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AMD Radeon VII Graphics Card Launched, Benchmarks Versus NVIDIA GeForce RTX (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD officially launched its new Radeon VII flagship graphics card today, based on the company's 7nm second-generation Vega architecture. In addition to core GPU optimizations, Radeon VII provides 2X the graphics memory at 16GB and 2.1X the memory bandwidth at a full 1TB/s, compared to AMD's previous generation Radeon RX Vega 64. The move to 7nm allowed AMD to shrink the Vega 20 GPU die down to 331 square millimeters. This shrink and the subsequent silicon die area saving is what allowed them to add an additional two stacks of HBM2 memory and increase the high-bandwidth cache (frame buffer) capacity to 16GB. The GPU on board the Radeon VII has 60CUs and a total of 3,840 active stream processors with a board power TDP of 300 Watts. As you might expect, it's a beast in the benchmarks that's able to pull ahead of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 in spots but ultimately lands somewhere in between the performance of an RTX 2070 and 2080 overall. AMD Radeon VII cards will be available in a matter of days at an MSRP of $699 with custom boards from third-party partners showing up shortly as well.

44 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Games vs 3D art by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The games crave the graphics power of a NVIDIA product.
    3D art creation likes the extra memory of the AMD card.

    Buy a AMD card to create a 3D game and pay it on NVIDIA card?

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    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re: Games vs 3D art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They're already better. People had an issue with Wattman not setting their fans high enough, it's easily remedied. 1/2 price for same performance as Nvidia is a no-brainer, goodbye Nvidia stock price!

    2. Re:Games vs 3D art by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      What are you talking about. Radeon VII is now widely understood to be roughly similar to GTX 1080 for games, if not faster especially at 4K. While being cheaper and twice the memory, which future-proofs it. Plus 50% higher internal memory bandwidth. Games crave these things.

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      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re:Games vs 3D art by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Eh, roughly similar to GTX 2080. But with twice the memory and lower MSRP.

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      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    4. Re:Games vs 3D art by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Bleah! Roughly similar to RTX 2080. Slashdot really need to implement a comment edit feature.

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      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re:Games vs 3D art by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      My problem with this card is there's no DXR acceleration or DLSS. I want both, mostly because I do actual ray tracing.

      Then you've been had by NVidia's hype. RTX is completely useless for actual ray tracing as opposed to the bag of cheap tricks they actually do for real time gaming, which involves shooting roughly three rays per pixel and trying to fake it from there. Usually only one bounce as well. So many unacceptable artifacts are apparent with anything more than a cursory look. Notice that anything reflected off a curved surface looks like it's been worked over with a ball peen hammer. I'm pretty sure the window reflections are being faked too, just so you don't immediately notice how broken up the actual raytraced reflections are. This isn't actual raytracing, it's a normal polygon render pass then they post process the scene by tracing a few rays off each reflective pixel and run it through some really weird and AI filtering to try to smooth with neighbour reflective pixels.

      If you are doing actual ray tracing then you will do it with the usual GPU path, not with the RTX hardware, and it will be offline. If you tried to use RTX rendered frames in a video you would get laughed at.

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      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    6. Re:Games vs 3D art by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Slashdot really need to implement a comment edit feature.

      It has one. You preview your comment, and then you have a chance to edit it before you submit it. If you hit submit without previewing, that's on you.

      I do it all the time, but I don't bitch about it, because it's my own damn fault. Guess what you're bitching about?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:Games vs 3D art by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Reddit has comment editing and it works fine. At least, comment editing should be supported for a short time after submit, this is the 21st century.

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      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  2. Re:Does it make the bitcoins? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    When free electrical power can be found 24/7.

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    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. Not a bad price by planckscale · · Score: 1

    But the 2070 RTX are going for around $550 on amazon. Will the price of these cards go down when the custom boards from manufacturers come out?

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    Namaste
    1. Re:Not a bad price by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Depends on the game and needing all that memory.
      Long term per game new driver support.

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      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Not a bad price by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      The 2070 is not comparable to the Radeon VII. Compare to 2080.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re:Not a bad price by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Drivel. Nobody except you thinks 2070 can touch Radeon 7.

      2070: 6.4 TFLOPS
      2080: 8.9 TFLOPS
      Radeon 7: 11.1 TFLOPS (non-boost)

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    4. Re:Not a bad price by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      FLOPS isn't a benchmark any more than clock speed is. You need to hand in your geek card.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  4. Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by locater16 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The card is sold out everywhere, meaning there's next to no stock.

    Odds are great that these are just another "bin" of cards from their high end machine learning series. Basically less functional castoffs that AMD is hoping to sell for some cash because otherwise they'd just go to waste.

    1. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      Reliable data are hard to get, but some people speculate that the Radeon VII barely brings its manufacturing costs, mostly because of the expensive HBM2.

      Maybe just a form of "hey look we are still making fast gaming cards" by AMD.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    2. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This only exists because they needed something to show off at CES because their next generation Navi cards aren’t ready. This is a Vega 20 part which is specifically designed for machine learning and heavy compute workloads. It’s basically just one of their MI50 cards with the double precision performance crippled intentionally. If NVidia weren’t jacking up the prices on their 2000 series cards, AMD probably wouldn’t be able to sell this since it’s expensive for them to make and comes at the cost of selling a several thousand dollar professional card instead.

    3. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by m00sh · · Score: 1

      This only exists because they needed something to show off at CES because their next generation Navi cards aren’t ready. This is a Vega 20 part which is specifically designed for machine learning and heavy compute workloads. It’s basically just one of their MI50 cards with the double precision performance crippled intentionally. If NVidia weren’t jacking up the prices on their 2000 series cards, AMD probably wouldn’t be able to sell this since it’s expensive for them to make and comes at the cost of selling a several thousand dollar professional card instead.

      This is just 7nm Vega.

      They're not going to make more Vega 56 and 64. Might as well make it in 7nm and add a few tweaks.

      nVidia can drop the prices tomorrow. Do you think doing that will kill this card?

    4. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by Xenx · · Score: 1

      It definitely feels like a pseudo marketing campaign. But, there is still the very real fact that newer games are requiring more and more vram for 4k. 8gb isn't always enough. The obvious example would be The Division 2 recommending 11gbps of vram for 4k 60fps. 4k is still a small market, but it's growing.

    5. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I suspect the reason the VII was released is, AMD got a good price on HBM2 from Hynix. Well below the price touted int recent Fudzilla article which is the same as the price they quoted in May 2017. There is no way that HBM2 prices didn't come down in the intervening 20 months.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    6. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Odds are great that these are just another "bin" of cards from their high end machine learning series.

      what machine learning series? I mean I did some googling and fund that they talk about deel learning and whatnot but I can't find any deep learning stuff that actually uses AMD cards.

      The only people I've ever heard of using AMD are people who have an AMD card in their laptop. By the looks of it they've abandoned OpenCL and gone for a cuda translator.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    7. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      The obvious example would be The Division 2 recommending 11gbps of vram for 4k 60fps

      Didn't know that. That gets really expensive. On the Nvidia side, this means a GTX 1080Ti or RTX 2080Ti.
      GTX 1080Ti seems almost sold out in Europe, the few offers left start at 800 Euro.
      RTX 2080Ti offers start at 1000 Euro.
      The Radeon VII is listed at 750 Euro at some dealers, but not in stock yet.
      So you need at least a 750 Euro card to have the recommended vram size for Division 2...

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    8. Re:Basically just trying to scoop extra $ by Xenx · · Score: 1

      Indeed, but 4k is still a very small subset of gamers. You can easily game on half that price (or less) at 1080p. I know the choice to go 16gb vram was because the the manufacturing was already there for it, and not because they wanted to sell to the 4k crowd. But as you mentioned, the 1080ti is getting harder to find and the only real alternative is the 2080ti. It places the Radeon VII in a sweet spot for newer games at 4k, even at it's current price.

  5. Driver not quite optimized yet? by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 2

    AMD has a history of needing some time to arrive at best driver performance.
    Vega 64 and Vega 56 were originally significantly weaker than GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Now they have caught up, just in time to become obsolete...

    I'm curious how Navi will work out. It is supposed to be a major step forward, architecture wise.

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    C - the footgun of programming languages
    1. Re:Driver not quite optimized yet? by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      10 years old? No Vega necessary then. I guess the Radeon 6670 on my second PC might be sufficient. Performance wise it is on the level of high end cards from 2009.

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      C - the footgun of programming languages
  6. This will be great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    For mining Ethereum. In 2017.

  7. pci-e 4.0? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    pci-e 4.0?

    1. Re:pci-e 4.0? by fishscene · · Score: 1

      It's not PCI-E 4.0

  8. Re: Show us benchmarks for PyTorch and Tensorflow by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    Since nvidia has very old opencl support no one uses it. Like win32 it makes no sense to develop for it and just tell customers to buy an Nvidia card.

    AMD will be out of business or the graphics market soon anyway

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    http://saveie6.com/
  9. Power consumption by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    would be my concern. Not sure about the top end but the rx 580 8gb seems to draw about 100 watts more than a GTX 1060 6gb. Across a year of gaming that adds up. If you're a kid not paying for the electricity go for it, but if not then the 580 needs to be cheaper or have better game bundles to offset the cost.

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    1. Re:Power consumption by Tough+Love · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then you will be overjoyed to know that the Radeon VII draws roughly the same power as the RTX 2080. Further, it is likely to underclock very well, dropping into a sweeter spot of the 7nm power curve. At which point it will be not only a very powerful card, but a cool and quiet one too. Whereas in stock configuration, this reference card is known to be about twice as noisy as a typical 2080. That would be my only serious issue, and for that reason I will wait for the OEM cards to land, which they surely will because AMD has, by accident or design, left room for OEMs to differentiate with superior cooling solutions.

      I guess this GPU is going to be a solid seller after the dust settles. It's already a hit in the Linux world. AMD will probably be selling as many as they can make for quite some time.

      That is considering it purely as a gaming card. But with twice the memory, and 50% faster memory than the RTX 2080 it's not just a gaming card. And 16MB gives it a lot of longevity, maybe an uncomfortable fact for Nvidia, who prefers its products to go obsolete as quickly as possible.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  10. Re:Slower than a 2 year old 1080ti by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    But 3D graphics creation. Its so good for creating 3D game art....
    The needed vram for 4K60 for both eyes.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  11. Re: Show us benchmarks for PyTorch and Tensorflow by mlyle · · Score: 1

    > AMD will be out of business or the graphics market soon anyway

    How's that work with $356M in net income over the past years and steadily improving financials?

  12. Re:Slower than a 2 year old 1080ti by mlyle · · Score: 1

    Do you shill^H^H^H^H^H work at Nvidia?

    It is power inefficient, but it is hardly slower than a 1080ti. What, did you find a single benchmark somewhere that said that? What about the GPGPU benchmarks where it's blowing the doors off the 2080, or the others where it's neck and neck?

  13. Re:Slower than a 2 year old 1080ti by mlyle · · Score: 1

    One more comment:

    > and has inferior AMD drivers.

    https://slashdot.org/comments....

    Are you troll-y, or just have very fluid opinions since you're bipolar?

    >I like my AMD more than my GTX 680 I replaced. The drivers are much better quality and I have much less issues and no latency lag or Windows 10 bugs related to the Nvidia drivers.

    > I think the tide has turned and the shitty AMD catalyst drivers were retired years ago. They are totally redone.

    Big swing of opinion in 2 months.

  14. I'm talking about cost by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    If the card costs me $50 less than the Nvidia equivalent but I spend $120 in extra power over the cards lifetime that's poor value.

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    1. Re:I'm talking about cost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure where you are getting your data but according to these two reviews:

      https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asrock-phantom-gaming-x-radeon-rx580-8g-oc,5601-4.html
      https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-pascal,4679-6.html

      The power difference under torture is 60W, so you have added over 50% to reach your 100W figure.

      At 5 hours gaming per day, that's 2100 Wh a week or 109200 Wh a year. If you keep the card for 3 years, that's 327.6 kWh.

      According to this reference, US cost for kWh is $0.12 in 2012:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing

      Let's increase the to $0.2 for the sake of argument, that makes the energy cost increase over 3 years as $65.

      Checking Nowinstock puts an equivalent Nvidia asus strix cards as $35 more expensive, equating to a $30 difference.

      Now, none reference 1060 consumers more power:

      https://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_1060_STRIX_OC/images/power_peak.png

      This makes the AMD card $13 more expensive over 3 years.
      At 4 hours gaming a day, AMD card is $4 more expensive over 3 years.
      At 3 hours gaming a day, NVidia card is $4 more expensive over 3 years.

      If electricity falls below $0.15 or user achieves less than 3 hours gaming per day, the Nvidia card is more expensive

      With cut screens, loading screens, changes in games, waiting in lobbies etc, the likelihood of having the GPU full load (and largest power consumption differential) for 5 hours gaming would probably require a gaming 'session' of 7 hours. I'm not sure how much of the population is able to achieve 7 hours of gaming every single day for 3 years.

      There are so many variables which affect cost but to suggest 'poor value' is nonsense.

  15. Re:Slower than a 2 year old 1080ti by Tough+Love · · Score: 2, Informative

    over 500 watts

    The Radeon VII draws approximately the same power as the RTX 2080, what are you blathering about?

    Idiot.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  16. Re:Slower than a 2 year old 1080ti by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    It is power inefficient

    Only if you also call the RTX 2080 power inefficient, because they draw about the same power

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. Re:Slower than a 2 year old 1080ti by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    They look about the same, but you could be looking at an easy 20-30% difference between the card draws without the rest of the system.

    No you won't, the GPU dominates the system power draw by far. Equivalent power performance is confirmed by multiple reviewers, not just this one.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  19. horrible performance by sad_ · · Score: 1

    horrible performance of the amd gpu, wasn't that what nvidia was claiming?
    sure, it's slower then their latest+greatest rtx card, but not in the magnitude they let it out to be.

    --
    On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  20. Might Buy AMD Video Cards if Drivers Were Better by BrendaEM · · Score: 1

    The performance difference between nVidia and AMD hasn't been so dissimilar, but AMD's drivers have not been great for 3D applications other than games. For design-work, this matters.

    I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with nVidia's business practices, lately. For instance, there is no reason why they couldn't include the raytracing on older video cards, such as the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080ti, which are well fast enough to support it on some level, though, few games are supporting it.

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  21. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion