The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTBenchmarking Testbed Setup
To preface, because of the SMU changes mentioned earlier, no third party utilities can read Radeon VII data, though patches are expected shortly. AIB partner tools such as MSI Afterburner should presumably launch with support. Otherwise, Radeon Wattman was the only monitoring tool possible, except we observed that the performance metric log recording and overlay sometimes caused issues with games.
On that note, a large factor in this review was the instability of press drivers. Known issues include being unable to downclock HBM2 on the Radeon VII, which AMD clarified was a bug introduced in Adrenalin 2019 19.2.1, or system crashes when the Wattman voltage curve is set to a single min/max point. There are also issues with DX11 game crashes, which we also ran into early on, that AMD is also looking at.
For these reasons, we won't have Radeon VII clockspeed or overclocking data for this review. To put simply, these types of issues are mildly concerning; while Vega 20 is new to gamers, it is not new to drivers, and if Radeon VII was indeed always in the plan, then game stability should have been a priority. Despite being a bit of a prosumer card, the Radeon VII is still the new flagship gaming card. There's no indication that these are more than simply teething issues, but it does seem to lend a little credence to the idea that Radeon VII was launched as soon as feasibly possible.
| Test Setup | |||||
| CPU | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz | ||||
| Motherboard | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 (F9g) | ||||
| PSU | Corsair AX860i | ||||
| Storage | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) | ||||
| Memory | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
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| Case | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition | ||||
| Monitor | LG 27UD68P-B | ||||
| Video Cards | AMD Radeon VII AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (Air) AMD Radeon R9 Fury X NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti |
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| Video Drivers | NVIDIA Release 417.71 AMD Radeon Software 18.50 Press |
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| OS | Windows 10 x64 Pro (1803) Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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Thanks to Corsair, we were able to get a replacement for our AX860i. While the plan was to utilize Corsair Link as an additional datapoint for power consumption, for the reasons mentioned above it was not feasible for this time. On that note, power consumption figures will differ for earlier GPU 2018 Bench data.
In the same vein, for Ashes, GTA V, F1 2018, and Shadow of War, we've updated some of the benchmark automation and data processing steps, so results may vary at the 1080p mark compared to previous GPU 2018 data.
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KateH - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
thirded on still enjoying SupCom! i have however long ago given up on attempting to find the ultimate system to run it. i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz, nope. FX-8150 @ 4.5Ghz, nope. The engine still demands more CPU for late-game AI swarms! (and i like playing on 81x81 maps which makes it much worse)Korguz - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Holliday75 and KateHive run supcom on a i7 930 OC'd to 4.2 on a 7970, slow as molasses late in the game VS the AI, and on my current i7 5930k and strix 1060 and.. same thing.. very slow late in the game.... the later patches supposedly helped the game use more then 1 or 2 cores, i think Gas Powered games called it " multi core aware "
makes me wonder how it would run on something newer like a threadripper, top en Ryzen or top end i7 and an i9 with a 1080 + vid card though, compared to my current comp....
eva02langley - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Metal Gear Solid V, Street Fighter 5, Soulcalibur 6, Tekken 7, Senua Sacrifice...Basically, nothing from EA or Ubisoft or Activision or Epic.
ballsystemlord - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Oh oh! Would you be willing to post some FLOSS benchmarks? Xonotic, 0AD, Openclonk and Supertuxkart?Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
I would like to see a mixture of games that are dedicated to a singular API, and ones that support all three or at least two of them. I think that would make for a good spread.Manch - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Not sure that I expected more. The clock for clock against the V64 is telling. @$400 for the V64 vs $700 for the VII, ummm....if you need a compute card as well sure, otherwise, Nvidia got the juice you want at better temps for the same price. Not a bad card, but it's not a great card either. I think a full 64CU's may have improved things a bit more and even put it over the top.Could you do a clock for clock compare against the 56 since they have the same CU count?? I'd be curious to see this and extrapolate what a VII with 64CU's would perform like just for shits and giggles.
mapesdhs - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Are you really suggesting that, given two products which are basically the same, you automatically default to NVIDIA because of temperatures?? This really is the NPC mindset at work. At least AMD isn't ripping you off with the price, Radeon VII is expensive to make, whereas NVIDIA's margin is enormous. Remember the 2080 is what should actually have been the 2070, the entire stack is a level higher than it should be, confirmed by die code numbers and the ludicrous fact that the 2070 doesn't support SLI.Otoh, Radeon II is generally too expensive anyway; I get why AMD have done it, but really it's not the right way to tackle this market. They need to hit the midrange first and spread outwards. Stay out of it for a while, come back with a real hammer blow like they did with CPUs.
Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Well, they're not basically the same. Who's the NPC LOL? I have a V64 in my gaming rig. It's loud but I do like it for the price. The 2080 is a bit faster than the VII for the same price. It does run cooler and quieter. For some that is more important. If games is all you care about, get it. If you need compute, live with the noise and get the VII.I don't care how expensive it is to make. If AMD could put out a card at this level of performance they would and they would sell it at this price.
Barely anyone uses SLI/Crossfire. It's not worth it. I previously had 2 290X 8GB in Crossfire. I needed a beter card for VR, V64 was the answer. It's louder but it was far cheaper than competitors. The game bundle helped. Before that, I had bought a 1070 for the wife's computer. It was a good deal at the time. Some of yall get too attached to your brands get all frenzied at any criticism. I buy what suits my needs at the best price/perf.
AdhesiveTeflon - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Not our fault AMD decided to make a video card with more expensive components and not beat the competition,mapesdhs - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Are you really suggesting that, given two products which are basically the same, you automatically default to NVIDIA because of temperatures?? This really is the NPC mindset at work. At least AMD isn't ripping you off with the price, Radeon VII is expensive to make, whereas NVIDIA's margin is enormous. Remember the 2080 is what should actually have been the 2070, the entire stack is a level higher than it should be, confirmed by die code numbers and the ludicrous fact that the 2070 doesn't support SLI.Otoh, Radeon II is generally too expensive anyway; I get why AMD have done it, but really it's not the right way to tackle this market. They need to hit the midrange first and spread outwards. Stay out of it for a while, come back with a real hammer blow like they did with CPUs.