The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTWolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Vulkan)
id Software is popularly known for a few games involving shooting stuff until it dies, just with different 'stuff' for each one: Nazis, demons, or other players while scorning the laws of physics. Wolfenstein II is the latest of the first, the sequel of a modern reboot series developed by MachineGames and built on id Tech 6. While the tone is significantly less pulpy nowadays, the game is still a frenetic FPS at heart, succeeding DOOM as a modern Vulkan flagship title and arriving as a pure Vullkan implementation rather than the originally OpenGL DOOM.
Featuring a Nazi-occupied America of 1961, Wolfenstein II is lushly designed yet not oppressively intensive on the hardware, something that goes well with its pace of action that emerge suddenly from a level design flush with alternate historical details.
The highest quality preset, "Mein leben!", was used. Wolfenstein II also features Vega-centric GPU Culling and Rapid Packed Math, as well as Radeon-centric Deferred Rendering; in accordance with the preset, neither GPU Culling nor Deferred Rendering was enabled.
We've known that Wolfenstein II enjoys its framebuffer, and to explain the obvious outlier first the Fury X's 4GB HBM1 simply isn't enough for smooth gameplay. The resulting performance is better conveyed by 99th percentile framerates, and even at 1080p the amount of stuttering renders the game unplayable.
Returning to the rest of the cards, Wolfenstein II's penchant for current-generation architectures (i.e. Turing, Vega) is again on display. Here, the Pascal-based GTX 1080 Ti FE isn't in the running for best-in-class, with the RTX 2080 taking pole and Radeon VII in a close second. Once again, the raw lead in average frametimes grows at lower resolutions, indicating that the Radeon VII is indeed a few shades slower than the reference RTX 2080, but judging from 99th percentile data the real-world difference is close to nil.
Compared to the RX Vega 64, the performance uplift is exactly 24% at 4K and 25% at 1440p, an amusing coincidence given the guidance of 25% given earlier.
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eva02langley - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Love my 2400g, agree with an iGPU like that, however you will not make me believe that an HD 520 is "enough".My only GPUs that died were Nvidia ones... 3 in total. 0 AMD.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Read what he said again. "For majority 90+ % of people Integrated graphics are good enough for spreadsheets, internet and word processing"Guess what nearly every office laptop and desktop uses? If it wasnt "good enough" there would be a push for more powerful iGPUs in widespread circulation.
The basic intel iGPU if far mroe then enough to do office work, stream video, or normal workstation content. more powerful GPUs are only needed in specific circumstances.
eva02langley - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
I know what he said and I know what he means... and I know he is painted Intel all over his body.And no, basic HD 520 is not enough, period. You can barely do office work and play videos.
If it was so true, the mobile market would not be the most lucrative for games/entertainment. As of now, a smart phone is having more GPU power than an HD520.
So basically, I am not agreeing at all.
AdhesiveTeflon - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
We do plenty of CAD work and GIS functions with Intel's iGPUs, so what were you saying about them barely able to do office work and videos?We also have a lot more issues with AMD's mobile and professional cards than nVidia's.
Icehawk - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
Out of 500 PCs at my job a whopping two have video cards, they are random low ends ones purchased to add additional video ports for two stations that run quad monitors. Otherwise there is zero need for a dGPU.This is typical of the vast majority of businesses.
ksec - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
1. I believe there will be better drivers for VII, it was quite clear that there are many optimisation not done in time, although I don't know how long it will take. The new AMD seems to be quick to react though.2. What if AMD decided to release the MI60 VII at $899.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
VII is the VEGA arch, with more ROPs. If AMD managed to leave that much performance on the table, they must be the most incompetent code writers in all of existence.The VEGA arch has long been optimized for, adding some ROPs isnt going to require much work to optimize for, and AMD has likely already done that.
ksec - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Optimisation are now nearly done on a per AAA game level. And more importantly not only the drivers but the game itself. Whether the developer are willing to optimise the game ( at the help of AMD ) will be another story.lcrotach - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Nice to see AMD being competitive again. It's a pity they've priced the card so high in Europe that you can get a RTX 2080 for 100 euros less. At that price point they won't be selling many.Manch - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Need to see the VAT free price.