

the strix comes with a higher clock out of the box, but clock isn't always the whole story. Either way I was more concerned with the value between the two

[leo1798]

The real question is what kind of monitor do you have? Do you have a FreeSync or GSync display? Is your monitor at a high refresh rate or a high resolution or both? Or are you planning to upgrade?

[Bananamuffin]

I have a 1080p Freesync with a range of 40ish to 72hz

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Strix boards are more of a joke than being good, but not cards as far as I'm aware.

Uhh, what? No

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Uhh, what? No

^^ In my experience they've been solid, a lot of their newer ones (and most of the new TUF series) are bleh but my Z370-A, Crosshair VII Hero, and Rampage III Formula (good ole X58 board) have been great. Especially the Rampage, I've put that thing through hell derping around in the BIOS with random OC/voltage settings and thought I've killed it but then it just keeps coming back and working.

[Ebony Falcon]

If u already got a free sync monitor get the vega and turn fps counter off 

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

8 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

^^ In my experience they've been solid, a lot of their newer ones (and most of the new TUF series) are bleh but my Z370-A, Crosshair VII Hero, and Rampage III Formula (good ole X58 board) have been great. Especially the Rampage, I've put that thing through hell derping around in the BIOS with random OC/voltage settings and thought I've killed it but then it just keeps coming back and working.

The TUF boards are a ...TUF sell for me these days (I'm not sorry) but the PRIMEs are the shit and my Z370-E has been solid. The Z390 offerings aren't the best but the Z370 ones are solid

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

The TUF boards are a ...TUF sell for me these days

TUF was ASUS top of the line "military graded" motherboards back on x99 days, then it become an alternative entry level with a bunch of cheap plastic nowadays on z370 / z390 boards.

 

ASUS is no longer a senseful alternative for motherboards, their Strix cards though are still alright mainly because like MSi Gaming X it's a good cooler that works and just gets refreshed over and over.

 

The other components wise aren't any better than reference PCB though.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

TUF was ASUS top of the line "military graded" motherboards back on x99 days, then it become an alternative entry level with a bunch of cheap plastic nowadays on z370 / z390 boards.

 

ASUS is no longer a senseful alternative for motherboards, their Strix cards though are still alright mainly because like MSi Gaming X it's a good cooler that works and just gets refreshed over and over.

 

The other components wise aren't any better than reference PCB though.

Good cooler though and if you don't OC too much it's fine. Boards wise yeah the Z390 stuff is disappointing but I love the BIOS and both my Z370 boards have been excellent overclockers

[Princess Luna]

3 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

s

Just because it overclocks and works on a short period of time, yes months to a year is still a short period of time, doesn't mean it's ideal.

 

VRMs heating sometimes up to 20Cº more than similar priced Gigabyte Aorus boards is really not good, ASUS is becoming more about marketing just like Razer and other known low quality high marketing brands out there.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Just because it overclocks and works on a short period of time, yes months to a year is still a short period of time, doesn't mean it's ideal.

 

VRMs heating sometimes up to 20Cº more than similar priced Gigabyte Aorus boards is really not good, ASUS is becoming more about marketing just like Razer and other known low quality high marketing brands out there.

Problem is the Gigabyte BIOS is even worse than MSi one (actually not too bad these days if my X370 Pro Carbon and a Z270 board I was working with recentl are anything to  go on)

[Princess Luna]

2 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

)

Bad in the sense of User Interface? From my own Gigabyte Z370M D3H I can tell the BIOS is not refined in the UI, sure, but it has all the "options" you need.

 

Broke a personal record of 1421cb points on a locked i7 8700 (all thermal and power limits off, BCLK overclock) which was pretty neat, I don't personally have complains while I understand Gigabyte could use affording this "visual upgrade" by now.

[Emanbaird]

15 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Bad in the sense of User Interface? From my own Gigabyte Z370M D3H I can tell the BIOS is not refined in the UI, sure, but it has all the "options" you need.

 

Broke a personal record of 1421cb points on a locked i7 8700 (all thermal and power limits off, BCLK overclock) which was pretty neat, I don't personally have complains while I understand Gigabyte could use affording this "visual upgrade" by now.

You can BCLK overclock on a 8700?  how would i go about doing that on a non-k CPU? and do you need a overclocking board

[Princess Luna]

4 minutes ago, Emanbaird said:

You can BCLK overclock on a 8700?  how would i go about doing that on a non-k CPU? and do you need a overclocking board

Yeah to mess around with the BCLK you need an overclockable board and don't bother there's an artificial limitation on the Intel Management micro-code that kinda makes this process pointless.

 

I only have an i7 8700 with this Z370M board because this was purchased literally on the release month when the i7 8700 was significantly cheaper than the i7 8700K and we only had z370 motherboards on the market thus why I took the cheapest one I found.

[Emanbaird]

12 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Yeah to mess around with the BCLK you need an overclockable board and don't bother there's an artificial limitation on the Intel Management micro-code that kinda makes this process pointless.

  

I only have an i7 8700 with this Z370M board because this was purchased literally on the release month when the i7 8700 was significantly cheaper than the i7 8700K and we only had z370 motherboards on the market thus why I took the cheapest one I found.

Cry, the 8700 is still a killer for gaming even non-overclocked, what does it let you get the base-clock to? i really need to do my research, last time i heard about overclocking non-overclockable CPU's was the 6000 series from intel 

[Quadriplegic]

5 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

How is Strix worse in performance? I'm interested for someone to make bold claims like that. Strix boards are more of a joke than being good, but not cards as far as I'm aware.

I need to double check, but if I remember right, V64 Nitro+ had better performance out of the box than Strix 64, the difference got only bigger once overclocked. 

Out of the box Sapphire V56 cards are pretty much equal to Strix version, but the still have more OC headroom due to issues with Strix design (something along the lines of overheating VRMs and coldplate not making good contact with GPU die?)

 

[RogueLizard]

6 hours ago, Bananamuffin said:

I'm thinking about upgrading my GPU towards the end of Jan 2019 and I'm trying to decide between 1070ti and Vega 56. 

Okay, here's my obviously biased answer.

 

Do you like AMD, or nVidia? Go with the company you like more and have had better experiences with.

 

On a personal basis, AMD's piss-poor IPC on FM2+ made me go with Intel and the R9 furnaces AMD crapped out made me go with nVidia.

 

The 1070 Ti is the better performer and can be found for $250 at the cheapest used here in the US. The Vega 56 goes for $300+ here in the US.

 

The Vega 56 is about 10% slower on a pure performance basis, and that can drop significantly in games that use proprietary nVidia tech like Fallout 4 (NVFlex, etc).

 

nVidia also typically has better thermal monitoring and cooling solutions than AMD does.

 

If it were me in your shoes I would buy a 1070 Ti.

[Jurrunio]

6 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

but the PRIMEs are the shit and my Z370-E has been solid.

Funny that you say that, the mosfets on the Strix boards (except the Z370-H), which are the SiRA14 and SiRA12, do no better than the 4C09B and pair of 4C06B used by the prime, TUF and Z370-H boards. If you think Strix boards are good, just put a fan on top of the Primes and they will do just as well (Prime does have weak heatsinks).

 

6 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

The Z390 offerings aren't the best but the Z370 ones are solid

Z390 Strix boards (aside from the Z390-H) are better than Z370 ones as the mosfets are improved to be the NCP302045. Finally getting mid range stuff on a mid range product..

6 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

 

The other components wise aren't any better than reference PCB though.

to be fair the reference Vega cards have overkill components, so no better than reference is not something to be ashamed of.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

29 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Funny that you say that, the mosfets on the Strix boards (except the Z370-H), which are the SiRA14 and SiRA12, do no better than the 4C09B and pair of 4C06B used by the prime, TUF and Z370-H boards. If you think Strix boards are good, just put a fan on top of the Primes and they will do just as well (Prime does have weak heatsinks).

 

Z390 Strix boards (aside from the Z390-H) are better than Z370 ones as the mosfets are improved to be the NCP302045. Finally getting mid range stuff on a mid range product..

to be fair the reference Vega cards have overkill components, so no better than reference is not something to be ashamed of.

Yeah that's fair

[pstarlord]

13 hours ago, Quadriplegic said:

Vega 56 Pulse can be found for around 320 pounds and is better card than Strix. Strix is one of the worst after market Vega cards, all you pay for is Asus tax.

Vega 56 also has more tweaking room, it can match performance of 1070 Ti. 

Getting another Freesync monitor will be cheaper than Gsync monitor

Where are you getting the numbers for the Stix Vega 56 being "one of the worst" Vega cards?  Every benchmark I've ever seen, and I've done a lot of digging on Vega, has the Nitro+ Vega 56 and Strix Vega 56 as being the two best performing and most overclockable of all the Vega cards out there.  I'm not being snarky, I'm legit curious. 

[pstarlord]

I'm getting into this a little late I see, but my personal vote is for Vega.  Been using a Vega 56 for a few months now (Sapphire NItro+) and haven't had any problems with it.  The AMD Wattman software just got a pretty cool update as well, giving you more control with over clocking, and fan curve.  Plus, ya know, save a bunch of money by not paying for G Sync.