https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-Vega-Frontier-Edition-16GB-Liquid-Cooled-Review
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Quote:What does change with the liquid cooled version is a usable BIOS switch on top of the card that allows you to move between two distinct power draw states: 300 watts and 350 watts.
Quote:First, it's worth noting this is a change from the "375 watt" TDP that this card was listed at during the launch and announcement. AMD was touting a 300-watt and 375-watt version of Frontier Edition, but it appears the company backed off a bit on that, erring on the side of caution to avoid breaking any of the specifcations of PCI Express (board slot or auxiliary connectors).
Even more concerning is that AMD chose to have the default state of the switch on the Vega FE Liquid card at 300 watts rather than the more aggressive 350 watts. AMD claims this to avoid any problems with lower quality power supplies that may struggle to hit slightly over 150 watts of power draw (and resulting current) from the 8-pin power connections. I would argue that any system that is going to install a $1500 graphics card can and should be prepared to provide the necessary power, but for the professional market, AMD leans towards caution.
Quote:The primary data point from our testing of the AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition liquid-cooled card is that the performance delta between it and the air-cooled card were significantly wider than I expected. We measured improved average frame rates that were 10%+ higher with the card in its 350-watt setting, which I expect most consumers to use, the vast majority of the time. At 2560x1440 there were a handful of instances that show only single digit increases, but that was infrequent. As a result, the Vega FE liquid card is much more capable of competing with the GeForce GTX 1080 in our gaming tests, coming within a few percent in most tests (taking away GTA V) and taking the lead in Dirt Rally. Considering my mostly negative outlook on the Vega product family after reviewing the air-cooled card, the liquid cooled version shifts the landscape again.
Which leads to the real question: what does this mean for the upcoming RX Vega product? While I know that testing the Frontier Edition in ONLY gaming is a bit of a faux pas, much of our interest was in using this product to predict what AMD is going bring to gamers later this month. It is apparent now that if the clocks are in the 1600 MHz range consistently, rather than dipping into 1400 MHz and below states as we found with the air cooler at stock, Vega in its current state can be competitive with the GeForce GTX 1080. That's an upgrade over where it stood before - much closer to GTX 1070 performance.
