News AMD Announces Radeon VII

[Hitman928]

More info to come. . .

 

[happy medium]

There's value in chipping away at massively overpriced GPUs. Undercutting by $100 while delivering double the memory and memory bandwidth....

Again, I won't be buying this.. But I do note the progress.
Also, a 7nm consumer GPU is now available as of Feb 7th...
Now Nvidia has to get off their but and deliver one as well.

The 2080 is the same price.
But just like this card retailers are gouging the prices well above the msrp.

Evga $699 2080....
https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E1...GSxQ3gudgSw6AwEqSJ9-xHsIVW-aEDv4aAtCaEALw_wcB

So you basically getting 8gb more ram that more then likely will never be used and more bandwidth thats not needed for this chips performance.

 

[coercitiv]

- AMD's branding is ****ing garbage. Radeon VII?! Has AMD just totally given up on the entire concept of a "GPU Generation" and we can look forward to all their cards having some cutesy one off name with nothing to inform the consumer where in the GPU landscape the card falls? We're looking at Radeon VII, Vega 64, Vega 56, Radeon RX 590, 580 etc... Aside from price, its anyone's guess how all these cards stack up.

IIRC correctly, they called it R7 Vega II, which (hopefully) means they will start using R3 and R5 performance indicators through the rest of the product stack as well. The new combination has some advantages over the previous generation numbering, at least for the higher end models where this approach was devised.

So last Christmas for $699 I got a Powercolor Red Devil RX Vega 56 that in some game

You bought during the mining craze. The MSRP for your card was $399, the MSRP for Vega 64 was $499. With this card we would be paying more to get more.

Keep in mind this Christmas people were paying $350-370 for Vega 56.

This card will likely be great for professionals looking for a cheaper card with tons of compute potential, but as far as gaming is concerned, it will be expensive and pushed to the limits of power consumption. As a Vega owner I know the power consumption will be easy to keep in check, but price is another story. The only reason some may think it's worth the money is the new Nvidia RTX tax, and the fact that so far paying extra for RTX only gets you ray tracing in one game.

 

[BFG10K]

Same performance as 2080 but double the VRAM and $100 cheaper. It's not ideal but it's better than what nVidia is offering.

I predict a 2080 price cut with possible drops for the 2070 and 2080TI as well.

 

[Shmee]

I am interested, but will likely wait for Navi or at very least a good price drop on current cards. Will also have to see actual reviews and retail pricing.

That said, it looks like a beast of a card and does seem to offer potential competition for 2080 and 1080Ti.

 

[Ottonomous]

The 2080 is the same price.
But just like this card retailers are gouging the prices well above the msrp.

Evga $699 2080....
https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E1...GSxQ3gudgSw6AwEqSJ9-xHsIVW-aEDv4aAtCaEALw_wcB

So you basically getting 8gb more ram that more then likely will never be used and more bandwidth thats not needed for this chips performance.

Its a pipe cleaner for 7nm and a placeholder until GFX10 (Navi). x80 remains the superior choice for gaming, Vega for compute/AI

Tensor cores are also memory limited in certain workloads and Vega along with the memory at least brings PCI 4.0, HBCC beyond that VRAM, and high performance precision all the way from Int4 to fp64

Theres also little point for speculation about a lower CU/2 or 3-stack variant, the performance difference from the Vega 64 would be negligible.

 

[antihelten]

an 8GB version would have half the memory bandwidth.

This is only true if you use half the number of stacks. But it is perfectly possible to use the same number of stacks as with 16GB (and thus have the same bandwidth), but have each stack be half the capacity. This can be done by either using regular 2-Hi stacks or by using half density 4-Hi stacks.

Now whether or not anyone sells 2-Hi stacks or half density 4-Hi stacks at an attractive price for AMD is of course a separate question.

 

[Carfax83]

The only way this card would be worth buying is if the raw 4K performance is significantly better than the RTX 2080; but based on the benchmarks they themselves provided, it looks like it will be more or less equally matched depending on the game without the benefits of DLSS and RT.

 

[kondziowy]

No point to buy 2080 8GB anymore. If I was on R9 Fury now, I would jump on RVII straight away in February Nobody expected it and boom.. now we are pleasantly surprised

 

[Qwertilot]

The only way this card would be worth buying is if the raw 4K performance is significantly better than the RTX 2080; but based on the benchmarks they themselves provided, it looks like it will be more or less equally matched depending on the game without the benefits of DLSS and RT.

Honestly, given their recent - optimistic as expected, frankly mildly dubious at times - history with GPU performance slides in this sort of preview, I would a priori expect it to quite often drop behind.

 

[Dribble]

Well it's a step forward - they managed 128 rops which I didn't think you could do with GCN. On the minus side it's doesn't change anything in the competitive landscape.

 

[NTMBK]

Frankly, this card only exists because NVidia pushed their prices so high. Last year AMD had no plan to launch this as a consumer card- 7nm is still super early, yields aren't going to be great, and EUV isn't available yet (which should push down wafer costs). If they couldn't launch it at $700, they wouldn't be able to launch it at all.

Not to say that it's a good product... I think that $700 is just way too much to spend on a graphics card.

 

[Qwertilot]

I guess their ability to soak up potential losses in order to show willing/compete has, with Zen doing so well, also markedly improved over the past year or so.

 

[linkgoron]

No point to buy 2080 8GB anymore. If I was on R9 Fury now, I would jump on RVII straight away in February Nobody expected it and boom.. now we are pleasantly surprised

The price isn't very attractive IMO, assuming that the performance is ~2080.

This would've been great at $499 or $549, and decent at $599. At $699 it's just competitive with the already inflated Nvidia pricing. It looks like it'll probably equal Vega 64's price/perf @ 4k. It might be a bit more future proof than the 2080, with 16GB, but it's still too much at $699.

 

[kondziowy]

The price isn't very attractive IMO, assuming that the performance is ~2080.

This would've been great at $499 or $549, and decent at $599. At $699 it's just competitive with the already inflated Nvidia pricing. It looks like it'll probably equal Vega 64's price/perf @ 4k. It might be a bit more future proof than the 2080, with 16GB, but it's still too much at $699.

I have never understood logic like this. Is 799$ 2080 (1080Ti 8GB) a good price then? Or you are not buying either? Ridiculous comment in my opinion.

 

[AtenRa]

It turns out we get another MEGA Fail year for the Consumer Desktop GPU market.
Both AMD and NV brought us 2017 performance (GTX1080Ti) at the same price in 2019, something is going completely wrong in the gaming world.

GTX1080Ti launch date March 2017 @ $699

RTX 2080 launch date Sept 2018 @ $699
Vega II launch Day Feb 2019 @ $699

 

[linkgoron]

I have never understood logic like this. Is 799$ 2080 (1080Ti 8GB) a good price then? Or you are not buying either? Ridiculous comment in my opinion.

I'm not buying either, as they're priced too high IMO. You can already buy a 2080 for $699:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...0446076&PID=6163686&SID=jqqjknqqv8011rh100053

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...0446076&PID=6163686&SID=jqqjks9607011rh100053

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...0446076&PID=6163686&SID=jqqjm1eb88011rh100053

 

[kondziowy]

And here I agree. Both should be cheaper. Now 2080 should drop it's price to 499$-599$ to be worth buying or also add ~180$ games in bundle like RVII has done. And then it would be AMD turn again to lower prices. Not the other way around.

 

[amenx]

Someone @ Guru3d (HWgeek) says he saw more benches and posted this chart/summary:

 

[DrMrLordX]

It's better than AMD not selling anything new - and I mean anything new - until October at the earliest!

Cmon people, this card wasn't even supposed to exist. At least they found a way to sell us something. If people don't buy them then next time they'll just junk the iffy GPUs from their pro line and sell us nothing.

Vega20 was not designed for gamers or consumers at all. Period. The fact that it clocks higher and can give us some more punch in games is a plus. AMD probably won't release anything faster than this on the consumer market for a year or longer. Navi is not aimed at that end of the market.

@amenx sad to see that they tested on a 7700k and not an 8700k or 9700k.

 

[LTC8K6]

They also didn't test it with the new Zen CPU.

 

[DrMrLordX]

They also didn't test it with the new Zen CPU.

Honestly, if they did that, the benches would probably crash. Running an unreleased pro graphics card with a consumer driver stack on an ES system with a custom board? Recipe for disaster.

 

[LTC8K6]

Honestly, if they did that, the benches would probably crash. Running an unreleased pro graphics card with a consumer driver stack on an ES system with a custom board? Recipe for disaster.

Who would know? They just wouldn't release those benches, or they'd only release the ones that were successful.
Plus, they didn't test it with the current Zen CPU, either.

 

[Dribble]

Frankly, this card only exists because NVidia pushed their prices so high. Last year AMD had no plan to launch this as a consumer card- 7nm is still super early, yields aren't going to be great, and EUV isn't available yet (which should push down wafer costs). If they couldn't launch it at $700, they wouldn't be able to launch it at all.

Not to say that it's a good product... I think that $700 is just way too much to spend on a graphics card.

It only exists because AMD couldn't sell all their Instinct MI50's - it is the same chip, just being sold off cheap for gamers. Even at $700 it's not a great deal - a 1080Ti launched at the same price and with the same performance, if that's what you wanted you could have had it 2 years ago.

I hope that AMD has something to put them back in the game, but this is not it. What they need is a new architecture that can be scaled, not the same GCN taken to the limit by using the most expensive manufacturing process and lots of the most expensive memory and the highest power usage they can get away with going to only reach the performance their competitor had 2 years ago.

 

[kondziowy]

It only exists because AMD couldn't sell all their Instinct MI50's - it is the same chip, just being sold off cheap for gamers. Even at $700 it's not a great deal - a 1080Ti launched at the same price and with the same performance, if that's what you wanted you could have had it 2 years ago.

I hope that AMD has something to put them back in the game, but this is not it.

That's like saying that Ryzen exist only because AMD couldn't sell all of their Epyc CPUs

 

[Veradun]

@amenx sad to see that they tested on a 7700k and not an 8700k or 9700k.

They also didn't test it with the new Zen CPU.

Repeatability of tests is something really important. At some point they will change the testing rigs and move forward, exactly as everyone else is doing