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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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.