The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTPower, Temperature, and Noise
As always, we'll take a look at power, temperature, and noise of the Radeon VII. While it is customary to look at voltages and clockspeeds, given the SMU changes that was not possible this first time around.
The noise levels of the card look surprising at first blush. Ultimately, what's happening here is the consequence of a very aggressive fan curve, one that invests all potential acoustic improvements of an open-air triple fan card for cooling capability. Going this route makes the fan noise comparable to RX Vega 64's blower.
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Samus - Sunday, February 10, 2019 - link
BenSkywalker, the short answer is this is based on a dated architecture (2 generations behind Turing) so there is no real way it's going to beat it in efficiency: It doesn't even try to compete with the 2080Ti.But the fact that a GCN\Vega-based card can nearly tie a 2080 is commendable. I think the problem this card has is it's $100 too expensive.
BenSkywalker - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
If we were comparing ray traced performance that would be a valid point, but we are talking about traditional rendering. They have a half node process advantage and are using more power than a 2080 by a comfortable amount.Try finding another chip, CPU or gpu that was built with a half node advantage, used more power *and* was slower.
Either TSMC is having major problems with 7nm or AMD set a new standard for poor engineering in this segment.
Ganjir - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
It is a shame the infinity fabric is disabled, because crossfire would actually give these cards a reason to use ALL of that bandwidth and capacity - at least on one card. Is there a way to enable this or is it a hardware limitation?Alistair - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
I calculate OxfordGuy has made 11 percent of all comments in this thread ;)Zingam - Sunday, February 10, 2019 - link
AMD should invest in power stations. And maybe even sell their future Radeon XIV in a bundle with a little power station!Crion66 - Sunday, February 10, 2019 - link
Nate or Ian, can AMD choose to enable pci-express 4.0 on this card when Ryzen/TR4 3000 is released?Also can crossfire be implemented by popular gamer demand?
ccfly - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
did anyone test this card in c4d ,radeon pro vs octane for speed ?peevee - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
"Though AMD hasn’t made a big deal of it up to now, Vega 20 is actually their first PCI-Express 4.0-capable GPU, and this functionality is enabled on the Radeon Instinct cards. However for Radeon VII, this isn’t being enabled, and the card is being limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds"Oh God, how much I hate marketoids! Morons who cannot get an A even in the primitive school math are hired into marketing depts, and ruin EVERYTHING.