The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Warhammer II (DX11)
Last in our 2018 game suite is Total War: Warhammer II, built on the same engine of Total War: Warhammer. While there is a more recent Total War title, Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, that game was built on the 32-bit version of the engine. The first TW: Warhammer was a DX11 game was to some extent developed with DX12 in mind, with preview builds showcasing DX12 performance. In Warhammer II, the matter, however, appears to have been dropped, with DX12 mode still marked as beta, but also featuring performance regression for both vendors.
It's unfortunate because Creative Assembly themselves have acknowledged the CPU-bound nature of their games, and with re-use of game engines as spin-offs, DX12 optimization would have continued to provide benefits, especially if the future of graphics in RTS-type games will lean towards low-level APIs.
There are now three benchmarks with varying graphics and processor loads; we've opted for the Battle benchmark, which appears to be the most graphics-bound.
Wrapping things up for games is Total War: Warhammer II, and this title is one that is less than ideal for the matchup between the Radeon VII and its competitors. Much like GTA V, the card is able to make substantial improvements over its predecessor; at 4K, this is an astounding 47% increase over the RX Vega 64. Nevertheless, given the starting point of the RX Vega 64, the Radeon VII is still somewhere around 15% behind the reference RTX 2080, meaning that it performs a shade faster than the reference RTX 2070 at 4K/1440p. That's not where the Radeon VII ideally wants to be, despite being respectable way to iterate on the RX Vega 64.
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Icehawk - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
FFXV results sure look CPU limited to me - why aren't you running at least an 8700 @ 5ghz?Oxford Guy - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
They look like GameWorks or something to me but I can't see why anyone cares about FF anyway. I hurt my face smirking when I saw the footage from that benchmark. Those hairstyles and that car... and they're going fishing. It was so bad it was Ed Wood territory, only it takes itself seriously.luisfp - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
People don't forget that Vega GPUs have the memory beside the GPU core, therefore making it more hot that normal GPUs out there. That has a lot to do with how hot it seems to be, the temperature tends to raise more due to memory temps in same area.just4U - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
True enough but owners of the 56/64 have found many work arounds to such things as the cards have not needed as much power as they push out. My cards (56s) use 220W of power per card They never go over 65c in any situation and usually sit in the high 50s to low 60s. with their undervolts.luisfp - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
I believe that Vega GPUs have the memory beside the GPU core, therefore making it more hot that normal GPUs out there. That might have a lot to do with how hot it seems to be, the temperature tends to raise more due to memory temps in same area.just4U - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Better than a 64 in all situations and comparable to a 1080ti in all situations with only 5-6% performance hits against the 2080 which is costing 50-100 more here in Canada (according to pre-order sales) Yep, Im sold.ballsystemlord - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Your favorite spelling/grammar guy is here. (AT Audience: Boo!)"Faced with a less hostile pricing environment than many were first expecting, AMD has decided to bring Vega 20 to consumers after all, duel with NVIDIA one of these higher price points."
Missing words (and & at):
"Faced with a less hostile pricing environment than many were first expecting, AMD has decided to bring Vega 20 to consumers after all, and duel with NVIDIA at one of these higher price points."
"Which is to say that there's have been no further developments as far as AMD's primitive shaders are concerned."
Verb tense problem:
"Which is to say that there's been no further developments as far as AMD's primitive shaders are concerned."
Thanks for the review!
I read the whole thing.
The F@H results for Vega are higher than I predicted (Which is a good thing!).
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
"Your favorite spelling/grammar guy is here. (AT Audience: Boo!)"You're always welcome here. Pull up a chair!
ballsystemlord - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
I was joking. Some site content creators call people like me "The spelling and grammar trolls".I can never really be certain, so I try to be a little funny in hopes that no body will take my corrections as "troll" actions.
I don't know how you guys feel, but you've always taken mine and others corrections into consideration.
Ryan Smith - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
Our flaws and errors are our own doing. When pointed out, it's our job as journalists to correct them. So as long as people are being polite about it, we appreciate the feedback.