AMD Radeon VII: world's first 7nm gaming GPU is 25-35% faster than Vega 64, ships February...

[Cal Jeffrey]

Why it matters: The next generation of AMD gaming GPUs has arrived. CEO Lisa Su announced the Radeon VII during AMD's CES 2019 keynote claiming the new 7nm second-generation Vega GPU can boost performance 27 to 62 percent depending on the task, has 1 terabyte/s memory bandwidth, 60 compute units operating up to 1.8GHz, and thanks to the shrink in process, the chip can squeeze 25% more performance in the same power envelope.

Radeon VII will be the first ever 7nm gaming GPU when it lands early February. The chip looked pretty impressive during a short demo of Devil May Cry 5, taxing the new GPU by running the game at 4K on maximum settings. The demo consistently ran between 70-120 fps only dropping below 60 fps a couple of times and only for a fraction of a second.

Similarly, Su showed off benchmark tests on Battlefield V, Fortnite, and Strange Brigade running 25 to 42 percent faster compared with the Radeon RX Vega 64. This boost in performance is aided by the card’s 1TB of memory bandwidth, which comes with no increase in power consumption.

Radeon VII comes equipped with 60 compute units/3840 stream processors running at up to 1.8GHz. Its 16GB of HBM2 (second-generation high bandwidth memory) as mentioned pushes through ultra-fast speeds.

“Ground-breaking 1 TB/s memory bandwidth and a 4,096-bit memory interface paves the way for ultra-high resolution textures, hyper-realistic settings and life-like characters,” said AMD.

The Radeon VII will set you back $699, making it clear that AMD is looking to compete directly with the GeForce RTX 2080 that has the same MSRP (currently selling for a bit more as it’s uncontested). Given the performance claims, AMD may be onto something, but then again they barely showed any performance metrics and those were hand picked by them.

To sweeten the deal, AMD will be throwing in copies of the Resident Evil 2 remake, The Division 2, and Devil May Cry 5 with every card. That's over $150 added value, which isn't shabby. The deal will apply to computers pre-installed with he card as well. According to AMD, the Alienware Area-51 Threadripper Edition will be one of the first desktops equipped with the Radeon VII.

You can start picking up Radeon VII cards or seeing them appear as options in high-end gaming rigs starting on February 7. The company says that several leading add-in-board partners will also be offering the cards.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/78196-amd-radeon-vii-world-first-7nm-gaming-gpu.html

 

[Jeff Schmidt]

Well if this holds true than AMD has brought some competition to Nvidia. Too bad they couldn't undercut them some in price. But at least we have a 3 fan reference design so its not noisy. Hopefully its not needed to keep the card from over heating. And its just them getting rid of the blower style coolers.

 

[yRaz]

Yay, 16GB of memory!

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

Well if this holds true than AMD has brought some competition to Nvidia. Too bad they couldn't undercut them some in price. But at least we have a 3 fan reference design so its not noisy. Hopefully its not needed to keep the card from over heating. And its just them getting rid of the blower style coolers.

Throwing in three as-of-yet unreleased games into the bundle makes the price more attractive -- at least to those interested in those games.

 

[TheDevopsGuy]

Honestly Navi in Early 2019 was a long shot and just a hope for most amd fans, the performance is up there but the price does cut it quite close. Also although the gpu is on 7nm process the power draw is too damn high.. as for the ryzen cpu looks great single thread performance matches the best i9 also it is rumoured that the displayed chip was just the r5 3600 not even the best amd ryzen 2 chip.

 

[Vulcanproject]

If we assume roughly the same performance as RTX2080, but $50 less with game bundles, they have a winner.

However at the same price as RTX2080......then there is little to shout about. It doesn't force the RTX price lower, Nvidia can still point out their RTX features make their cards worth more. What's more is that if this card doesn't use a lot less power than a Vega 64, the RTX2080 is still considerably more power efficient. People will just buy Nvidia as they did when it was between GTX1080 and Vega 64.

At least it gives more of a choice I suppose. Not great, not bad. Just ok. Wait for the benchmarks and hope the Radeon wins by enough to make Nvidia sweat a little on price.

 

[144hzGamer]

Meh. So thanks to nvidia these are the new prices for gpu line ups:

- mid end 450€/600€
- high end 800€
- enthusiast 1200€

Amd followed this pricing. I am personally out. Bring that PlayStation 5.

Never bought an apple product so I will defo not be paying premium price on pc hardware. I'm done.

 

[Maxiking]

There is no reason to buy Radeon VII unless you are a braindead amd fan. If you can afford spending 699 for the VII, the additional 100 dollars for 2080 won't kill you and you will save up.

 

[Evernessince]

If we assume roughly the same performance as RTX2080, but $50 less with game bundles, they have a winner.

However at the same price as RTX2080......then there is little to shout about. It doesn't force the RTX price lower, Nvidia can still point out their RTX features make their cards worth more. What's more is that if this card doesn't use a lot less power than a Vega 64, the RTX2080 is still considerably more power efficient. People will just buy Nvidia as they did when it was between GTX1080 and Vega 64.

At least it gives more of a choice I suppose. Not great, not bad. Just ok. Wait for the benchmarks and hope the Radeon wins by enough to make Nvidia sweat a little on price.

On the upside this card isn't a year late, so at least they are making up ground. Whether this card is efficient or not will depend if they targeted the sweet spot or just went for raw performance. Vega 56 and 64 could get could power efficiency when undervolted, they were just pushed too hard out of the factory.

There is no reason to buy Radeon VII unless you are a braindead amd fan. If you can afford spending 699 for the VII, the additional 100 dollars for 2080 won't kill you and you will save up.

This comment doesn't make any sense. Why would you spend $100 more on the Nvidia card if both have the same performance? How exactly does saving money for the same performance make someone braindead? Please elaborate.

 

[torchyear]

Interesting. Perhaps a GPU with more appeal to content creators on a budget. Currently there's nothing else available at this price with 16GB VRAM. Might be a hot item for indie 6K/8K video editors.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Is SU supposed to be channeling Huang holding that card up that way? Seems so.

 

[redhat]

The important thing is not performance as the old Vega also did well, however it is the power consuming that concern at most, plus I dont understand why they choose HBM? to increase prices or to reduce availability????

 

[Vulcanproject]

Whether this card is efficient or not will depend if they targeted the sweet spot or just went for raw performance. Vega 56 and 64 could get could power efficiency when undervolted, they were just pushed too hard out of the factory.

She talked about 25 percent more performance for the same power draw yet again, as was emphasised last year when the first 7nm parts were confirmed. Well, this card is something like 25-30 percent faster than a Vega 64.

So it's likely to still be rather power hungry unless AMD have managed to do a lot of work on the power profile side of the GPU.

Hopefully it's less than a Vega 64 but it needs to be quite a lot less. RTX2080 is only 225w under max gaming load. 250w would at least make people more interested when in a head to head against the RTX2080. 300w will put them off like it did for the Vega 64.

 

[Lounds]

So this has basically confirmed that the PS5 is coming 2020 and not 2019.

 

[Evernessince]

Interesting. Perhaps a GPU with more appeal to content creators on a budget. Currently there's nothing else available at this price with 16GB VRAM. Might be a hot item for indie 6K/8K video editors.

That's a good point. That's not taking into consideration that vega cards can create a virtual memory space of up to 1 TB by streaming from the HBM and main system memory. That's one of the big reasons they decided to use HBM instead of GDDR.

The important thing is not performance as the old Vega also did well, however it is the power consuming that concern at most, plus I dont understand why they choose HBM? to increase prices or to reduce availability????

HBM is intrinsic to the Vega design. The HBCC (which allows the card to have a virtual memory address space of up to 1TB) requires HBM. Not really appealing to gamers but very useful for creatives.

 

[Evernessince]

Is SU supposed to be channeling Huang holding that card up that way? Seems so.

Given that she's related to him, I'm guessing that share that trait mutually.

 

[TomSEA]

Competition is always good, so I applaud this.

Now if AMD could finally get their act together when it comes to releasing timely (and quality) drivers.

 

[Johndoedoedoe]

They didn't undercut NVIDIA's price point. Disappointing. With NVIDIA's features, it's arguable that it's still the better deal. Unfortunate.

 

[144hzGamer]

So this has basically confirmed that the PS5 is coming 2020 and not 2019.

To me it just confirms the rumours about sony and amd deal about keeping navi exclusive until PS5 releases so Sony can say they have something new.

One thing Im sure, next gen Im going console.

 

[BigBoomBoom]

So what happened to that "leak" that AMD GPU will be super cheap? $200 for GTX 1080/2070 performance? If this is around 1080Ti/2080 and $699 price tag I can't see how that "leak" going to be real.

At least I hope this will make NVIDIA lower their price a bit. But meh, 2018 16nm performance for 2018 price. 7nm isn't showing much so far. At least AMD is only 12 months late now not 18 months late.

 

[Danny101]

If you don't have to water cool it like you had to do with Vega 64, then it's a win. It'll be at least a year before I'll be in the market for a card anyway, so I'm just spectating for now. I never had a PS4, but if the PS5's are backwards compatible, then I can skip the PS4. 2 for the price of one.

 

[Nightfire]

They didn't undercut NVIDIA's price point. Disappointing. With NVIDIA's features, it's arguable that it's still the better deal. Unfortunate.

This card had 1 TB/s bandwidth, which is twice that of the GTX 2080. Combined with the 16GB vRam, it will have a longer lifespan than the competition.

This would be like comparing an 8GB Fury (if it existed) to a 4GB GTX 980.

 

[wiyosaya]

HBM is intrinsic to the Vega design. The HBCC (which allows the card to have a virtual memory address space of up to 1TB) requires HBM. Not really appealing to gamers but very useful for creatives.

And also for those doing compute on large data sets.

 

[m3tavision]

Whether this card is efficient or not will depend if they targeted the sweet spot or just went for raw performance. Vega 56 and 64 could get could power efficiency when undervolted, they were just pushed too hard out of the factory.

She talked about 25 percent more performance for the same power draw yet again, as was emphasised last year when the first 7nm parts were confirmed. Well, this card is something like 25-30 percent faster than a Vega 64.

So it's likely to still be rather power hungry unless AMD have managed to do a lot of work on the power profile side of the GPU.

Hopefully it's less than a Vega 64 but it needs to be quite a lot less. RTX2080 is only 225w under max gaming load. 250w would at least make people more interested when in a head to head against the RTX2080. 300w will put them off like it did for the Vega 64.

I do not think you are well learned on Vega 56 & 64.

As other have attempted to convey with you is that Vega's design IS very efficient when not pushed to it's limits (as AMD had to do, when releasing Vega, because they had to met a certain price/performance ratio.)

But if you ran Vega slightly underclocked, it's efficiency rose considerably. And you didn't lose much performance, or low frames times, because the card ran so much cooler, that it didn't throttle all the time, of have heat soak, etc.

Now, if you start out with 1.8GHz chips and you are not overvolting them (like they did with the 1.4Ghz 1st gen), then you will not have the excessive power draw you had on Stock Vega's a year ago.


Secondly, if you are going from 14nm to 7nm you can be conservative and EASILY understand that Radeon 7 (VEGA2) is not going to hotbox People's systems.

 

[Stark]

Meh. So thanks to nvidia these are the new prices for gpu line ups:

- mid end 450€/600€
- high end 800€
- enthusiast 1200€

Amd followed this pricing. I am personally out. Bring that PlayStation 5.

Never bought an apple product so I will defo not be paying premium price on pc hardware. I'm done.

This is actually what bothers me the most, supporting one company or not, Whenever the prices are driven high they tend to stick to those brackets even when the other company has a competitive product.