AMD Radeon RX Vega review: Vega 56, Vega 64, and liquid-cooled Vega 64 tested

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Now it’s time for another graphically punishing game, but this one favors AMD hardware. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided replaces Hitman in our test suite because its Dawn engine is based upon the Glacier Engine at Hitman’s heart. We dropped all the way down to the High graphics preset for this one and still struggled at 4K. We tested in DirectX 12, as that mode raises all performance boats regardless of which brand’s GPU sits at the heart of your graphics card.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

No surprise here: AMD wins across the board. Once again, Vega 56 surpasses the GTX 1070 Founders Edition by 12 to 13 percent depending on resolution. Vega 64 especially dominates the GTX 1080 at 1440p resolution, and the liquid-cooled version’s higher clock speeds give it a sizeable 8 percent boost over the air-cooled model. The liquid-cooled version delivers 17.5 percent more performance than the GTX 1080 Founders Edition at that resolution.

Even the overclocked, custom-cooled PNY GTX 1080 Ti XLR8 fails to come anywhere near the 60fps gold standard at 4K. The GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition would likely be roughly 5 percent slower.

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