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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29a - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
As usual in these garbage articles the prices given are nowhere near reality. The Vega 64 is $100 cheaper than what is listed.RSAUser - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Anandtech doesn't ever seem to update reviews or prices.They'll compare a device from their history even if there have been months of driver updates that fixed performance issues, so they'll be using non-current info and everyone will assume it's current.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
"Anandtech doesn't ever seem to update reviews or prices."On the contrary, quite a bit was updated for this review. Though as driver performance has been rather stable as of late, performance hasn't exactly gone anywhere for most cards on most games.
If you see anything that seems wrong, please let us know. But we go out of our way to try to avoid using any card/driver combinations that result in performance issues.
Korguz - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
29aif you think AT does nothing but garbage articles.. then, lets see YOU do better...
as for prices.. meh.. thats something hard to account for as there are things called exchange rates, and other variables that no one can predict.....
Phil85 - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
So when will prices of GPU's decrease? Is this the new normal?eva02langley - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Navi should bring value back to mid-range.It is still a nice card for professional/compute/rendering. But for gaming, the price is maybe 50$ too expensive, and AMD really needs to get some better quality fans.
TEAMSWITCHER - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
If Navi is missing next generation features like ray tracing and tensor cores, there will be ZERO value to it.eva02langley - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
AHAHAHAHA... Ray Tracing... you know the real problem of Ray Tracing? It was never on the table until Jensen brainwashed shill that it was important. by defending it, you obviously prove that you have no critical judgement.By the way, the problem with RT/DLSS is that it will never be implemented because AMD owns consoles, and that devs develop on consoles. There is no monetary benefit to implement gimmick proprietary gameworks features for 1% of the PC user base, unless if Nvidia is paying you to do so.
It will never be a thing for the upcoming console generation. See you in 7 years, where it might be remotely relevant to the industry. As of now, unless you are rendering a CGI movie, it is worthless.
Dribble - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Both the next gen consoles are going to have ray tracing. Microsoft - who wrote and own the spec for the DX12 ray tracing extension currently used by PC's and hence a strong backer of ray tracing - will make one of them.eva02langley - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Not going to happen because RTX is proprietary, it is a closed environment, and require hardware acceleration that AMD is not going to pursue in the short time. Nvidia shoot themselves in the foot by pushing it. Open source is the only way a new standard can be adopted. The whole G-synch fiasco should have been enough to prove it.Hardware could run it still, but the impact on performances is just to important. At that point, developers like Sony have incredible talent in creating new effect that look way more realistic.
Just looking at The Last of Us Part 2 is a good example.