Is vega a failure?

[Not_Sean]

guys a lot of really good points been made here, but please for the love of god stop going on about a year old. the time is irrelevant if the same product is still been sold. a car stays the same over 4+ years until its given a facelift, if you buy in the first or last year its still the exact same product. 

 

Same thing for the GPU, the guys who pre ordered a 1080 a year ago and me walking into a shop right now are getting the exact same product. so the fact that a "Year old" card keeps up with the latest the time isn't important, as until a new one comes out this is the latest. Its Geforce Generation 10xx Vs Vega (1st gen??) when volta comes out than Radeon will fire its new generation and than we compare. 

[Frankenburger]

17 minutes ago, Not_Sean said:

guys a lot of really good points been made here, but please for the love of god stop going on about a year old. the time is irrelevant if the same product is still been sold. a car stays the same over 4+ years until its given a facelift, if you buy in the first or last year its still the exact same product. 

 

Same thing for the GPU, the guys who pre ordered a 1080 a year ago and me walking into a shop right now are getting the exact same product. so the fact that a "Year old" card keeps up with the latest the time isn't important, as until a new one comes out this is the latest. Its Geforce Generation 10xx Vs Vega (1st gen??) when volta comes out than Radeon will fire its new generation and than we compare. 

Except Vega isn't offering anything new or better in comparison, which is what a lot of people wanted. It's a new product with last year's features. It's a perfectly valid complaint to have when comparing competing products. It's much different than buying a product that's actually a year old.

[Not_Sean]

2 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

Except Vega isn't offering anything new, which is what a lot of people want. It's a new product with last year's features. It's a perfectly valid complaint to have when comparing competing products.

so if I buy a 1080 in Jan 2017 can I complain that its a card with two year old features ? no because its still the same generation. its still the same product and until there is a new one with new features I can't compare. Vega matches a 1080, it has the same features (Ignoring the Spec's, ie it has the same gen connectors and such)  until there is something like Displayport3 that a 1080 has that the vega doesn't the year gap is still irrelevant. 

 

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the difference or the fact that the vega is power hungry or any of its failings or Pro's must be forgotten I'm just saying the age thing is pointless. Every other +/- is very valid. I don't yet know how I feel about vega, against the 1070 it looks good, but until i see more prices from partners as I'll never go for a blower again its hard. I'll prob rather go for the Green team as I've just had a better experience with them. 

[HisEvilness]

New prices came out not sure how solid they are but the 56 is now 500 USD MSRP.

[Frankenburger]

11 minutes ago, Not_Sean said:

so if I buy a 1080 in Jan 2017 can I complain that its a card with two year old features ? no because its still the same generation. its still the same product and until there is a new one with new features I can't compare. Vega matches a 1080, it has the same features (Ignoring the Spec's, ie it has the same gen connectors and such)  until there is something like Displayport3 that a 1080 has that the vega doesn't the year gap is still irrelevant. 

Except what you're not understanding is Vega isn't the same generation as Pascal. It's a newer GPU with updated architectures that struggles to match last year's competition.

[Deedot78]

Vega 56 no, decent value. Vega 64 maybe.  Drivers still have a way to go. But this rumored price hike  is concerning. 

[Jon Jon]

2 hours ago, Not_Sean said:

so if I buy a 1080 in Jan 2017 can I complain that its a card with two year old features ? no because its still the same generation. its still the same product and until there is a new one with new features I can't compare. Vega matches a 1080, it has the same features (Ignoring the Spec's, ie it has the same gen connectors and such)  until there is something like Displayport3 that a 1080 has that the vega doesn't the year gap is still irrelevant. 

 

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the difference or the fact that the vega is power hungry or any of its failings or Pro's must be forgotten I'm just saying the age thing is pointless. Every other +/- is very valid. I don't yet know how I feel about vega, against the 1070 it looks good, but until i see more prices from partners as I'll never go for a blower again its hard. I'll prob rather go for the Green team as I've just had a better experience with them. 

I see where you are going with your argument, but it's proving the "too little too late" aspect of the counter argument.

 

People who wanted this level of performance already got GTX 1070s and 1080s at launch.

 

Those people also have the GTX 1080TI which is currently not much more than a Vega 64 since all I've seen them cost is $599 and $699 for the standard air cooled version.

 

In this instance, NVIDIA beat AMD to the market with this performance already. This product really only appeals to people who already invested into Freesync TBH, or people that want a combination of GPGPU performance along with gaming, where the Vega 56 seems to scratch that sweet spot in performance and the latter.

 

I get the feeling that Vega was simply a total botch job and they started focusing on Navi ages ago to make up for what may have become an R&D money pit.

[WhiteSkyMage]

13 hours ago, Frankenburger said:

Except Vega isn't offering anything new or better in comparison, which is what a lot of people wanted. It's a new product with last year's features. It's a perfectly valid complaint to have when comparing competing products. It's much different than buying a product that's actually a year old.

Sorry to disappoint you, but actually Vega does have features that Pascal does not, that may not be relevant today, but if you think people upgrade every 1-2 years, you are wrong. Many people like myself prefer to stay with the same GPU for 3-4 years. And as you can see, games are demanding more performance and more memory. I chose back then to buy a GTX 980 just cuz it had 4GB of vram and not 3.5. Is 4 gigs really enough for me to drive the newest games at ultrawide 2K this year? NOPE - it's a power point presentation... Perhaps if I had HBCC, it would have helped somewhat with that. Vega will appeal to people who want to keep their GPU for longer, and also, take into account that many of the features they've talked about are still not enabled. I don't know how much performance gain they would get for supporting fully DX12_1, but there is a room for a lot of improvement. Id assume we will see Vega gaining performance similarly to RX 480 and 470, which got beaten by 1060 at first, but later on returned with drivers...I will wait until AIB cards and buy Vega 64 next month together with a FreeSync monitor.

[Mihle]

If I get Vega only depends on the price of it where I live compared to 1080/1070, when AIB cards came out.

Freesync is cheeper than Gsync, so even if Vega costs same or tiny bit more than 1080/1070, i might still get it.

[megaemil]

19 hours ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

How much is 1kW in Denmark? For me it's 0.25 CHF in Switzerland, and that is 0.26 USD. If I did the math id be paying $7/month for 2 hours gaming a day (which is all i have time for these days), if my PC consumes 470W power with RX Vega. Hell my lunch is 10chf a day. So there is no reason for me to care about power. If you are that afraid that your power bill would go up by $50 USD if you were to buy RX Vega, then by all means, go with nVidia. I don't see a problem if you were to pay $10 a month for the high power consumption of Vega, because $10 is NOTHING.

In Denmark 1KWH is about 0.31 USD. My pc is on about 8 hours a day, about 4 are spent on gaming. If we say we dont care about idle loads that makes for 4 hours of roughly 400W usage (its not at full load) for Vega and 250 for my Nvidia setup. So for Vega thats 1,6Kwh and Nvidia 1kwh for a day thats 0,48 usd and Nvidia 0,31 usd, difference of 17 cents a day which i admit is not alot, though it is the same graphics power and all that extra heat has to go somewhere. So after a week i save 1,19 usd after a year its 61,88 usd. So its no longer 50 bucks less i payed but 12 i spent on extra power and this just keeps rolling.

That said beefier cooling also comes at a price. Some may not care that their fans need to be at 50-60% usage or higher, but for some who strives towards a silent PC without going for a custom loop, a higher TDP (which equals more heat and higher noise levels) is not acceptable, not a year after the competition did the very thing.

 

TL:DR

In case i wasnt clear my main issue was that AMD is a full year behind Nvidia and not delivering the same amount of power efficiency, As i said i wanted AMD to kick Nvidia's ASS!!! with Vega, but i'm bummed it didnt happen.

Also pricing in Denmark on Vega cards are already getting ridiculous in LTT's test only the watercooled VEGA 64 could stay ahead the 1080 consistently those are a already a full 100 usd more expensive or even more depending on where you buy or from which AIB than a 1080, Some places its actually cheaper to get a 1080ti 

[Frankenburger]

23 minutes ago, megaemil said:

In Denmark 1KWH is about 0.31 USD. My pc is on about 8 hours a day, about 4 are spent on gaming. If we say we dont care about idle loads that makes for 4 hours of roughly 400W usage (its not at full load) for Vega and 250 for my Nvidia setup. So for Vega thats 1,6Kwh and Nvidia 1kwh for a day thats 0,48 usd and Nvidia 0,31 usd, difference of 17 cents a day which i admit is not alot, though it is the same graphics power and all that extra heat has to go somewhere.

There's also an additional cost of running the AC to keep the room comfortable. An extra 150W usage can increase ambient temperatures by a decent amount. It's a pretty safe bet that you'd be spending more than an extra 17 cents a day if you live in a hot climate that requires AC.

 

Also

 

 

There's an ongoing discussion on the topic of cost per kWh here