AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q3 2017 with a MSRP of $399. It is built on the GCN 5.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Vega 10) and is manufactured on a 14 nm process.

Memory

The RX Vega 56 has 8 GB of HBM2 memory, with a 800 MHz memory clock and a 2,048 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 409.6 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RX Vega 56 includes 3,584 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,156 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 1,471 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 224 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 64 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RX Vega 56 occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 550 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 210 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RX Vega 56 has the 81st best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 27.81% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 29,086 score and $399 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 72.9. This is the 42nd best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.