New GPU - 1070 vs Vega 56

[directhex]

Howdy y'all

Building a new PC for the wife, and hung up on GPU choice. I had originally opted for a GeForce 1070, but they seem to have gone up in price, and are way out of my comfort zone.

The nearest equivalent from AMD seems to be the Vega 56, which gives roughly the same benchmark numbers for the same money but eats 100W more power to do it. The obvious choice there is the GeForce.

But

If I factor in the cost of a monitor, everything changes? A 4K G-Sync screen starts at $700, whereas 4K Freesync starts at $300.

Am I missing something here?

[shaithis]

Seems there's a bigger picture here.....are you buying a monitor as well? Is there a requirement for 4K? Do you have to game at 4K? If your on a budget, should G-Sync/Freesync come into the picture?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Go for the GTX1070 it you want smaller cards,lower power consumption and lower purchase costs.

OTH,if you want a card to support some future tech,I would probably go for the Vega56 which tends to also be a tad faster overall but costs a bit more. It has support for things like FP16,etc which the PS4 PRO has and the next FarCry and Wolfenstein have,and the XBox One X has Vega derived shaders,and it has probably the best future DX12 support of any current card in its bracket.

However,at least in the UK you can get a GTX1080 for Vega 56 money too if you shop around,and that does sway it favour of the GTX1080.

[directhex]

Seems there's a bigger picture here.....are you buying a monitor as well? Is there a requirement for 4K? Do you have to game at 4K? If your on a budget, should G-Sync/Freesync come into the picture?

It's part of a whole system upgrade, so the plan is to get a monitor as well, within the year if not immediately. And, again, 4K is part of it because if not then why replace a 1440p display with another 1440p display?

However,at least in the UK you can get a GTX1080 for Vega 56 money too if you shop around,and that does sway it favour of the GTX1080.

In these parts, the cheapest 1070 is $394, and cheapest Vega 56 is $454. 1080 starts at $499

[Millennium]

I am happy with my choice of Vega 56 which I got as soon as it came out for around £380. I don't know if it's worth much more than that. But as you say, freesync is much cheaper than Gsync, and if you're in the market for a new monitor and the difference is as large as you say, it's a no brainer.

There is also some talk of hardware specific Vega features not being enabled (for games at least) in the current driver, so a future driver, hopefully this year, could yield some tasty performance improvements. Quite speculative, and really late, but it's on the cards so I'm not complaining.

[DanceswithUnix]

I believe you can switch to a lower power profile on the Vega saving a lot of power for a small performance hit, if power is your worry.

[scaryjim]

I believe you can switch to a lower power profile on the Vega saving a lot of power for a small performance hit, if power is your worry.

Yup; here's the Power Profiles page from hexus' review: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...ga-56/?page=15

That's for the Vega 64, but it gives you an idea of how much power you can drop for a really minimal performance hit. Can't help but think that's down to the 14LPP process being more mobile/low-power focused, which may mean that a Vega respin on the new 12LP process might be more performance-oriented.

Either way, if you're buying a new 4k monitor then I think Vega 56 + a Freesync monitor is a no brainer. Ideally look for a monitor that's freesynx 2 certified, as that means it has to offer low framerate compensation as standard - at which point I don't think the minimal performance different from a GTX 1070 or from using the power saver profile is going to have any serious impact on gaming experience...

[GM91]

I would definitely prefer nvidia's lineup personally.

[Agrroz]

Vega 56 is only worth it if you go for freesync and/or watercooling since if you put both cards under water the 56 will outperform the 1070 by a wide margin.