AMD Radeon VII 16GB Review: A Surprise Attack on GeForce RTX 2080

[Jim90]

If you're in the market for the three bundled games then this card is an attractive proposition.

This is a card whose roots is not gaming based. It's not going to be a mass market card...was never intended as such. What's impressive is that it trades blows with the 2080. What Nvidia should be concerned with is that it's a non-gaming card doing this - just how much competition will the real AMD 7nm Navi cards be when they're finally released and drivers optimised? It's looking good for AMD on the gfx side too

 

[Joe Black]

What impressed me was the 99th percentile figures.

 

[emeralds1000000]

AMD ... where is the 8GB Version of this card and $150 less?

We are waiting for it to happen .,

 

[AgentLozen]

AMD ... where is the 8GB Version of this card and $150 less?

There's apparently a link between the amount of memory, bus width, and total memory through put. I've read that if AMD released an 8GB version that would cut the bandwidth in half.

I don't understand why the HBM2 stacks couldn't just be half as tall though. Instead of 4GB x 4 stacks, they could use 2GB x 4 stacks. Maybe I just don't understand how this works though.

 

[bramahon]

Finally, Chris has something to pour his authority and experience into. Think what he could had AMD given him a brand new architecture! Great write-up, but I'll wait for your Navi review

 

[shmoochie]

This is not a gaming card, people. I know you want it to be, but you have to wait until Navi. They cannot release an 8Gb version of this because it would bottleneck the card. Anyone that says this is targeting the same crowd as the 2080 is just plain wrong.

 

[Brian_R170]

This is not a gaming card, people. I know you want it to be, but you have to wait until Navi.

Are you calling AMD liars? Go to https://www.amd.com and the first thing you see is "AMD RADEON VII THE WORLDS FIRST 7nm GAMING GPU." (The all-caps are quoted directly).

 

[TJ Hooker]

This is not a gaming card, people. I know you want it to be, but you have to wait until Navi. They cannot release an 8Gb version of this because it would bottleneck the card. Anyone that says this is targeting the same crowd as the 2080 is just plain wrong.

AMD themselves describe it prominently as a gaming card, presented benchmarks comparing it to an RTX 2080 when they unveiled it, and priced it the same as a 2080. It's not hard to see why people would think it's targeting the same market as a 2080.

 

[shmoochie]

This is not a gaming card, people. I know you want it to be, but you have to wait until Navi.

Are you calling AMD liars? Go to https://www.amd.com and the first thing you see is "AMD RADEON VII THE WORLDS FIRST 7nm GAMING GPU." (The all-caps are quoted directly).

Yes, I am calling them liars.

 

[shmoochie]

This is not a gaming card, people. I know you want it to be, but you have to wait until Navi. They cannot release an 8Gb version of this because it would bottleneck the card. Anyone that says this is targeting the same crowd as the 2080 is just plain wrong.

AMD themselves describe it prominently as a gaming card, presented benchmarks comparing it to an RTX 2080 when they unveiled it, and priced it the same as a 2080. It's not hard to see why people would think it's targeting the same market as a 2080.

Yes, I can see why people would think that, but again, they are just plain wrong. AMD took the opportunity to market it as such because it is conveniently close in performance and can double as a gaming card, but it is first and foremost a workstation compute card. AMD was stupid to try to market it any other way.

 

[Jim90]

To clarify, this is a card whose production roots is not gaming based. What's impressive is that it trades blows with the 2080. Just how much competition will the real AMD 7nm Navi cards be when they're finally released and prices competitively adjusted? Nvidia will be concerned about this.

It's looking good for AMD on the gfx side too !!

 

[TJ Hooker]

To clarify, this is a card whose production roots is not gaming based. What's impressive is that it trades blows with the 2080. Just how much competition will the real AMD 7nm Navi cards be when they're finally released and prices competitively adjusted? Nvidia will be concerned about this.

It's looking good for AMD on the gfx side too !!

If you're talking about how this is basically a consumer release of a workstation GPU, you could say the same thing about a 2080. Nvidia uses the same dies for their Geforce line as their Quadro line, a 2080 GPU is just a slightly cut down version of what's in a Quadro RTX 5000 with bumped up clock speeds.

 

[Jim90]

The Radeon VII is a 7nm conversion of an established line (Vega 64) but with an explicit professional focus (e.g. 16GB, some FP64 functionality).

The takeaway message for the Radeon VII is that a very deliberate demo of AMD's 7nm process via a 'relatively' simple die shrink of an existing Vega line can actually compete with Nvidia's 2nd most powerful gaming card. Nvidia will be concerned for what this same (and now tested) 7nm process is capable of in a brand new design actually intended for the gaming market (Navi '10/20'). Just as AMD is about to upset Intel, the potential for them to also to upset Nvidia is clear, particularly after Nvidia's eye-watering raising of the price bar.
Ignore Vega II's pricing (16GB of HBM2) - Navi will undoubtedly price 'competitively' - they won't make the same error as Nvidia and they'll be well aware of that backlash and it's affect on sales, reputation etc etc. I applaud Nvidia for introducing RT. I don't applaud them for how they treated their loyal customers with the pricing. I have a GTX 1080. I still have one.

 

[King_V]

they cant lower the price without losing money on each card that memory cost so much its half of the BOM

I know this has been mentioned, but do we have any hard data where we know this for certain?

I remember asking someone before, and they posted a link, but even that seemed to be a he-said-she-said kind of thing.

It was unintentionally leaked by an employee at AMD who didn't think the product was going to be released.

https://wccftech.com/exclusive-mike-rayfield-amd-retires/

"He presented suggestions that werent really feasible such as ‘Radeon VII ‘ which was to be a Vega 20 based consumer facing part that cost $750 to build and would barely tie in with an [NVIDIA] GTX 1080 Ti."

This article was posted December 13th. A month before the Radeon VII was actually announced. There's no way wccftech just made up a quote that got the name of the product right when it followed no previous naming scheme, got the price right within $50 (well, claimed cost to build was $50 difference from actual MSRP), and nailed the performance, a month out when no one else had any leaks all the way up to release. That would be one epic guess.

While I don't think wccftech made up this interview . . I'm a bit leery when the info is coming from a single anonymous source, not confirmed by anyone else, yet is seen as dead-on reliable.

I mean, don't get me wrong, could well be true. Could well be somewhat inaccurate in the estimation of the costs, though.

While I am no SEC officer, I also imagine that if AMD were selling things at a loss, reports to investors would probably have to contain such information (my understanding of the laws around this are pretty darn near zero, though)

 

[King_V]

But this? " Buy before these cards sell out!" ... uh huh. The Radeon VII won't be sold out. They messed up. Big time.

Well, as it turns out, they are sold out.

https://techreport.com/news/34456/all-the-radeon-vii-graphics-cards-where-are-they

 

[nobspls]

But this? " Buy before these cards sell out!" ... uh huh. The Radeon VII won't be sold out. They messed up. Big time.

Well, as it turns out, they are sold out.

https://techreport.com/news/34456/all-the-radeon-vii-graphics-cards-where-are-they

Being sold out at any one moment doesn't mean jack. Paper launches are always sold out for the time period until it becomes a real launch. If you are easily fooled by that ..... you probably think there are bunnies on the moon too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit

 

[nobspls]

To clarify, this is a card whose production roots is not gaming based. What's impressive is that it trades blows with the 2080. Just how much competition will the real AMD 7nm Navi cards be when they're finally released and prices competitively adjusted? Nvidia will be concerned about this...

Why does it matter what its roots are? Being 3 years late to produce something that can't convincingly beat the 1080ti or 2070 across the board is hardly worth celebrating. It is a distortion to talk about it "trading blows" because its performance is so inconsistent and all over the place. For example:

or

Intel may have screwed up their own executions in their own fabs. But it is silly to think that nVidia can not die shrink. nVidia is totally sandbagging with the RTX launch, because the reality is that there is no competition. All this talk of Navi just like all the talk of Vega 3 years ago, when is Navi going to be real. And if current trends hold you can bet AMD will price it screw people over. BTW You can bet nVidia has got stuff worked out ready to go to respond when there is real competition, they just have no need to show their cards, especially while they want to unload all the pascals. The Radeon VII isn't that competition, when it delivers less performance for basically same price point yielding poorer value.

 

[keeperofthestones01]

Maybe Nvidia owns Radeon via subsidiaries simply to release crap that makes nvidia continue looking kingly...shame next gen consoles and smart tvs will do most leisure based entertainment / pc activities like movies and gaming for 1/3 of the price and 1 millionth of the hassle with drivers rubbish settings and poor optimisation. What if sony have their own chip. ? Nvidia and AMD sink at any rate gpus are over....perhaps 2000 AU$ for a rtx 2080ti worth it as only collectors items and we all know how collectors edition of GPUs ends up lol ......

 

[keeperofthestones01]

Oh and if game makers want to ensure the faster death of consumer GPUs drop or continue poor Sli/crossfire implementation...us clients who had to purchase two of the crappy cards just to play games decently already hit up and bruised by the fact alone...developers will say no more sli...then when they realise the poorly optimised console ports require two cards to get decent frame rates dual cards will again be pushed...Dropping SLI/Crossfire support is a tactic to create reasons to purchase an RTX series fail....

 

[keeperofthestones01]

Perhaps ...AMD cannot release a decent card by contractual arrangement with the Console makers regarding 7nm Navi. Once PS5 is out of the way then AMD may elect to really step up and produce something that really does reinvigorate the PC gaming market with either affordable high performance or cheap SOCs that "do the job" or else just walk away to custom SOC's only...I suspect the PS5 will be such a hit PC GPU sales will plumet anyway...

 

[keeperofthestones01]

From the test results 1080's running well in SLI will do a 2080 anyday ... 2 1080's will run a lot faster and cooler than a single stressed out 2080///... optimised correctly. There is a lot of propaganda about this...my FE 1080 and GB Gaming 1080 are fiddly but running at 1800Mhz @47 Degrees....doing AF SLI 2560p 120hz Ultra . Now A 2080RTX @ 2560p 120hz? Ultra probably around 80 plus degrees..
I wouldn't be surprised if a 1080 kept pace with 2080 just using a phys x card as well...in phys x games that is.
Very strange that Nvidia has 300000 1080's to rid themselves of plus likely more so why not a SLI push to help clear the stock ie buy two for only ....the cost of a 2080...... but last twice as long run half as hot. My next spend on tech will be a console ps5 or X...

 

[PrinceTexasLoaf]

It seems like an amazing card but it just needs a little more performance I would like to see how it does overclocked compared to an overclocked 2080 that'd be interesting

 

[PrinceTexasLoaf]

I'd say lower the memory to about 14gb lower the price by like 30-50$
and have them a little bit factory overclocked and have a better fan curve from
factory that would make them compete a little more to the 2080

 

[gangsta112]

hmm https://gyazo.com/4d20d43e76eaf5a33b2003eccc4fd517

 

[gangsta112]

Hmm, the nano version would probably look something like this: https://gyazo.com/4d20d43e76eaf5a33b2003eccc4fd517 lol