The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTWolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Vulkan)
id Software is popularly known for a few games involving shooting stuff until it dies, just with different 'stuff' for each one: Nazis, demons, or other players while scorning the laws of physics. Wolfenstein II is the latest of the first, the sequel of a modern reboot series developed by MachineGames and built on id Tech 6. While the tone is significantly less pulpy nowadays, the game is still a frenetic FPS at heart, succeeding DOOM as a modern Vulkan flagship title and arriving as a pure Vullkan implementation rather than the originally OpenGL DOOM.
Featuring a Nazi-occupied America of 1961, Wolfenstein II is lushly designed yet not oppressively intensive on the hardware, something that goes well with its pace of action that emerge suddenly from a level design flush with alternate historical details.
The highest quality preset, "Mein leben!", was used. Wolfenstein II also features Vega-centric GPU Culling and Rapid Packed Math, as well as Radeon-centric Deferred Rendering; in accordance with the preset, neither GPU Culling nor Deferred Rendering was enabled.
We've known that Wolfenstein II enjoys its framebuffer, and to explain the obvious outlier first the Fury X's 4GB HBM1 simply isn't enough for smooth gameplay. The resulting performance is better conveyed by 99th percentile framerates, and even at 1080p the amount of stuttering renders the game unplayable.
Returning to the rest of the cards, Wolfenstein II's penchant for current-generation architectures (i.e. Turing, Vega) is again on display. Here, the Pascal-based GTX 1080 Ti FE isn't in the running for best-in-class, with the RTX 2080 taking pole and Radeon VII in a close second. Once again, the raw lead in average frametimes grows at lower resolutions, indicating that the Radeon VII is indeed a few shades slower than the reference RTX 2080, but judging from 99th percentile data the real-world difference is close to nil.
Compared to the RX Vega 64, the performance uplift is exactly 24% at 4K and 25% at 1440p, an amusing coincidence given the guidance of 25% given earlier.
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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.