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) |
||||
| 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 |
||||
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA Release 417.71 AMD Radeon Software 18.50 Press |
||||
| OS | Windows 10 x64 Pro (1803) Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
||||
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
289 Comments
View All Comments
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.