Radeon VII

Morve · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:32

Gibbo said:
We've just passed 250 units sold, mostly Sapphire.

Only Brand to get imo, madness to pay £150 over for the asus tax

harmattan · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:33

KentMan said:
So basically the latest decent card AMD made out of the box was what? 7950 or something?

290 - hot and loud
Fiji - rubbish
Polaris - issues with powerdraw over pcie lane, took a while to get performance up to par
Vega - Overpriced, underperforming, excessive powerdraw, took a while to get performance up to par.

And now this.... we have 25% perf increase over the V64 @ 1440p or 32% @ 4K for another £250 ontop, thats more than 50% of the price for less than 35% performance... And this is on 7nm, AMD are still not able to beat Nvidias last gen stuff, on any meaningful factor (price, performance, power consumption etc).

People will point out that putting 16GB of HBM on was the mistake, yada yada, these are failed Enterprise cards rebadged as gaming cards, the GPU Die with HBM Stack is built like this, and if it fails this is what they have done with them. AMD cant even make GDDR on this package, they'd have to completely redesign the whole GPU package.

I think the evolution of AMD cards had 2 tracks, one was Fiji > Vega > V7 which is the HBM track the other was the 290 > Polaris track where they used GDDR... i dont even think the Fiji > Vega stuff will even work on GDDR without a drastic overhaul, pretty sure that particular track of GPU was designed ground up with HBM in mind. And to be honest this latest iteration confirms my suspicions.

AMD would be better off not even trying to fight the 1080ti / 2080 / 2080ti market, should just aim as high as the 2070 as a max, and try and do it with GDDR only cards, adding HBM just adds more price and really seems to kill performance. Probably another reason NVidia hasnt bothered either.

290 - hot and loud
Fiji - rubbish
Polaris - issues with powerdraw over pcie lane, took a while to get performance up to par
Vega - Overpriced, underperforming, excessive powerdraw, took a while to get performance up to par.
Vega II - Overpriced (for it's time), reasonable performance, excessive powerdraw, loud as heckfire

Outcome... it's just "OK"!

Good ol' AMD.

KentMan · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:33

Morve said:
Only Brand to get imo, madness to pay £150 over for the asus tax

Lol this time around its Asus, Gigabyte and MSI tax...

nashathedog · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:35

Gibbo said:
I find that hard to believe, I was stood next to three of them at CES in cases and of course there was ambient noise from other people but I could not hear the cards or systems and they were running some kind of demo.

I couldn't wait & phoned up as I think the gpu I'm using is going to fail any minute as it's freezing for a second every 5 or so seconds which is annoying as hell plus it means I can't game until it's replaced and I was hoping to replace it tomorrow either with a VII or with something else, Apparently I was the second in the queue so a job well done, Thanks for the link yesterday.

Panos · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:35

harmattan said:
290 - hot and loud
Fiji - rubbish
Polaris - issues with powerdraw over pcie lane, took a while to get performance up to par
Vega - Overpriced, underperforming, excessive powerdraw, took a while to get performance up to par.
Vega II - Overpriced (for it's time), reasonable performance, excessive powerdraw, loud as heckfire

Outcome... it's just "OK"!

Good ol' AMD.

Where you saw excessive powerdraw? Just finished watching the GamersNexus, is similar to RTX2080.
And if someone watches the GN review, pay close attention to RTX2080Ti performance and compare it to the price & performance of both RTX2080 & Radeon VII.

KentMan · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:36

harmattan said:
290 - hot and loud
Fiji - rubbish
Polaris - issues with powerdraw over pcie lane, took a while to get performance up to par
Vega - Overpriced, underperforming, excessive powerdraw, took a while to get performance up to par.
Vega II - Overpriced (for it's time), reasonable performance, excessive powerdraw, loud as heckfire

Outcome... it's just "OK"!

Good ol' AMD.

As someone running a Vega 64 Nitro+ and a Ryzen 1700, i was hoping and willing this to be a really good card... however offering roughly 1080ti performance a year later one a Node Shrink is quite frankly embarassing from AMD and especially at the price point. HBM is to blame for the issues with Fiji, Vega and now Vega 7... AMD should have stopped at Fiji and left the HBM stuff to the Enterprise market much like Nvidia has and focused on bringing great priced mid range cards to the masses, like hopefully Navi will be.

fastboy · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:36

so its slower than a nearly 2 yr old 1080ti..?

Nitrams64 · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:37

Had one ordered have now cancelled going to wait and see so it will be 2080 or radeon vii

Illuminist · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:37

KentMan said:
So basically the latest decent card AMD made out of the box was what? 7950 or something?

290 - hot and loud
Fiji - rubbish
Polaris - issues with powerdraw over pcie lane, took a while to get performance up to par
Vega - Overpriced, underperforming, excessive powerdraw, took a while to get performance up to par.

And now this.... we have 25% perf increase over the V64 @ 1440p or 32% @ 4K for another £250 ontop, thats more than 50% of the price for less than 35% performance... And this is on 7nm, AMD are still not able to beat Nvidias last gen stuff, on any meaningful factor (price, performance, power consumption etc).

People will point out that putting 16GB of HBM on was the mistake, yada yada, these are failed Enterprise cards rebadged as gaming cards, the GPU Die with HBM Stack is built like this, and if it fails this is what they have done with them. AMD cant even make GDDR on this package, they'd have to completely redesign the whole GPU package.

I think the evolution of AMD cards had 2 tracks, one was Fiji > Vega > V7 which is the HBM track the other was the 290 > Polaris track where they used GDDR... i dont even think the Fiji > Vega stuff will even work on GDDR without a drastic overhaul, pretty sure that particular track of GPU was designed ground up with HBM in mind. And to be honest this latest iteration confirms my suspicions.

AMD would be better off not even trying to fight the 1080ti / 2080 / 2080ti market, should just aim as high as the 2070 as a max, and try and do it with GDDR only cards, adding HBM just adds more price and really seems to kill performance. Probably another reason NVidia hasnt bothered either.

So many flaws in what i just read that i cant reply properly sorry.

Aretak · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:37

KentMan said:
So basically the latest decent card AMD made out of the box was what? 7950 or something?

Depends. Are you only limiting things to reference coolers for some reason? Nvidia's are almost as hot and loud in that case. I wouldn't touch a reference cooler from either brand. If you mean the last great high end GPU that AMD made in general, it was Hawaii without question. The 290(X) still competes favourably with the 1060 and 580. Sure, it's a lot more hot and power hungry, but it's not like Nvidia's competition from the time was any different. It's just that nobody cares about the 780 Ti any more, because its performance nosedived off a cliff, whilst the 290(X) keeps on trucking.

Polaris was also a perfectly fine product for what it was/is. The PCIe power draw "issue" was massively-overblown even on the reference cards, and the third party ones just plain didn't suffer from it.

Gerard · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:39

nashathedog said:
Like I said before they've cut away too much heatsink too make sure it's only a two slot design.

Doubt it would have made much difference, if they had used lower profile fans it most likely would have been the same result. More down to the diameter of the fans not being enough imo. Some of the reviews do mention its mostly an air sound you can hear and not a fan whir.

Bob Dole · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:39

Damn main competitor still had sapphire stock till 14.35 at msrp and my order still stuck proccessing payment. Hope i am not stuck in limbo for weeks before i get my card! I'm sure i made the right choice

JediFragger · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:40

Bob Dole said:
I'm sure i made the right choice

You changed it to a 2080?

Mason Wallis · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:41

I’ve bought my ASUS version of the card, how do I get the free games?

fizzy · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:42

Think my order for a Sapphire card went through ok. Will be a bit of a boost from my 980ti. Something new to tinker with.

Scougar · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:42

I don't know why anyone was expecting a miracle. It is an updated Vega with more memory. I did see them on a US supplier today, and was about to ask the wife if I could get one for my Birthday.... but they were out of stock d'oh! At $699 with 3 games... it's not a bad deal with present prices.

Wanna see the overclocks now!!!!!!

JediFragger · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:42

Mason Wallis said:
I’ve bought my ASUS version of the card, how do I get the free games?

No games, just a Lobotomy booked in for next week

Bob Dole · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:43

JediFragger said:
You changed it to a 2080?

I already have a 1080TI for gaming, I'm more interested in the compute performance of Vega and 16gb HBM.

Mason Wallis · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:43

Seriously how do I get the free 3 games I’m so confused

Vish Petrol · 7 Feb 2019 at 14:44

I think i'm going to have to keep the games as my brother will want to play them, but whats the best way to sell the games?