The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGrand Theft Auto V (DX11)
Now a truly venerable title, GTA V is a veteran of past game suites that is still graphically demanding as they come. As an older DX11 title, it provides a glimpse into the graphically intensive games of yesteryear that don't incorporate the latest features. Originally released for consoles in 2013, the PC port came with a slew of graphical enhancements and options. Just as importantly, GTA V includes a rather intensive and informative built-in benchmark, somewhat uncommon in open-world games.
The settings are identical to its previous appearances, which are custom as GTA V does not have presets. To recap, a "Very High" quality is used, where all primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, except grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced rendering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but not increasing the view distance any further.
We've updated some of the benchmark automation and data processing steps, so results may vary at the 1080p mark compared to previous data.
GTA V is another game where the Radeon VII starts off on the back foot. Its 38% 4K performance improvement over the RX Vega 64 is outstanding and nothing to be scoffed at, but even this jump isn't enough to draw even with the GTX 1080 Ti FE and RTX 2080. Ultimately, it lands somewhere in between the reference RTX 2070 and RTX 2080.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
289 Comments
View All Comments
Dr. Swag - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
If I had to guess, those tests probably are more dependent on memory capacity and/or memory bandwidth.Klimax - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Could be still difference between AMD's and Nvidia's OpenCL drivers. Nvidia only fairly recently started to focus on them. (Quite few 2.0 features are still listed as experimental)tipoo - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
That they changed the FP64 rate cap entirely in BIOS makes me wonder, should the iMac Pro be updated with something like this (as Navi is supposed to be launching with the mid range first), if it would have the double precision rate cap at all as Apple would be co-writing the drivers and all.tvdang7 - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
I feel AT needs to update the game list. I understand that these are probably easier to bench and are demanding but most of us are curious on how it performs on games we actually play. Lets be real how many of you or your friends play these game on the daily? BF1 and MAYBE GTA are popular but not on the grand scheme of things .Manch - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
7 DX 111 DX 12
1 Vulcan
Need a better spread of the API's and denote which games are engineered specifically for AMD or Nvidia or neither. I think that would be helpful when deciding which card should be in your rig.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Perhaps tell game developers to get with the times then? You cant test what isnt there, and the vast majority of games with repeatable benchmarks are DX11 titles. That is not Anandtech's fault.Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Didn't say it was. Merely a suggestion/request. There are around 30 games that are released with DX 12 support and about a dozen with Vulkan. Some of the DX 11 titles tested for this review offer DX 12 & Vulkan supt. They exist and can be tested. If there is a reason to NOT test a DX version or Vulkan version, for example RE2's broken DX12 implementation, OK fair enough. I think it would offer a better picture of how each card performs overall.Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
DX11 DX12 Vulkan
BF1 Tested Yes No
FC5 Tested No No
AotS Yes Tested Yes
Wolf Yes Yes Tested
FF Tested Maybe? No
GTA Tested No No
SoW Tested No No
F1 Tested No No
TW Tested Yes No
4 of the games tested with DX11 have DX 12 implementations and AotS has a Vulkan implementation. If the implementation is problematic, fair enough. Put a foot note or a ** but there are games with DX 12 and Vulkan out there on current engines so it can be done.
Ryan, perhaps and article on the games, the engines, their API implementations and how/why you choose to use/not use them in testing? Think it would be a good read.
Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Sorry bout the format didn't realize it would do that to it.eddman - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
"about a dozen with Vulkan"What are these dozen games? Last time I checked there were only three or four modern games suitable for vulkan benchmarking: Wolfenstein 2, Doom, Strange Brigade and perhaps AotS.
IMO Wolfenstein 2 is enough to represent vulkan.
"Wolf Yes Yes Tested"
Wolfenstein 2 is vulkan only; no DX12.
As for DX12, yes, I too think they could add more.