AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 – The New Mining Standard

No matter whether you’re a miner or a gamer, you probably share the hype about the RX Vega series. Before the Vega FE came out, people were attributing quasi-divine powers to the new Vega line and consequently more than one enthusiast preordered the FE as soon as they were able to, even though it costs 1000 dollars.

Once gamers and miners alike were able to try the new Vega FE they quickly realized that those cards are only meant to be used in a graphic design office.

Consequently, the RX Vega became the last hope for gamers, since unlikely the FE, it was marketed as a gaming card from the beginning. As a miner, I was hyped about the RX too since gaming GPU’s are usually better miners than workstation ones.

Is the RX Vega 64 a Gaming GPU?

The answer is probably no YES. There are mixed opinions on whether the GPU can be considered good for gaming. For instance, according to benchmarks from videocardz.com, the RX Vega is far from the best solution for gamers. It is lagging behind the MSI GTX 1080 TI Gaming X and its performance can be compared to the cheaper GTX 1080.

It looks like that the RX Vega 64 is far from being the gaming GPU of the year and AMD knows that. AMD probably first realized that when they started to test the new Vega architecture, so this might explain why they tried their GPU for Ethereum mining and shared the results with the mining community.

Now, according to several other sources, the Vega 64 is competing with the GTX 1080 Ti by lagging only a couple fps behind in most of the cases. Looks like the Vega 64 performs poor on certain benchmarks, which does not prevent it from running most modern games in high settings.

RX Vega 64 Mining Edition? Performance

It was confirmed by OCUK’s Gibbo that

Before reviewers could test the card on Ethereum mining, OCUK posted on his Gibbo that
“Seems the hash rate on VEGA is 70-100 Mh/s per card, which is insanely good.

Trying to devise some kind of plan so gamers can get them at MSRP without the miners wiping all the stock out within 5 minutes of product going live.”

70-100 MH/s per card is a lot, even for a GPU worth 700 dollars. This is between two and three times more than a GTX 1080 could ever hash. Add that to the fact that the Vega RX is got far from the best price/performance ratio for gaming and we get a card oriented for mining.

It looks like AMD was aiming to make a new-gen gaming GPU, but ended up creating a new-gen mining GPU almost by accident. Now that the company realized what is going on, they apparently decided to follow the flow and they literally invited miners to check this new GPU out.

It is obvious that not a lot of gamers will have the chance to enjoy the new RX Vega 64. Also, I wonder how many gamers would like to buy one of those GPU’s to begin with.

70-100 MH/s per card looks surreal and guess what – it is indeed a FAKE ESTIMATION. According to latest tests, the real hashrate we should expect from the RX  Vega 64 is between 30 and 34 MH/s. The best undervolting so far was 32.6 MH/s at 256 Watts.

All of this means that mining-wise we are probably dealing with an AMD version of the GTX 1080. The estimated price of the card is around 700 dollars, which makes it a bit more expensive than its Nvidia counterpart.

RX Vega 64 Ethereum Mining 4

RX Vega 64 Ethereum Mining 3

RX Vega 64 Ethereum Mining 2

RX Vega 64 Ethereum Mining 1

In Conclusion

The RX Vega 64 looks rather promising, at the point that it might become a game changer for the Ethereum mining community. I look forward getting my hands on some of those new GPUs as soon as they become available for preorder. AMD sent dozens of those cards to reviewers, so expect a load of real feedback this Monday.

The RX Vega 64 might be great for gaming, but it is slightly lagging behind as a mining GPU. This also means that we should not worry about the RX Vega 64 being a difficulty bomb. Those of us who own RX 400/500 cards can keep mining in peace. There is an unofficial driver release for Polaris-based GPUs that allow them to hash a bit better. I have installed the driver on my rigs and I can confirm that it works as intended. You can check it here.