Radeon VII

[Legend]

In 6 or 9 months well prob have two more RTX games if we're lucky xD

RTX not a selling point for me at all. I think second gen RTX will be more compelling. The whole RTX thing is very underwhelming, from implementation (Or lack of) too the extra price etc.

I needed a replacement for a dead VEGA and 1080 Ti was more expensive than RTX 2080. So RTX 2080 was my best option. (2080 Ti failure rate scares me).

RTX 2080 is a beast of card, seems even faster than my old 1080 Ti. If AMD's card can compete and offers decent games I think it's a massive positive for AMD.

Honestly for me at least 1080 Ti, RTX 2080 level of performance is enough. A future with 4K games running with RTX at max will be welcome though. Atm Ray tracing just isn't there yet, or the cards to run it..

You might be right and in a years time there will only be a smattering of RTX enabled games. But if the 2080 performs almost identical to the Radeon VII at the same price, AMD are going to struggle to shift that many. Many people will recognise there's still a chance that RTX offers something more. You are getting more for your money, even if ultimately the 20xx cards are never able to fully exploit ray tracing... which they won't, but it's an easier card to sell because of that, all else being equal. The extra RAM on the Radeon VII is useless for gamers, and will remain so for a long time yet. Great for content creators though, so they'll be more likely to buy one.

Nvidia now supporting Freesync is another problem for AMD. I think there would be swathes of gamers with Freesync monitors who wouldn't even consider a 2080 over a Radeon VII if that wasn't the case... but now, the A-Sync playing field is far more level.

 

[Illuminist]

It's going to be hard for them. I've no idea what they have in store with Navi, but by the time that sees the light of day, Nvidia will have their 7nm products on the horizon. It's a real shame. Despite only having 1080Ti power, there is absolutely a place in the market for a card which can perform to that level... but not at the £700 price point. Circa £500 and people would really be paying attention right now. That was the only move they could have made to win back major support near the top end, but it seems being locked in to HBM2 didn't give them any other choice. An 8GB HBM2 card wouldn't be much cheaper I suspect... it would have had to be GDDR6, but for reasons already discussed, that would have just been too costly for them to make.

I guess it's up to trusty old Intel now... we can surely rely on them to put out a top end performance amazing value GPU.

Ultimately, we do have Nvidia somewhat to blame for all this. Had they brought in Turing at more sensible prices... a 2080 around the £500-550 mark, and the 2080Ti around £700-750, then AMD wouldn't have even bothered bringing the Radeon VII to market. Or they would have had to drastically re-engineer things to make it happen at the right price.

The more i read and think about this latest vega the sadder i feel about everything, I genuinely feel like we will all be nvidia users by 2020 waiting on Intel to fail/win us over.....

 

[Illuminist]

You might be right and in a years time there will only be a smattering of RTX enabled games. But if the 2080 performs almost identical to the Radeon VII at the same price, AMD are going to struggle to shift that many. Many people will recognise there's still a chance that RTX offers something more. You are getting more for your money, even if ultimately the 20xx cards are never able to fully exploit ray tracing... which they won't, but it's an easier card to sell because of that, all else being equal. The extra RAM on the Radeon VII is useless for gamers, and will remain so for a long time yet. Great for content creators though, so they'll be more likely to buy one.

Nvidia now supporting Freesync is another problem for AMD. I think there would be swathes of gamers with Freesync monitors who wouldn't even consider a 2080 over a Radeon VII if that wasn't the case... but now, the A-Sync playing field is far more level.

Freesync is not supported by Nvidia, Adaptive sync is. And out of the 200 ones they tested only 4 got certified.

After reading your post i see how Nvidia's marketing works so flawlessly on people that don't look into things properly (not directed at you directly btw, just "people")

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

In defense of Radeon 7, how long until 8gb becomes a bottleneck for 4k gaming? It isn't today but how about in 2 years? I suppose by then it's been superseded but whoever buys it gets the benefit of an extended life of the card

 

[Tom B]

In defense of Radeon 7, how long until 8gb becomes a bottleneck for 4k gaming? It isn't today but how about in 2 years? I suppose by then it's been superseded but whoever buys it gets the benefit of an extended life of the card

But by the time 16gb becomes a requirement, the card won't be able to run the games that need it on high settings anyway and will be limited by the GPU rather than VRAM.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

I doubt they have excess supplies, I think it is more liekly that the binning is done after the HBM and GPU are mounted to the interposer. At that point there is no going back and removing a stack of memory.

So given these were binned anyway there's a chance they'll make a loss on some of them to clear supplies at end of life before their next GPU comes in and pricepoint might actually hit £500-£600. And if they were all excess stock does that mean there's not that many of them and they won't be running new batches off? So probably a very short lived GPU.

 

[ltron]

Lol. So true.

PS5 will get a lot of PC gamers attention I think (I know I am getting one for sure). With 120Hz VRR OLED TVs with proper HDR it will be an easy choice. Nvidia better price their 3000 series much more competitively or they will see number of sales plummet.

Even I am thinking about a console, with the terrible GPU and monitor prices and lack of progress it's looking very tempting. I never thought I'd say that. Still very interested in Ryzen 3000 though and that's the only thing I am interested in.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Freesync is not supported by Nvidia, Adaptive sync is. And out of the 200 ones they tested only 4 got certified.

After reading your post i see how Nvidia's marketing works so flawlessly on people that don't look into things properly (not directed at you directly btw, just "people")

It was actually 12 or something along those lines. The trick is that freesync essentially IS Vesa ASync with a few tweaks. Nvidia are NEVER going to say that GSYNC was overpriced or unnecessary because it invalidates what they've already said, but the telling point is they've already supported Async for things like laptops for some time, they've just not really wanted to admit it or wanted to support it on desktop, because it'd basically render Gsync kargely irrelevant due to the significant amount they charged for the Gsync modules and the price differential this caused.

The real issue here with some freesync monitors is because AMD have been much more hands off, some manufacturers have put out really shoddy ASync/FreeSync monitors. The fact is, good ASync (be it Freesync or Gsync) monitors will still be good and poor monitors will still be poor monitors.

Nvidia will also never likely release the reasons why so many monitors have failed, because there is a distinct possibility many of the 'failures' could be for trivial matters. Much as I dont like Nvidia's business ethic etc, I do think tighter QC control on these monitors will likely be a good result, the downside being costs will likely go up.

 

[LePhuronn]

If this is big Navi then it wouldn't have been described as impressive. I thought AdoredTV said Navi in general was impressive not big Navi in particular. We don't really know when a true high end Navi will come out although at this rate its competitor will be the 3080Ti.

This is what I'm thinking. If you look back in the Navi video from AdoredTV, there's literally a blink and you miss it throwaway line about Big Navi. The source who provided the RX 30x0 details also said they'd seen a Big Navi running and it was impressive. That's all we've ever heard. Whether we see a Big Navi I don't know because Arcturus is next year (let's say September), and now the Radeon VII occupies (for better or worse) that 2080 performance bracket I can't see something based on Navi (which is still GCN) coming out at or above that level.

Something I find humorous and disheartening in equal measure is all this attitude towards AMD saying "well if they can't beat Nvidia now then they might as well quit". Does nobody remember that AMD are coming out of a horrible period? Massive losses everywhere, talks of bankruptcy for years? Where in the hell do you people expect them to get the R&D and talent budget to suddenly smack Nvidia around the chops?

But look at what AMD have done is just 3 years with Zen. Look at what Lisa Su has done with the company. They face a long, long road back in technology, operating budget and profitability, but there is now every reason to think AMD CPUs will return to the top of the stack leaving Intel with big challenges of their own to compete. I personally would've preferred the Radeon VII never happened because it's just bad PR, but clearly AMD saw a market point and had the capability to go for it, so they did.

But Radeon VII doesn't change the narrative in any way. It was always about reclaiming the midrange space with Navi to get market share and mind share in the segment which actually makes money. Navi could well do that, which is entirely the reason why there's suddenly talk of a GTX 11 series getting Turing performance without the RTX cruft at a proper midrange price point. And then when there's an improvement in market and mind share, AMD can fully focus on the brand new architecture designed on 7nm+ (which will still be 1 process generation ahead of Nvidia).

If people want to cry because AMD are still underwhelming now then feel free. But this is a long game. If Arcturus end of 2020 still can't offer proper competition to Nvidia then the pitchforks and torches are much more justified.

2020 is where the proper fight is, people. Turing 7nm vs Arcturus 7nm+ vs Intel.

 

[TNA]

Then I would strongly encourage you to give Lisa Su a ring with a copy of your CV, degrees in semiconductor design and fortune telling abilities. Because clearly it's as easy as you say

Haha

Oh yeah ray tracing is very pretty. I think the future of ray tracing will be awesome, but this gen 1 is underwhelming.

RTX 3080 Ti on 7nm will prob be when things get exciting. Pricing will be even more exciting xD

Surprised you gave Nvidia more of your money mate. At one point it looked like you was on a vendetta against them. Sell that filth and pre-order yourself a new Vega VII!

I am also really looking forward to a 7nm RTX 3080 Ti. They better keep it under £1000 the greedy milk sucking *******!

 

[Boomstick777]

You might be right and in a years time there will only be a smattering of RTX enabled games. But if the 2080 performs almost identical to the Radeon VII at the same price, AMD are going to struggle to shift that many. Many people will recognise there's still a chance that RTX offers something more. You are getting more for your money, even if ultimately the 20xx cards are never able to fully exploit ray tracing... which they won't, but it's an easier card to sell because of that, all else being equal. The extra RAM on the Radeon VII is useless for gamers, and will remain so for a long time yet. Great for content creators though, so they'll be more likely to buy one.

Nvidia now supporting Freesync is another problem for AMD. I think there would be swathes of gamers with Freesync monitors who wouldn't even consider a 2080 over a Radeon VII if that wasn't the case... but now, the A-Sync playing field is far more level.

I think the opposite. We are paying early adopter tax for a feature not even implemented yet. RTX gen 1 is massively underwhelming. No other way to look at it imho. Gen 2 will prob be far better, maybe in 2/3 years from now well have 20 or more decent games that use Ray Tracing. Who knows.

The Radeon card is coming in $100 cheaper than custom or RRP, RTX 2080's. Offers 1TB/s memory bandwitdh and a huge 16GB HBM. Seems like a monster card to me. Also the Radeon card has bundle of 3 games. Launch prices are always bad. Eventually RTX and VEGA 7 will come down in price too. Best thing for people to do is wait.

The 2080 Ti is double the price of some 2080's and VEGA 7. Either of these cards look great value in comparison xD.

I had a card die so needed one now otherwise would have waited till prices settled a bit. RTX is still new really, and VII not even launched yet lol. Pick either VEGA 7 or RTX 2080 and be happy with stonking performance.

 

[Boomstick777]

Haha




Surprised you gave Nvidia more of your money mate. At one point it looked like you was on a vendetta against them. Sell that filth and pre-order yourself a new Vega VII!

I am also really looking forward to a 7nm RTX 3080 Ti. They better keep it under £1000 the greedy milk sucking *******!

No vendetta just speak my mind. Nvidia are very dodgy company lol.

I was never gonna pay £800 for a RTX 2080, or the joke price of £1200+ for a RTX 2080 Ti.

My VEGA 64 died. Otherwise would not of bought anything yet.

Prices have fallen somewhat when I got my 2080, I paid 650, and was cheaper than 1080 Ti's xD.

Is a great card, the Radeon VII looks like a great card too xD

 

[Illuminist]

This is what I'm thinking. If you look back in the Navi video from AdoredTV, there's literally a blink and you miss it throwaway line about Big Navi. The source who provided the RX 30x0 details also said they'd seen a Big Navi running and it was impressive. That's all we've ever heard. Whether we see a Big Navi I don't know because Arcturus is next year (let's say September), and now the Radeon VII occupies (for better or worse) that 2080 performance bracket I can't see something based on Navi (which is still GCN) coming out at or above that level.

Something I find humorous and disheartening in equal measure is all this attitude towards AMD saying "well if they can't beat Nvidia now then they might as well quit". Does nobody remember that AMD are coming out of a horrible period? Massive losses everywhere, talks of bankruptcy for years? Where in the hell do you people expect them to get the R&D and talent budget to suddenly smack Nvidia around the chops?

But look at what AMD have done is just 3 years with Zen. Look at what Lisa Su has done with the company. They face a long, long road back in technology, operating budget and profitability, but there is now every reason to think AMD CPUs will return to the top of the stack leaving Intel with big challenges of their own to compete. I personally would've preferred the Radeon VII never happened because it's just bad PR, but clearly AMD saw a market point and had the capability to go for it, so they did.

But Radeon VII doesn't change the narrative in any way. It was always about reclaiming the midrange space with Navi to get market share and mind share in the segment which actually makes money. Navi could well do that, which is entirely the reason why there's suddenly talk of a GTX 11 series getting Turing performance without the RTX cruft at a proper midrange price point. And then when there's an improvement in market and mind share, AMD can fully focus on the brand new architecture designed on 7nm+ (which will still be 1 process generation ahead of Nvidia).

If people want to cry because AMD are still underwhelming now then feel free. But this is a long game. If Arcturus end of 2020 still can't offer proper competition to Nvidia then the pitchforks and torches are much more justified.

2020 is where the proper fight is, people. Turing 7nm vs Arcturus 7nm+ vs Intel.

It was me that said that about AMD giving up, and i don't agree that they are on a road to recovery, Like i said the fury x was on par with the 980ti and then 1080ti happened and vega, that is the first time they slipped and lost the race properly and its happened again but worse this year (like i said power and speed and features behind now)

In 2020 the 7nm Nvidia will be RTX 2 3080ti , AMD if they even release a high end card (Arcturus) I would put large amounts of money on it being no where near the top end (probably 2080ti performance with maybe there own ray tracing)
Leaving, like I said , Intel to disappoint or compete.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

It also strikes me that as Nvidia will likely never release its reasons for why monitors have 'failed' certification, based on past history, it wouldnt surprise me if they manufactured issues on some monitors also, or at least not consider if they've tested a faulty screen.

 

[TNA]

No vendetta just speak my mind. Nvidia are very dodgy company lol.

I was never gonna pay £800 for a RTX 2080, or the joke price of £1200+ for a RTX 2080 Ti.

Prices have fallen somewhat when I got my 2080, I paid 650, and was cheaper than 1080 Ti's xD.

Is a great card, the Radeon VII looks like a great card too xD

After speaking your mind so much you must have changed it, as you gave this guy your money:



"The more you buy, the more you save!"

 

[JCLDJB]

You are right it has a place, but that place is somewhat niche. Unless they do something about the price (impossible it seems thanks to HBM2 cost), mainstream gamers are not going to be buying this card in their droves, no more than they have the 2080. The 'cut down' 8GB GDDR6 version you mentioned, priced right, would have been the card to do that. But this won't happen. Re-tooling and new memory controller etc. would make it far too costly... and such a card would by necessity have to come in cheap.

Oh there's no doubt it's a very niche market.

I still see Radeon VII as a (something to fill the void) card, though.

Remember that we have yet to reap the benefits from that huge cash injection ZEN has been bringing in since 1st Gen.

I suspect this will arrive with Navi - new architecture (goodbye GCN!) - delayed a bit longer so that they can tweak it further to really shine, when Navi comes out, and the last couple of years, I suspect the Radeon team have been getting a bit more R&D cash from those ZEN profits.. so we should see the make considerable gains.

Everything about Radeon VII screams (temporary filler).
From the reusing of Vega as an architecture, the application of 7nm as a 'proof of concept' more than anything, the reusing of 16Gb of HBM2 from 'imperfect MI50 Cards'.

This is more of a showcase to say "hey guys..Radeon is still here".

I can already picture a ZEN 2 Release alongside Navi, and the 8-core + Navi APUs in early 2020, maybe.

And Nvidia also did AMD a favour, by pricing their cards so much higher, to enable AMD to actually release another HBM2 Card and not look like complete fools with a ridiculously overpriced GPU (it still isn't overpriced for me personally specifically because of the 16Gb of HBM2, not that it is usable in Games..at least we will know soon enough if it has any uses).

It is just a shame, though, that they had to go with 16Gb of HBM2 bringing the costs that high; but who knows how well this card will overclock, or how low (sub-700) the price could actually get.

I do feel for the Radeon team, for the last ~5 years have had a really tough time, no doubt.
Most likely having many great ideas, only to be told by the CFO/CTO/CEO that they "don't have the budget to support R&D for this right now".

I even feel for the Nvidia team who have put blood sweat and tears into the RTX tech, only for it to raise eyebrows,

One thing I do think isn't so far-fetched is, as I am writing this, the Radeon team are probs FINALLY breathing easy after all these years...the last GCN GPU being release, allow them to focus on making the new gen shine, and should include them having been given much higher budgets from the ZEN profits.

Radeon VII is a little disappointing, but all things considered, AMD did the best they could with what they got.

The biggest disappointment for me, is the RTX 2060 price...sure, it's got 1070Ti performance, but it's still an xx60 card priced 40% markup from the 1060 gen.

(rambling mode - off)

 

[Funky-Melon]

“The performance is lousy and there’s nothing new," he said. "[There’s] no ray tracing, no AI. It’s 7nm with HBM memory that barely keeps up with a 2080. And if we turn on DLSS we’ll crush it. And if we turn on ray tracing we’ll crush it.”

Wow Jenson, talk about jumping on the defence, he's probably not even seen one in the flesh yet before spouting all that lol

https://www.techradar.com/news/amds-radeon-vii-graphics-card-dismissed-as-underwhelming-by-nvidia

He may be right, but it paints him as a giant ****.

 

[D.P.]

So given these were binned anyway there's a chance they'll make a loss on some of them to clear supplies at end of life before their next GPU comes in and pricepoint might actually hit £500-£600. And if they were all excess stock does that mean there's not that many of them and they won't be running new batches off? So probably a very short lived GPU.

I expect supply is extremely limited, unless yields for the Vega20 Instinct card are dire. It is liekly one of the reasons for the pricing, supply will be very low so it is ok to reduce demand with higher prices.

Probably like the Vega64 release, retail prices will shoot up.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

But by the time 16gb becomes a requirement, the card won't be able to run the games that need it on high settings anyway and will be limited by the GPU rather than VRAM.

At 16gb sure, but what about when a game requires 9gb at 4k? You then have a case of Radeon 7 > 2080

Games like Battlefield 5 uses more than 6gb now at 4k. So having more than 8gb is a bonus and removes a bottleneck in the GPU

 

[JediFragger]

seems even faster than my old 1080 Ti

No offense meant, but perhaps going 1080Ti>Vega>2080 has skewed you a little, but I expect the 2080 to open up a lead with newer games.