The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTFinal Fantasy XV (DX11)
Upon arriving to PC earlier this, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition was given a graphical overhaul as it was ported over from console, fruits of their successful partnership with NVIDIA, with hardly any hint of the troubles during Final Fantasy XV's original production and development.
In preparation for the launch, Square Enix opted to release a standalone benchmark that they have since updated. Using the Final Fantasy XV standalone benchmark gives us a lengthy standardized sequence to utilize OCAT. Upon release, the standalone benchmark received criticism for performance issues and general bugginess, as well as confusing graphical presets and performance measurement by 'score'. In its original iteration, the graphical settings could not be adjusted, leaving the user to the presets that were tied to resolution and hidden settings such as GameWorks features.
Since then, Square Enix has patched the benchmark with custom graphics settings and bugfixes to be more accurate in profiling in-game performance and graphical options, though leaving the 'score' measurement. For our testing, we enable or adjust settings to the highest except for NVIDIA-specific features and 'Model LOD', the latter of which is left at standard. Final Fantasy XV also supports HDR, and it will support DLSS at some later date.
Moving on to Final Fantasy XV, the Radeon VII's showing here is one of the least ideal scenarios. The game has historically performed well on NVIDIA hardware, so the RTX and GTX performance levels are well-known. With a lot of ground to cover from RX Vega 64's starting point, the Radeon VII does well in pushing up to a 34% speedup at 4K and 28% at 1440p. While that is enough to overtake the reference RTX 2070 at 4K/1440p, the RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Ti FE remain out of reach.
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just4U - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
It's not a turkey at all.. it beats a Vega64 for around 30% ads 2x the ram (which is not really utilized yet) has a 3 fan design with Amd's top end shroud/block takes less power, runs cooler, and has the same characteristics which means Amd was generous on power so undervolting it without appreciable performance losses will be easy enough to do as will overclocking.For me that's a winner. I have blower 1080s and their very loud if I let them or run things at stock (i undervolt there to..) and I've seen how loud the Vega56/64 blowers can be.. this with the 3 fans? pfft.. way quieter.
Oxford Guy - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
I think you should look at the data in this review because your analysis is way off.ballsystemlord - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
They are sold out! All the online retailers I checked have no Radeon VIIs! Unless you go to ebay and pay way too much.Oxford Guy - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Overpriced underbaked vaporware? Never-coulda-happen.It's an ugly time to be a "serious" PC gamer.
ballsystemlord - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Well, it's been a week. They came into stock for about 5min.LogitechFan - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
amdumb defense force in full denial mode, sorry, we can't hear you over the 55db noise level of the radeon VII ;)))))))))rukufe - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
If you want to play with AI, you need tensorflow, and for a "server" card, at this price, it doesn't not makes sense to not support tensorflow. AI is everywhere today. this card is obsolete.gsalkin - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
So is this too little too late? I'm bewildered that even at 7nm this card is pulling 300W of power and generating insane noise.It's also unfortunate that the rumor of 128 ROPs was bunk. These cards definitely have an imbalance in the CU to ROP ratio. Nvidia Titan Xp had 96 ROPs strapped to 3840 SPs but AMD is shipping a max of 64?
Oxford Guy - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
"It's also unfortunate that the rumor of 128 ROPs was bunk."That rumor typifies the irrational thinking that plagues the gaming community. AMD isn't going to make the effort of changing the Instinct GPU to better suit gamers. It isn't and it hasn't.
dr.denton - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
I wonder, do people actually read and comprehend these articles? By now it should be obvious to everyone, that VII is not and was never supposed to be AMD's next generation of GPU. In fact, they always denied that Vega 7nm would make it into the consumer market - and for very good reason: they had Navi for that. Now that Navi is delayed, they need something for people to talk about - and talk about it we do.