FYI on AMD Radeon VII Review from HardOCP...

Thanks for the honesty, [H]'rs won't have a problem to wait for the truth.
 
I'm gonna read all the reviews no matter when they come in. I can wait for quality.
 
Poor Brent, I wonder how far along he was with the initial testing before the error was found.
 
Anything to do with the [massive] drive instability issues that other reviewers have been reporting in their reviews?
 
Looks to be a bit disappointing overall anyway, acoustics seem to be on par with 290x. :oops:
 
Something else for the review

Guru3d used Core i7 5960X (Haswell-E) 8c/16t @ 4.2 GHz and R7 beat the 2080ti in BF V

seems like CPU scaling is a thing again.


Oh and in other crazyness, AMD even told some reviewers to undervolt to 900mv... so they tried 934mv and power went down to 274W
 
I would seem that there will be a lot of differing opinions and results regarding the seven in the near future....
 
Kyle,
I came across this interesting tidbit:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_VII/33.html

washers_small.jpg

After completing all testing and photos, I reassembled my card and wondered if I could bring down Junction Temperature below the 110°C I've been seeing on the stock card. Changing the thermal paste didn't make much of a difference (barely 1-2°C better). My trick for such situations is increasing mounting pressure by adding little metal washers. Pictured above you see two of the washers: one to get a better look and a second one below one of the mounting screws, to indicate the location I placed it in. Of course you want to use a total of four washers — one for each screw.

With the washers installed, my Radeon VII Junction Temperature dropped by around 10°C to 100°C, which is a significant improvement.

Could you look into this? Low mounting pressure-> high temps might explain why so many outlets are seeing high noise/fans ramping super high.
 
This is a n interesting analysis, clock-for-clock showing how bandwidth-limited VEGA was guaranteed to be if you bumped the clocks with the same old memory bandwidth:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13923/the-amd-radeon-vii-review/18

There's no rush.. The folks who are looking to buy this halo card already have it.

Hey guess what, the die shrink did nothing for power consumption, when all you did was up the clocks:

106265.png



Once again it will be up to owners to manually under volt to fix the power consumption issues, assuming you got a golden sample.

But at least it's competitive with the RTX 2080. Nvidia left themselves wide-open this release (until your favorite game supports RTX, of course)
 
Last edited:
Press drivers have been absolutely crap so it might work out to your advantage.

It boggles the mind how amd manage to fuck up drivers for a product launch, especially considering this is just another vega which has been around for near 2 years now. :confused:
 
This is a n interesting analysis, clock-for-clock showing how bandwidth-limited VEGA was guaranteed to be if you bumped the clocks with the same old memory bandwidth:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13923/the-amd-radeon-vii-review/18

There's no rush.. The folks who are looking to buy this halo card already have it.

Hey guess what, the die shrink did nothing for power consumption, when all you did was up the clocks:

View attachment 140319


Once again it will be up to owners to manually under volt to fix the power consumption issues, assuming you got a golden sample.

But at least it's competitive with the RTX 2080. Nvidia left themselves wide-open this release.
Not really that surprising. Making big changes going from the 14nm node to the 7nm node would be more risk than making minor changes and using the die shrink to boost clock speeds for performance instead. And AMD hasn't really had the R&D budget to push bigger changes out before Navi. Vega 20 was always intended to be a stop gap between the original Vega release and Navi.
 
Really doubt it's as loud as 290X, blower card fan profiles tend to be way worse than dual/triple fan coolers.
 
Really doubt it's as loud as 290X, blower card fan profiles tend to be way worse than dual/triple fan coolers.

The fan speeds seems to be directly tied to this "junction temp" sensor. Some reviews have seen 2900 rpm. That one sensor of 64 seems to be the main thing that ditactes fan speed regardless of the temp of the rest of the core. Then you have some pieces saying they used washers to remount the cooler which resulted in a lower junction temp of upto 10c and a slower fan speed.
 
The fan speeds seems to be directly tied to this "junction temp" sensor. Some reviews have seen 2900 rpm. That one sensor of 64 seems to be the main thing that ditactes fan speed regardless of the temp of the rest of the core. Then you have some pieces saying they used washers to remount the cooler which resulted in a lower junction temp of upto 10c and a slower fan speed.
Yes, fan speed is tied to Junction Temperature, not "CPU Temp." CPU temp sensor is a single sensor on the outside edge of the die. Junction Temperature is a series of sensors inside the GPU itself. AMD is monitoring these sensors and controlling clocks and power to specific areas of the architecture. You can monitor both values in AMD Wattman. You can see the delta below.

And also, I have seen fan values over 3000RPM. On an OPEN test bench about 4 feet away, you are looking at about 49-50dB. However, it is nothing like the 290X fans sound. They are not whiny. Once in the case, and gaming, yes, I can hear those at my feet if I listen, but it is far from distracting.

upload_2019-2-7_13-11-14.png
 
Kyle, any chance these use the same PCB layout as a reference 56/64? I can't find the shots I had of my cards when I tore them down. If not I need to see if I can find a solution.
Not to my knowledge. Going on memory, they are not even close IIRC.
 
Reckon there's much to the story about using washers to better attach the heatsink for better acoustics?
No. I am not saying that it did not give him a bit better temps, but he would have to be dealing with an ambient or case temp that right on the edge of the fan curve to actually impact this.
 
Last edited:
TBH, with the many inconsistencies in the R VII performance, as well as driver bugs, stability and poor OC'ing reported by some reviewers, a delayed review could bring some fresh perspective? I'd like to read a much delayed R VII review, say a couple months. Have a feeling the card was rushed out too soon.
 
Seems that this card does pretty good in DX12 titles/4K resolution. There's gotta be some untapped potential in there, surely.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Auer
like this
TBH, with the many inconsistencies in the R VII performance, as well as driver bugs, stability and poor OC'ing reported by some reviewers, a delayed review could bring some fresh perspective? I'd like to read a much delayed R VII review, say a couple months. Have a feeling the card was rushed out too soon.
Touched on this in the other thread. AMD reported a known issue with the black screen instability on X399 boards. So I put it on my personal X399 system and had this issue. This is very much related to the latest version of Win10. They got me over a fixed driver, but that did not fix it, but that driver along with a quick regedit fixed the blackscreen issue. So that is going to handled on the tech side, just need to get that driver, which was not a performance driver, pulled together and put out.
 
I was really hoping this card would be a win for AMD... 7nm, 16Gb of HBM2 Vram... It sounded pretty promising.

Maybe they can get a driver out that fixes the main issues by the end of next week. Then [H] will have to recheck some numbers :)

GamersNexus' card performed better with the stock thermal pad than with paste... Seems a bit like cutting corners with the silicon chiplets at differing heights... that shit needs sorted out before AMD really goes mainstream 'chiplet'.

We already delid CPU's.. what's next, resurfacing? ugh
 
I was really hoping this card would be a win for AMD... 7nm, 16Gb of HBM2 Vram... It sounded pretty promising.

Maybe they can get a driver out that fixes the main issues by the end of next week. Then [H] will have to recheck some numbers :)

GamersNexus' card performed better with the stock thermal pad than with paste... Seems a bit like cutting corners with the silicon chiplets at differing heights... that shit needs sorted out before AMD really goes mainstream 'chiplet'.

We already delid CPU's.. what's next, resurfacing? ugh

Those aren't chiplets. The extra chips around the die are the HBM2 modules. The height differences are due to manufacturing tolerances from the supplier.
 
I'm glad you opted to delay the review. The reviews released today were pretty much a mess. I really hope they will be able to get the OCing support figured out soon.
 
I'm glad you opted to delay the review. The reviews released today were pretty much a mess. I really hope they will be able to get the OCing support figured out soon.
Once we ran into the OCing problems, we moved to getting 4K included. I however do not think that heatsink and fan design is up to a lot of overclocking.
 
A late review here seems like it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Even of you don't have a new driver to test with, you may have more insight into issues amd potential resolutions than someone reviewing at launch. A lot of info is starting to come to light from the user community since Thursday e.g. fan curves, undervolting, overclockong methods. Kudos to Brent for retreading the work.

Mine is in the mail. I know... I should have passed (or at least waited for better drivers), but I'm bored, and figure I can use the extra vram for comtent creation. Looking forward to the review.
 
Hopefully mine will be here by the weekend. Ordered today. Gonna pull the Vega 56s out of the VR rig and try the R7 in it.
 
Back
Top