AMD’s Radeon VII Is a Great Gaming Card, But That’s Just the Beginning

AMD ’s fighting challenger on all fronts . It ’s battling Intel in the processor space , with each society publicise more core and flip on more features to woo drug user ( and manufacturers ) away from the other . Yet its battle against Nvidia in the GPU outer space is unlike . While Nvidia well dominates the high-pitched - remainder distance , AMD has been content to offer tatty cards with comparable power in the mid - range and below . The Radeon VII , AMD ’s new $ 700 bill of fare — the first 7 nm GPU to embark to consumer — is intended to take on Nvidia ’s very beneficial cards . What ’s surprising is that it is n’t just as just as Nvidia ’s best — sometimes it ’s better .

AMD Radeon VII

What is it ?

Photo: Alex Cranz

Those four rectangles surrounding the larger rectangle are the 16GB of HBM2 memory. It’s a lot.Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

AMD ’s rival to the ray tracing Nvidia RTX 2080 .

Price

$ 700

Graphic: Alex Cranz

Graphic: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

It ’s improbably fast in professional software thanks to 16 GB of HMB2 memory .

No Like

Graphic: Alex Cranz

Graphic: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

It lack the nerveless supernumerary features the RTX 2080 has , including ray trace .

It ’s a surprise that the Radeon VII is impressive because it ’s base on the Vega architecture that AMD introduced in 2017 . It ’s the same architecture found in its Ryzen CPUs with integrated graphics , and it ’s the same architecture found in the Vega 56 and 64 nontextual matter card game , which launched back in August 2017 and sold for $ 400 and $ 500 severally . A $ 700 card based on a two - yr - old computer architecture feels like a uncollectible mess when you consider that Nvidia also has a menu that starts at $ 700,the RTX 2080 . The RTX 2080 is based on Nvidia ’s Turing architecture , which plunge lately last yr and is still roll out . The 2080 also has ray tracing support , which the Radeon VII is not equip for and may not gain livelihood for subsequently via software updates .

So there ’s an straightaway interrogative sentence of why you should buy this expensive GPU based on some old computer architecture . AMD believes that the reasons are two - fold . One it ’s based on a 7 nm node ( hence the name ) . Earlier Vega chips come from a 14 nm node , and Nvidia ’s Turing GPUs are on a 12 nm lymph node . The knob ’s size usually translate to the size of the chip itself . A smaller thickening means a smaller scrap which means data point should journey quicker and the micro chip should need less energy .

Graphic: Alex Cranz

Graphic: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

But the Radeon VII processor is n’t that much smaller than the one found in the Radeon 64 and 56 — because AMD ’s used the extra space to cram in more memory . The Radeon VII has is that it ’s stretch with twice the memory of most other consumer - form carte du jour , and it ’s not just any store . AMD jammed in 16 GB of HBM2 memory , which has virtually twice the bandwidth of the GDDR6 found in Nvidia ’s card .

In theory , this extra retentivity , couple on with the shrink dice size of the GPU , should allow AMD ’s aging architecture to be free-enterprise with Nvidia ’s shiny new stuff . AMD told me beforehand of my examination that it would n’t necessarily beat the RTX 2080 every time , just some of the time . game , specially the AAA title that really tax a high - end GPU , often have soft cap for the amount of GPU memory they can call on . That cap is 11 GB , the same amount of memory regain in the RTX 2080 Ti which starts at $ 1000 . That means 5 GB of the Radeon VII ’s memory is wasted on a lot of games .

AMD ’s claim endure out in our tests . The Radeon VII does well in some , and it does bad in others , often fall within just a few frames per second of the 2080 , and always lagging distantly behind the 2080 Ti — the gold standard in gaming GPU performance at the moment .

Graphic: Alex Cranz

Graphic: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

So why on earth would you get a Radeon VII when the 2080 costs the same amount and toss in backing for ray trace ? There ’s the obvious reason that few game actually support beam of light tracing presently — with Battlefield V being the only AAA title to have it . There ’s also all the other stuff a computer graphic add-in does that has nothing to do with gaming .

That clobber admit process big 3D scene and high - resolving power video files . And this is where the Radeon VII smoke not just the 2080 , but the $ 1,000 2080 Ti as well . confessedly , few multitude want a number crunching beast like the Radeon VII for their solar day - to - day work . If you are spending eight time of day a solar day at a desk animating in 3-D or rendering high - solution videos , you are one of them — less than that , and you could likely pop off .

In three separate benchmark , the Radeon VII performed so well it looks like a steal compared to the 2080 Ti . In Blender , we notice the meter it takes to render 3D images , and in Adobe Premiere 2019 , we time how long it takes to render and convert a mo long 8 K video that include essence and passage . lastly , we bunk Luxmark , a freely available bench mark that turn across platforms and process a 3D file , using ray trace , then provides a musical score , with higher scores being good .

Graphic: Alex Cranz

Graphic: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

As you could see above , the Radeon VII is the superior alternative , using all 16 GB of that HBM2 to cry past the 2080 and 2080 Ti . We should note that Luxmark does n’t tap into the potential benefits of Nvidia ’s tensor gist — the CORE in the GPUs that allow it to do light beam tracing in tangible time . So there could be instance where the 2080 or 2080 Ti execute well , but wherever a pro has run up against the limitation of what 11 GB or less of GDDR6 memory can do the Radeon VII is there , offering a speedier future .

The only problem is this is n’t the last fancy card from AMD this twelvemonth . At CES , AMD note that its next - genesis computer architecture , Navi , would be do this year , and right now we know very little about it . perhaps it ’s as fast or quicker than the Radeon VII , but with hardware support for beam tracing too . mayhap it will be loud . perhaps it will be so expensive we all begin thinking of the 2080 Ti as a buy . We just do n’t know — and that makes commend the Radeon VII as your next GPU difficult .

If your card ’s crapped out or you have zero interest in what might come six months down the line , then investing $ 700 in the Radeon VII is n’t a bad idea . It ’s an admirable performing artist in games ( though lacking in Nvidia ’s chime and whistles ) and one of the fastest consumer price card available for pro in the video and 3D space . But in person , I ’d rather carry through my money for Navi . If this is what AMD can do with senesce architecture , I ca n’t wait to see what it does with something new .

Graphic: Alex Cranz