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) |
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| 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 |
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| Video Drivers | NVIDIA Release 417.71 AMD Radeon Software 18.50 Press |
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| OS | Windows 10 x64 Pro (1803) Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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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.
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eva02langley - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Love my 2400g, agree with an iGPU like that, however you will not make me believe that an HD 520 is "enough".My only GPUs that died were Nvidia ones... 3 in total. 0 AMD.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Read what he said again. "For majority 90+ % of people Integrated graphics are good enough for spreadsheets, internet and word processing"Guess what nearly every office laptop and desktop uses? If it wasnt "good enough" there would be a push for more powerful iGPUs in widespread circulation.
The basic intel iGPU if far mroe then enough to do office work, stream video, or normal workstation content. more powerful GPUs are only needed in specific circumstances.
eva02langley - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
I know what he said and I know what he means... and I know he is painted Intel all over his body.And no, basic HD 520 is not enough, period. You can barely do office work and play videos.
If it was so true, the mobile market would not be the most lucrative for games/entertainment. As of now, a smart phone is having more GPU power than an HD520.
So basically, I am not agreeing at all.
AdhesiveTeflon - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
We do plenty of CAD work and GIS functions with Intel's iGPUs, so what were you saying about them barely able to do office work and videos?We also have a lot more issues with AMD's mobile and professional cards than nVidia's.
Icehawk - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
Out of 500 PCs at my job a whopping two have video cards, they are random low ends ones purchased to add additional video ports for two stations that run quad monitors. Otherwise there is zero need for a dGPU.This is typical of the vast majority of businesses.
ksec - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
1. I believe there will be better drivers for VII, it was quite clear that there are many optimisation not done in time, although I don't know how long it will take. The new AMD seems to be quick to react though.2. What if AMD decided to release the MI60 VII at $899.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
VII is the VEGA arch, with more ROPs. If AMD managed to leave that much performance on the table, they must be the most incompetent code writers in all of existence.The VEGA arch has long been optimized for, adding some ROPs isnt going to require much work to optimize for, and AMD has likely already done that.
ksec - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Optimisation are now nearly done on a per AAA game level. And more importantly not only the drivers but the game itself. Whether the developer are willing to optimise the game ( at the help of AMD ) will be another story.lcrotach - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Nice to see AMD being competitive again. It's a pity they've priced the card so high in Europe that you can get a RTX 2080 for 100 euros less. At that price point they won't be selling many.Manch - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Need to see the VAT free price.