Hot delicacies for vegans: Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC in review

If we were asked for a slightly better equipped RX Vega64 and if the range of such cards were more diversified, we would probably call the Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC. Where and how exactly the map is positioned, today's test ... Board layout Like Gigabyte and Sapphire, Asus is extremely different from AMD's reference layout, which should make the use of existing full-cover water coolers impossible. Asus relies on 6 phases with Doubling, so that in... With a current BIOS and the newer drivers, the peculiarities of the benchmark results, as we were able to see during the review of the Sapphire RX Vega64 Nitro+, finally disappear completely and the maps now do exactly what you can from... The overall picture does not change much, even if the Vega cards break in a little more in a few games. But then it almost doesn't matter if reference or board partner card. Shared suffering is half suffering, although it is never a real d... Power consumption at different loads The power consumption in the gaming loop is at the measured approx. 275 watts in Balanced Mode about 5 watts below what could be measured at the reference in the default BIOS. This is all the more astonishing because ... Overclocking and undervolting The conventional overclocking by means of an even higher power limit and more clock counteracts the current cooling concept, because the rather quiet cooler gets along quite well with what it has to dismount ex works. More on the other hand... Cooling system and backplate Of course, the generated waste heat is directly related to the recorded power, for which the cooling solution is responsible for optimum dissipation. And this is precisely where we are faced with minor problems, which we are... How and where can we classify the Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC now? The map is in itself quite a solid story, apart from the hot tension converters. The quality of the workmanship is neat and the component selection is ...

If we were asked for a slightly better equipped RX Vega64 and if the range of such cards were more diversified, we would probably call the Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC. Today's test will show where and how exactly the map is positioned.

In contrast to Sapphire's heavyweight RX Vega64 Nitro+, the Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC is a rather inconspicuous card at first glance, but unlike the completely unlit Gigabyte RX Vega64 Gaming OC, it can still be illuminated at least later after unpacking. can bring.

With the currently still available Vega64 cards, however, one can no longer distinguish between individual positionings within this chip class due to the really already presusb prices. You can be happy if there is one. Interestingly, availability in Europe is often better than in North America or Asia, for example.

Unboxing, optics and haptics

Weighing 1286 grams, this card lies between the much lighter gigabytes and Sapphire's monstrous battleship. Asus has also not saved on the dimensions and offers a relatively long card with 30.2 cm installation length (outer surface slot panel until the end of the radiator cover). With a height of 12.7 cm (from the top of the motherboard slot to the top of the radiator cover, as well as a thickness of 4.5 cm from the board to the front of the radiator cover, this results in the image of a not exactly compact map.

The three fans with a rotor blade diameter of 9 cm each sit in an opening with a diameter of 9.2 cm. A total of 11 rotor blades per fan, with their special shape, mainly provide airflow and turbulence and less static pressure. This should be helpful to the cooling concept.

The backplate is embossed with the RGB backlit ROG logo. The backplate, which is not used for cooling, is therefore optical in nature and also stabilizes the not very light card.

After all, one should plan at least 5 mm for the rear body, which can already lead to problems with some motherboards if heat sinks are sitting too close to the slot or the CPU cooler is extremely large.

You can already clearly see at the bottom of the map that Asus is betting on vertically arranged slats and now offers a real 2.5-slot model instead of the usual flat cards. This creates a significantly higher cooling surface.

The top also clearly shows that Asus has remained true to his form and design. In addition to the usual dark plastic cover, there are still RGB effects on the ROG lettering. In addition, the two 8-pin power supply connections are positioned here, which have been rotated and also moved downwards.

In addition to the five 6 mm heatpipes, the closed end of the card shows the two PWM-controlled fan connectors for optionally connectable housing fans, an RGB output, and the internal fan and LED connectors.

The slot panel has five ports analogous to the reference card. Two HDMI 2.0 ports and two DisplayPorts 1.4 are available to the user. This is completed by a DVI-I connector (Dual Link).

Finally, let us take a first look at the technical data. The value displayed as the maximum boost clock, on the other hand, is rather a wishful thinking, which is unlikely to be achieved within the set power limit or at all.

Compared to the relevant reference cards, this looks like this:

Model	Radeon RX Vega64 Reference	Asus RX Vega64 Strix OC	Radeon RX Vega56 Reference	Geforce GTX 1070 Ti	Geforce GTX 1080 Fe
Gpu	Vega 10	Vega 10	Vega 10	GP104	GP104
Chip size	484 mm2	484 mm2	484 mm2	314 mm2	314 mm2
Transistors	12.5 billion	12.5 billion	12.5 billion	7.2 billion	7.2 billion
GPU base clock/ Boost clock	1274 MHz 1546 MHz	1274 MHz 1630 MHz	1156 MHz 1471 MHz	1607 MHz 1683 MHz	1607 MHz 1733 MHz
Shader/SIMD	4096/64	4096/64	3585/56	2432/19	2560/20
Texture Units/ Rops	256 64	256 64	224 64	152 64	160 64
Pixel fill rate	99 GPix/s	104 GPix/s	94 GPix/s	108 GPix/s	114 GPix/s
Texture Fill Rate	396 GTex/s	417 GTex/s	330 GTex/s	244 GTex/s	257 GTex/s
Memory connection	2048 Bit	2048 Bit	2048 Bit	256 bits	256 bits
Storage type	HBM2	HBM2	HBM2	GDDR5	GDDR5X
Memory bandwidth	484 GB/s	484 GB/s	410 GB/s	256 GB/s	320 GB/s
Memory clock	1.9 Gbps	1.9 Gbps	1.6 Gbps	8 Gbps	10 Gbps
Storage expansion	8 GB	8 GB	8 GB	8 GB	8 GB
DX Feature Level	12_1	12_1	12_1	12_1	12_1
PCIe sockets	2 x 8-pin	2x 8 Pin	2 x 8-pin	1x 8-pin	1x 8-pin
Tbp	295 watts	295 watts	210 watts	180 watts	180 watts

Test system and measurement methods

The new test system and the methodology have already been described in great detail in the basic article "How We Test Graphics Cards" (English: "How We Test Graphics Cards") and therefore, for the sake of simplicity, we now only refer to this detailed Description. So if you want to read everything again, you are welcome to do so. However, we have again improved CPU and cooling to largely exclude possible CPU bottlenecks for this fast card.

If you are interested, the summary in table form quickly provides a brief overview:

Test systems and measuring rooms
Hardware:	Intel Core i7-6900K -4.3GHz MSI X99S XPower Gaming Titanium G.Skill TridentZ DDR4 3600 1x 1 TByte Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System SSD) 2x 960 GByte Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images) Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 11, 850-watt power supply
Cooling:	Alphacool Ice Block XPX 5x Be Quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM (Closed Case Simulation) Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (for cooler change)
Housing:	Lian Li PC-T70 with expansion kit and modifications Modes: Open Benchtable, Closed Case
Monitor:	Eizo EV3237-BK
Power consumption:	non-contact DC measurement on the PCIe slot (Riser-Card) non-contact DC measurement on the external PCIe power supply Direct voltage measurement on the respective feeders and on the power supply 2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500 MHz multi-channel oscillograph with memory function 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50, current togor adapter (1 mA to 30 A, 100 KHz, DC) 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355, touch divider (10:1, 500 MHz) 1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012, digital multimeter with storage function
Thermography:	Optris PI640, infrared camera PI Connect evaluation software with profiles
Acoustics:	NTI Audio M2211 (with calibration file) Steinberg UR12 (with phantom power for the microphones) Creative X7, Smaart v.7 own low-reflection measuring room, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2 m (LxTxH) Axial measurements, perpendicular to the center of the sound source(s), measuring distance 50 cm Noise in dBA (Slow) as RTA measurement Frequency spectrum as a graph
Operating system	Windows 10 Pro (Creators Update, all updates) Radeon Software Adrenaline (17.12.2, status December 2017)