AMD Radeon VII 33-Game Benchmark: "It Makes the GTX 2080 Look Pretty Good"

[Megalith]

Hardware Unboxed’s Steve Walton has put the Radeon VII through its paces with 33 titles (public driver), but the numbers aren’t really in AMD’s favor. Their latest effort is 7% slower on average at 1440p compared to the GeForce GTX 2080, leading to Walton’s comment the Radeon VII has “managed to make the GTX 2080 look pretty good in today’s climate.” He admits he was hoping it would “obliterate” the 2080 so NVIDIA would reconsider their pricing, but that’s not happening. AMD’s latest effort was also 5% slower than the 1080 Ti at 1440p on average.

 

[Darkswordz]

Damnit, AMD.

 

[Krenum]

Damnit, AMD.

The definition of insanity.....

 

[Nobu]

I would call it decent, sure, certainly better for the price...still going to wait for prices to come down for that level of performance.

 

[cbroseinak]

AMD could easily eek out another 3-8% performance with driver updates, so all is not lost. The power consumption is worrisome though, their 7nm is not quite there yet? Dunno.

 

[Nobu]

AMD could easily eek out another 3-8% performance with driver updates, so all is not lost. The power consumption is worrisome though, their 7nm is not quite there yet? Dunno.

That may be part of it, but I think the four stacks of HBM plays a pretty large role in power as well.

 

[KazeoHin]

It's Vega. Stop trying to make Vega happen.

 

[Shmee]

So what he is saying is that the Radeon Vega 7 is $200 too expensive.

 

[Tsumi]

So what he is saying is that the Radeon Vega 7 is $200 too expensive.

Well, both the 2080 and Radeon VII are about $200 too expensive.

 

[ecuador]

This is a 16GB card at $700. Amazing for content creators who'd have to fork over $2k+ for going above 12GB. It is also a 3.5TFlops FP64 card at $700. Amazing for double precision FP applications. It just so happens it can also play current games almost as well as a 2080 (it might or might not play future games better). For gamers it is indeed rather "meh" or "overpriced", for some other types of users it is ground breaking and a "steal".

 

[c3k]

But, but, but...what about 4k?



Okay, I'm still waiting for Navi. The Radeon VII is an obvious stopgap. I say that as an AMD fan (check the sig: Vega 56 and R9 390, and very old Nvidia's).

Holiday Season 2019 will change everything. Feliz NAVI-dad...indeed.

 

[Brian_B]

That may be part of it, but I think the four stacks of HBM plays a pretty large role in power as well.

16GB is a lot of RAM, but I thought HBM was supposed to use significantly less power than DDR5X/DDR6?

 

[Shmee]

This is a 16GB card at $700. Amazing for content creators who'd have to fork over $2k+ for going above 12GB. It is also a 3.5TFlops FP64 card at $700. Amazing for double precision FP applications. It just so happens it can also play current games almost as well as a 2080 (it might or might not play future games better). For gamers it is indeed rather "meh" or "overpriced", for some other types of users it is ground breaking and a "steal".

That is fine, but for 99% of us all that RAM is wasted on us. A cheaper 10Gig card would have gone a long way to win gamers over.

 

[KazeoHin]

That may be part of it, but I think the four stacks of HBM plays a pretty large role in power as well.

not really, HBM uses a fraction of the power that GDDR uses. If AMD used a 512-bit GDDR6 bus instead of the 1024-bit HBM bus, the memory would be slower, and consume over twice the power.

 

[Kor]

That may be part of it, but I think the four stacks of HBM plays a pretty large role in power as well.

It would be worse if they had GDDR6 modules.

 

[vegeta535]

not really, HBM uses a fraction of the power that GDDR uses. If AMD used a 512-bit GDDR6 bus instead of the 1024-bit HBM bus, the memory would be slower, and consume over twice the power.

Yet Nvidia is using the slower and more power hungry ram and still deliever better performance at let power. Running at a bigger nod also. GCN needs to finnaly be taking out back. Navi won't be the answer. Nvidia is going to have a beast with of a card once they drop down to 7nm. AMD needs to get their shit together or we never going to have affordable GPUs again.

 

[JNavy89GT]

I'm a bit sad, but not overall surprised Radeon 7 didn't "overperform" the 2080. I feel once drivers are up to snuff, it will equal or maybe slightly better a 1080ti, and still makes the pricing somewhat questionable. However, I do agree that HEDT users and video editing gurus will probably buy out this card, and keep it out of stock for the foreseeable future. Also, given the Radeon 7performance, I really don't hold out a ton of hope for Navi either. I think AMD can continue to compete on a price/performance standpoint for the more entry level gaming gpu buyers. I just got my son an 8gb Radeon 570 and I'm very impressed with the performance given I paid $120 after rebate. I'll say $200 Radeon 580's are a harder sell for me given 1060 pricing and relative performance etc.... All I can do at this point is wait and see..... Having no control over these external events, I'll take it as it comes. I was disapponted in the Nvidia 2080/2080ti performance increase over prior cards, especially given the huge IMO price increases for RTX which is of no interest to me currently. I'll stick with my 1080ti hybrid and be happy with it for what I paid etc... Should keep me performing well until the next cycle hits.

 

[Zam15]

Not sure why he didn't cover 4K in the video, if you look at his 4K benchmarks the VII does much better when compared to the 2080.

 

[Krenum]

But, but, but...what about 4k?



Okay, I'm still waiting for Navi. The Radeon VII is an obvious stopgap. I say that as an AMD fan (check the sig: Vega 56 and R9 390, and very old Nvidia's).

Holiday Season 2019 will change everything. Feliz NAVI-dad...indeed.

Don't get your hopes too high or it'll be, Feliz NAVI-disappointed.

 

[ThreeDee]

It is also a 3.5TFlops FP64 card at $700. .

isn't it FP60?

 

[R_Type]

That may be part of it, but I think the four stacks of HBM plays a pretty large role in power as well.

It probably is the opposite; hbm is more efficient than gddr5/6

 

[noko]

Good to hear the driver bugs seemed to be remedy but with some performance loss ( not much).

• He did not mention if OCing now works even though he didn't test it?
• Looking at his charts, did he tested all those video cards in the same system with current AMD drivers as well as Nvidia or did he use old results? That is not clear to me and really just seems impossible for all those cards, anyone knows?

Man, I am dying to hear from Brent! Want to know if there are texture artifacts, glitches, rendering issues, smoothness of actual game play, abnormal fan variations and the list goes on that none of the reviews I've plowed through even would considered. Plus any real OCing results, the Nvidia tests were with an OC card so being 5%-7% slower overall is most likely just a wash between the cards. Max OC on both would be nice to know.

It is very obvious that AMD, once again put a subpar cooling solution on their card. At least they could have had a liquid cooling addition for $100 more, encourage AIBs for a better cooling solution. It maybe just a token card to say they are in the race yet with no real long term commitment or large number of cards. If one has a Vega 64, 64LC, 1080 I don't think either the 2080 or Vega VII is a worth while upgrade. For a 1080 Ti owner looking for a worth upgrade for the same price (the use to be norm of things), the Vega VII and 2080 would be pointless. The 2080 Ti with abysmal failure rate and pricing is the only worthwhile performance upgrade card except maybe for a 1080 Ti owner. For me the 2080 Ti pricing, lack of use of the hardware, crap reliability is a bad joke, the Turning Titan is even more of a Joke. 2019 in a nutshell just sucks for the Enthusiast with nothing obvious coming later.

As for the notion that Vega VII is for content creators, I would like to see case studies that even remotely shows this to be valid. Anything Cuda based such as VRay and other programs would prove Nvidia the better Content card. While OpenCL programs AMD. AMD previously went with that route with the Vega FE, Content creator card but gaming as well. The newest Pro Drivers 19.Q1 for the Vega FE went backwards with the gaming drivers with only 18.8.1 - Thanks AMD for the support for those that support you, NOT! One can go through some acrobatics and load 19.2.1 drivers as a side note unofficially/unsupported with of course issues which one will need to work around.

Looks like 2020, probably late 2020 for a real worthwhile upgrade and maybe, I doubt it, it might be from Intel.

 

[Nobu]

HBM may be more efficient, but how about the fabric connecting that memory to the GPU? Also, we're talking about almost double the memory. It may be more efficient, but 100%?

 

[_mockingbird]

It would be worse if they had GDDR6 modules.

Navi can replace Radeon RX Vega 64 and below.

The efficiency gain from GloFo 14nm --> TSMC 7nm would be used up by going from HBM2 --> GDDR6

That said, I don't know how Navi could replace Radeon VII.

Since Radeon VII is already on TSMC 7nm, going from HBM2 --> GDDR6 would result in big increase in power consumption without a GPU die shrink to mitigate the power increase.

Furthermore, it's unclear if AMD can even fit 16 x GDDR6 chips on the PCB to maintain the memory bandwidth.

AMD would have to make some serious improvement to its memory compression.

 

[andrewaggb]

Guess we'll have to see what Navi does with GCN. If it's just minor tweaks and some new features it's going to be disappointing. Needs a major overhaul.

 

[NKD]

he really thought it would destroy the 2080? I am terribly disappointed in him that he didn't have his expectations in check knowing everything we knew about Radeon 7. Talk about over reaction.

 

[Nobu]

Good to hear the driver bugs seemed to be remedy but with some performance loss ( not much).

• He did not mention if OCing now works even though he didn't test it?
• Looking at his charts, did he tested all those video cards in the same system with current AMD drivers as well as Nvidia or did he use old results? That is not clear to me and really just seems impossible for all those cards, anyone knows?

Man, I am dying to hear from Brent! Want to know if there are texture artifacts, glitches, rendering issues, smoothness of actual game play, abnormal fan variations and the list goes on that none of the reviews I've plowed through even would considered. Plus any real OCing results, the Nvidia tests were with an OC card so being 5%-7% slower overall is most likely just a wash between the cards. Max OC on both would be nice to know.

It is very obvious that AMD, once again put a subpar cooling solution on their card. At least they could have had a liquid cooling addition for $100 more, encourage AIBs for a better cooling solution. It maybe just a token card to say they are in the race yet with no real long term commitment or large number of cards. If one has a Vega 64, 64LC, 1080 I don't think either the 2080 or Vega VII is a worth while upgrade. For a 1080 Ti owner looking for a worth upgrade for the same price (the use to be norm of things), the Vega VII and 2080 would be pointless. The 2080 Ti with abysmal failure rate and pricing is the only worthwhile performance upgrade card except maybe for a 1080 Ti owner. For me the 2080 Ti pricing, lack of use of the hardware, crap reliability is a bad joke, the Turning Titan is even more of a Joke. 2019 in a nutshell just sucks for the Enthusiast with nothing obvious coming later.

As for the notion that Vega VII is for content creators, I would like to see case studies that even remotely shows this to be valid. Anything Cuda based such as VRay and other programs would prove Nvidia the better Content card. While OpenCL programs AMD. AMD previously went with that route with the Vega FE, Content creator card but gaming as well. The newest Pro Drivers 19.Q1 for the Vega FE went backwards with the gaming drivers with only 18.8.1 - Thanks AMD for the support for those that support you, NOT! One can go through some acrobatics and load 19.2.1 drivers as a side note unofficially/unsupported with of course issues which one will need to work around.

Looks like 2020, probably late 2020 for a real worthwhile upgrade and maybe, I doubt it, it might be from Intel.

He didn't rerun any of the tests covered in the prior video.

 

[legcramp]

They really should've priced it $100 more expensive...

#dealwithit

 

[Teenyman45]

They really should've priced it $100 more expensive...

#dealwithit

View attachment 141031

It could also be out of stock because, according to some rumors, AMD only made about 5,000 VII's for initial sales globally.

 

[STEM]

AMD could easily eek out another 3-8% performance with driver updates, so all is not lost. The power consumption is worrisome though, their 7nm is not quite there yet? Dunno.

The driver is unpolished when it comes to over locking and properly running the GPU, however, the chip itself is Vega with four less compute units, a bunch more temperature sensors and twice the memory bandwidth, oh, and higher clocks. The architecture is old and poorly designed, highly inefficient. A die shrink to 7nm won't fix those problems. So there won't be any more performance with driver updates.

That may be part of it, but I think the four stacks of HBM plays a pretty large role in power as well.

Those four stacks of HBM2 need 20W of power, a heck of a lot less than GDDR6.

Guess we'll have to see what Navi does with GCN. If it's just minor tweaks and some new features it's going to be disappointing. Needs a major overhaul.

NAVI is a slimmed down version of GCN made custom made for SONY. As stupid choices go, this was one of the stupidest AMD made. This is why VEGA was a clusterfuck, because most engineers were moved over to work on NAVI. Don't expect much from that architecture.

Honestly, looks like the 1080 Ti is the best GPU as far as value is concerned. I'm sure that if NVIDIA would still make it, people would continue to buy it at $699 no questions asked. I got a pair and a 2080 and I like the 1080 Ti better. Because if the 11GB framebuffer I can run some stupid settings in GTA V.

 

[chaos4u]

it maybe a good 500 dollar card.

 

[psyclist]

Well we shall see how it shakes out in a month or so, give the drivers a chance to mature a little for the new card, and overclocking tools fixed for the new design. Card is definitely not a home run, but a solid offering to keep AMD in the high end. Imma stick with my V64, great performance when underwater and clocked, within ~5% of the stock clocked VII, but I want to see this card can do overclocked and under water

 

[ecuador]

isn't it FP60?

Is this a bad attempt at a "60 FPS" joke?

 

[_mockingbird]

NAVI is a slimmed down version of GCN made custom made for SONY. As stupid choices go, this was one of the stupidest AMD made. This is why VEGA was a clusterfuck, because most engineers were moved over to work on NAVI. Don't expect much from that architecture.

I know someone on RTG's driver team and asked him specifically about this.

He said that this is completely false.

 

[noko]

He didn't rerun any of the tests covered in the prior video.

That to me falls far short. Basically making big list of games, results and not even playing one of them to see if they actually work right combined with different drivers, OS updates and probably system configurations then place then on a chart to indicate how they compare to each other. I think I give the Vega VII a better rating then his review of it.

 

[wizzi01]

Whatever his results are hardware unboxed always seemed like a joker to me. A lot of what he says and does stinks of bias.

 

[Oldmodder]

Well if i could get it for 699 i would be happy, but the fact is it sell for close to 899 here, and that pretty much make it not interesting, though a 2080 sell for a little higher price then that's more easy to justify with its place in performance rankings.
If i could get it for 599 i would buy it tomorrow, or should i say when cards with a better cooler appear cuz i will have to run it on air for a while.

 

[Usual_suspect]

I’m sure as time goes on, and more and more modders get their hands on this card someone will do the same here that was done to Vega 56/64. I know my Vega 56 doesn’t consume more than 210 watts and I have the memory OC’d and my power limit set at the default max thanks to undervolting.

Every review I’ve read is a knee jerk reaction, I’m sure time will tell though.

 

[auntjemima]

Whatever his results are hardware unboxed always seemed like a joker to me. A lot of what he says and does stinks of bias.

Negative Radeon 7 review? Must be bias.

 

[wizzi01]

Negative Radeon 7 review? Must be bias.

Yes, because I was just talking about the latest review. learn to read or just don't reply to me.