Home / AMD / AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition: Performance and Specs

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition in 2025: Nostalgia or Relevance?

Review of an Obsolete Flagship in the Era of New Technologies

1. Architecture and Key Features: Vega in the Age of RDNA 4

The Vega architecture, on which the RX Vega 64 is based, looks like a relic of the past in 2025. Released in 2017 on a 14nm process by GlobalFoundries, this contrasts sharply with the contemporary 5nm and 4nm chips from AMD and NVIDIA.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Suite: AMD's suite of technologies for image enhancement (upscaling, sharpening). In 2025, FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2 works on the Vega 64, but the quality falls short compared to NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5.

- Lack of Hardware Ray Tracing: Vega lacks RT core equivalents, so ray tracing in games (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty) "eats" 50-70% of the FPS even at low settings.

Conclusion: The Vega architecture is outdated, but FidelityFX and optimized drivers from 2024-2025 have prolonged its life in less demanding scenarios.

2. Memory: HBM2 — Advantage or Burden?

Vega 64 is equipped with 8GB HBM2 with a record-breaking bandwidth of 484 GB/s for its time. In comparison, even the GDDR6 in the RTX 4060 (288 GB/s) is noticeably slower.

Impact on Performance:

- Pros: High memory speed is beneficial for rendering and 4K texturing.

- Cons: The limited capacity (8GB) does not allow for modern games to run at 4K with ultra settings — for instance, Starfield "uses" 9-10GB of VRAM.

3. Gaming Performance: Modest Results

In 2025, the Vega 64 handles games at 1080p and 1440p, but compromises are necessary:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Patch 2.2):

- 1080p/Medium: 45-55 FPS (without ray tracing);

- 1440p/Low: 30-40 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy (2023):

- 1080p/High: 50-60 FPS;

- 1440p/Medium: 35-45 FPS.

- Fortnite (with FSR 2.2):

- 1440p/Performance Mode: 70-80 FPS.

4K is not for Vega 64: Even in CS2, the average FPS in 4K barely reaches 60 frames on low settings.

4. Professional Tasks: Unexpected Resilience

Thanks to support for OpenCL and ROCm, the Vega 64 remains useful in niche scenarios:

- Video Editing: In DaVinci Resolve, rendering a 4K project takes 15-20% longer than on the RTX 3060.

- 3D Modeling: Blender Cycles optimized for AMD shows acceptable speed, but NVIDIA's CUDA accelerators are still 1.5-2 times faster.

- Scientific Computing: In Python projects (TensorFlow/PyTorch with ROCm support), the card demonstrates modest but stable performance.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation: A Fire-Breathing Dragon

TDP of Vega 64 — 295W — this is on par with modern RTX 4080 (320W), but without their power.

Recommendations:

- Power Supply: At least 650W (preferably 80+ Gold).

- Cooling: A case with 3-4 fans. The turbine cooling system of the Limited Edition is noisy (up to 45 dB under load), so it's better to replace the thermal paste and use undervolting (setting via Radeon Software reduces power consumption by 10-15%).

6. Comparison with Competitors: The Battle of Generations

- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (2021): Lower TDP (170W), supports DLSS and ray tracing, comparable performance in DX12 games. New price — $299.

- AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (2021): More energy-efficient (160W), 8GB GDDR6, but weaker in 4K due to a narrow memory bus. Price — $279.

- Intel Arc A770 (2022): 16GB GDDR6, supports XeSS, but drivers are still immature. Price — $329.

Conclusion: Vega 64 loses in efficiency but wins in tasks requiring high memory bandwidth.

7. Practical Tips: How to Maximize Performance

- Power Supply: 650W + cables with high-quality insulation (high currents!).

- Platform: Compatible with PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0, but the processor shouldn't be a bottleneck (recommended Ryzen 5 5600 or newer).

- Drivers: Use Adrenalin 24.x — stability and support for FSR 2.2 have been improved.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- High bandwidth of HBM2.

- Moderate performance at 1080p.

- Support for modern APIs (Vulkan, DX12 Ultimate).

Cons:

- High power consumption.

- Lack of hardware ray tracing.

- Limited memory capacity for 2025.

9. Final Verdict: Who is Vega 64 Suitable for in 2025?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget gamers playing at 1080p.

2. Enthusiasts building retro PCs or testing HBM2.

3. Professionals in need of an inexpensive card for OpenCL calculations.

Price: New units are almost non-existent, but remnants in warehouses range from $250-$300. For that money, it's easier to buy an RX 6600 XT, but if you want something exotic, the Vega 64 can still impress.

Conclusion

The RX Vega 64 Limited Edition in 2025 is a symbol of a bygone era. It won’t handle "Alan Wake 2" in 4K, but for less demanding tasks, it remains an intriguing option. It should only be considered in the absence of alternatives or for nostalgic reasons. After all, progress cannot be stopped!

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

August 2017

Model Name

Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition

Generation

Vega

Base Clock

1247MHz

Boost Clock

1546MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

12,500 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

256

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 5.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

HBM2

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

2048bit

Memory Clock

945MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

483.8 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

98.94 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

395.8 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

25.33 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

791.6 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

12.913 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

4096

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

4MB

TDP

295W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

Power Connectors

2x 8-pin

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

600W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

12.913 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Arctic Sound 2T

13.544 +4.9%

Instinct MI50

13.142 +1.8%

Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited Edition

12.913

Instinct MI25

12.536 -2.9%

TITAN Xp

12.393 -4%