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
eddman - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
Just to clarify my comment; there was no proof that nvidia deliberately implemented the tessellation feature badly to cripple AMD.just4U - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
At the moment I am not concerned about the drivers. This card comes in at pretty impressive numbers.. looks to be slightly better than the 1080ti but with 16G of mem.. and not cheap mem either so it will be useful in a few years (likely) I want one!!cmdrdredd - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Slightly better than 1080ti which is what 3 years old now? Not impressedjust4U - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Which is pretty much the state of affairs regardless is it not cmd? Are you majorly impressed with the 2080ti??? it's only marginally faster than the 3 year old 1080ti as well.I own 1080s and vega56s. Those vega56s would be a huge upgrade if I went to the new Vega. The 1080s? Meh.. yeah a little .. not much.. not worth the upgrade.
LogitechFan - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
it's 30% on average. if this is only marginally better for you, then of course you deserve an amd card :Deddman - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
... for a 43% higher launch MSRP, or if we compare it to the currently cheapest 2080 Ti at $1150, 64%.This is one of the worst generational launches so far, where price/performance actually went DOWN.
Gastec - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
Time is relative. What if Nvidia and everybody else would choose to release a new generation every 5 years? Most so-called gamers in the World don't even have the "old" GTX 1080Ti.kostaaspyrkas - Sunday, February 10, 2019 - link
you are totally right...i wonder why no reviewer ever says that... its been many times proven that all radeon cards 6 months after release always take lead from their nvidia competitors...nvidia leads in older games...amd future proof...i dont buy a 700 euro card for 1 year..i keep its 3 plus years at leastGastec - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
That's the difference between you and these tech reviewers and their accompanying "unbiased" trol...I mean bragge...commentators, COMMENTATORS! They "upgrade" to the latest and greatest each new generation :)boozed - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
I was underwhelmed at its launch because it seemed like just a speed bump; on paper, it didn't seem that impressive.I am now suitably whelmed.