Radeon RX Vega 56

datkins91

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Howdy,

So I've just recently got the titled card and was wondering which of my other components would likely bottleneck it the most? I realise the card is certainly better than everything else.

MSI Gaming 970 motherboard (PCIe 2.0 x 16).... would PCIe 3.0 make THAT much of a difference?

AMD 8350 FX Black Edition - I have a feeling this is likely the biggest bottleneck?

Cheers in advance.
 
As far as I know there is no way to tell if PCIe will bottleneck your graphics card, since directly comparing PCIe bandwidth and GPU bandwidth will always be in favour of the GPU. For example, the theoretical bandwidth of the Vega 56 is about 400GB/s, for PCIe x16 is 8GB/s and for PCIe 3.0 x16 is 16GB/s, both being significantly lower than the GPU's bandwidth, which would mean both would bottleneck your GPU, which is not true. In short, I don't know, there are more factors to consider. Testing it would be the most reliable way to find out.

However, the 8350 may be a bit of a bottleneck, especially when it comes to games that can't use all 8 cores. A GTX 1060 is about as much as the 8350 can handle. The easiest way to know would be finding benchmarks between systems using this processor and other processors with the same GPU. My guess is that the 8350 is definitely going to be bottlenecking the card, but it's hard to tell how much.
 
Thanks AMD.

Running 'Peformance Test' I seem to be only getting a 3D Graphics score of about 8.5k... when on the GPU benchmark/Performance Test website it appears the average is around 11.3k or so. Would you assume this would be largely to do with the CPU?

Might there be any other factors? (Definitely not PSU, have 1000W plat rated).

Cheers in advance.

Edit: Additionally, what CPU would be a solid upgrade from the 8350FX to easily support the Vega 56?
 
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Running 'Peformance Test' I seem to be only getting a 3D Graphics score of about 8.5k... when on the GPU benchmark/Performance Test website it appears the average is around 11.3k or so. Would you assume this would be largely to do with the CPU?
I'm not sure what tests you are referring to, but if the processor is the only thing that changes, then yes. Memory technology, speed or latency shouldn't matter that much. However, you have to consider that changing processor architecture usually means changing chipsets and with that changing motherboards, which could mean a newer PCIe specification, so you can't discard that.
Might there be any other factors? (Definitely not PSU, have 1000W plat rated).
As I said, you can't discard PCIe spec.
Edit: Additionally, what CPU would be a solid upgrade from the 8350FX to easily support the Vega 56?
Anything newer. Ryzen 5 and above or Intel I5 6xxx and above should work fine with this card.
Actually - I think this answers my question perfectly when you look at the drop downs for the other CPUs with the same card..
https://www.3dmark.com/vrpor/150729
It's not certain, but this does tell you that you need to update the rest of your computer if you want to take advantage of the card. Regardless of who's at fault, upgrading your processor will mean upgrading motherboard and memory, and this is what you should do. I would recommend you look into the Ryzen 5 or 7 series and the Intel I5 and I7 7xxx or 8xxx series. You can't go wrong with those.
 
Many thanks for the details reply.

I was prepared for buying a new motherboard, memory, etc. I was looking at the i5 6800k..it appears to be an excellent CPU for gaming!
 
Hey there.


Since you already have the parts, find out practically. Open a program like MSI Afterburner in the back ground and activate the GPU and the CPU cores graphs. Play normally long enough then check the graphs after you turnoff the game. I think they record for 10 minutes or something for the graph's length.


In your case the CPU is the possible suspect.



Also keep in mind that bottleneck does not necessarily mean low performance. It only means holding back full performance. If the GPU is like 10% bottlenecked, I highly recommend skipping the upgrade. You may also be lucky and have your favorite games GPU intensive. This minimized bottleneck possibility.


Also consider overclocking the CPU to get the best out of it.
 
Hey there.


Since you already have the parts, find out practically. Open a program like MSI Afterburner in the back ground and activate the GPU and the CPU cores graphs. Play normally long enough then check the graphs after you turnoff the game. I think they record for 10 minutes or something for the graph's length.


In your case the CPU is the possible suspect.



Also keep in mind that bottleneck does not necessarily mean low performance. It only means holding back full performance. If the GPU is like 10% bottlenecked, I highly recommend skipping the upgrade. You may also be lucky and have your favorite games GPU intensive. This minimized bottleneck possibility.


Also consider overclocking the CPU to get the best out of it.

What's the best indication of bottleneck? Would it simply be that the CPU is running at full utilisation?
 
CPU bottlenecking GPU is the possible bottleneck here and since it's gaming (as presumed by mentioning the Vega card), this is most likely it. CPU bottlenecking GPU is when the CPU runs at 100% and the GPU does not, yes. The game won't be able to run in more frames per second so the GPU is held back once it processes all there is in image quality.


The monitoring app like the one I suggested will clear that up. Keep in mind it could be an issue in the game due to bad optimization.


Other fields have other related bottleneck types. Talking about video cards, it is gaming and graphics matter.


A test is the best thing to do now before opening a can of worms.
 
What's the best indication of bottleneck? Would it simply be that the CPU is running at full utilisation?

Definitely not. I mean, if it is at 100%, and the card isn't, then yes, but that's not the only way, since it may happen that the game can't use 100% of the processor.

I don't think there is a good way to know, really. You could increase graphic settings and check loads, but that still won't tell you much, since there are some settings that impact the processor more than they do the card (for example, field of view). I mean, there is definitely a bottleneck here, may not be in every game, but it's there. Finding out the cause could be problematic, unless you are at 100% processor load and 70% card load, in which case the bottleneck is obvious.

It'll come a time where the bottleneck becomes more obvious, when games get more demanding, and, in my opinion, you'll have to upgrade the rest of the computer sooner or later.
 
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