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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eddman - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
What does that have to do with anything? No console game, ever, could be installed on a PC.Current consoles having x86 processors means absolutely nothing. Consoles are defined by their platform, not processors.
It'd be like complaining about switch (which you deem a real console) not being able to install android games; or complain they switch games can't be installed on android phones.
Korguz - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
1) wheres the proof ?? links to this perhaps ?2) again.. where is the proof ?? considering they are also DirectX based.. that should make porting them to the comp.. a little easier..... so, not splintering anything....
the same can be said about cpus and gpus.
Oxford Guy - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
The proof is that PS and MS "console" games won't install and run in Windows nor in Linux.Korguz - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
sorry man.. but thats not proof.... thats just differences in the programming of the games..D. Lister - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
@Korguz:You actually believe developers make seperate versions for every platform? Wow.
Korguz - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
never said that... while the core of the game could be the same.. the underlying software that allows the games to be run, is different.. as Eddman said.. no console game can be run on a comp, and vice versa... i know i can't take any of the console games i have in install them on my comp.. cant even read the disc.. same goes for a comp game on a console... just wont read it...D lister.. are you able to do this some how ? ( and i dont mean by use of an emulator, either )
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
You're hopeless with logic.Korguz - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
oxford guy.. d.lister, or me? and how so ?DracoDan - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
I think you're missing a digit on the Radeon Instinct MI50 launch price... only $999?Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Forgot to scrub a cell when cleaning out a table. At the moment there isn't an official price for the card.