Radeon VII

Hardware & Tech Questions
1

I just read about the new AMD Radeon VII and I have to say it does look interesting.
Somewhere between the RTX 2080 and 2080 TI but for 730€…
Still a bit over my current budget, but I am curious how the cheaper cards with those chips will run.

EDIT: even though it is a bit slower in some games, I wonder if the 16GB(!!) of RAM (and but is very fast RAM) wouldn’t immensely help in DCSW…

Any opinions?

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2

Saw one on sale today and was curious as well. I’m not entirely sold on ATi cards as I remember how bad their driver support was from years back.

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3

From what I’ve seen it’s not quite RTX 2080 (minus RT and DLSS as well). It seems to fit between the 2070 and 2080, but it has more RAM than either.

The drivers are “not there yet” as apparently this release was a last minute decision on AMD’s part. This is a server GPU that they’ve made into a high-end consumer card at the last minute after seeing nvidia’s path.

So give it a month or two for the drivers to catch up. Personally, I’m still going with a 2070 once I see a deal putting it under $450, this card won’t reach that price any time soon.

4

Edit. The embargo lifted today, I thought it was tomorrow.

Anyhow, some food for thought. Looks like the drivers need maturing,.

5

ATi curse strikes yet again.

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6

I’m a Nvidia/Intel guy myself. Just seems like they consistently outperform the ATI/AMD stuff.

7

Unfortunately, Nvidia/Intel seem to have the stability game down pat. My ATi/AMD systems in the past have been decent for the budget, but stability was horrid – lots of BSOD.

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8

Yeah I feared that would be the answer.

Background: I was a fan of ATI cards back in the day, but at some point I was so fed up with the *&%! drivers that I decided to switch to nvidia with the… 8800GTX I think. Gone were the days of having three driver installers on my desktop and installing different ones because each of them caused problems in other games.
I never went back.

I had kinda hoped they had the driver thing nailed by now, because I’d like to get rid of that nvidia monopoly if possible…

9

Persoannly, the radeon 7 was a rush to stop gap the rtx release until navi came out. Also remember (whilst not a great move on amd’s side) that the review cards are mostly running on a review testers driver and not a finished consumer release driver.

Personally I’ve had very stable run with and over the past 4-5 years with my 7970 which performed admirably. Only latest drivers were causing issues that I updated too over the last month.

But horses for courses. Depends on the way the game is coded. Radeon 7 performs worse and sometimes better than rtx 2080. Some games like hit man an it surpassed 2080ti. It’s a powerful card, no doubt about it.

However, at that price, I am not sure I would buy it. Right now, there isn’t much need for the 16 gig or ram. It doesn’t have rtx (not that anyone is really using it anyway–and hence don’t buy a card just for that) and dlss may or may not be added in the future?

So currently, I am not against getting the card for what the card is, but the price for what you can use it for is a limiting factor.

I just picked up a rtx 2080 on a steal because it was a great offer, and I expect the rtx prices to come down more soon

10

I read a few more tests now and the general consensus seems to be:

  • lot of VRAM (and fast) is advantageous in high resolutions. The card is around RTX2070 level in 1080p, but in high resolutions very close to a RTX2080, in some games even better.
  • the drivers are a mess
  • the card is f***ing loud and needs between 300 and 400 Watts, which kinda insane

DCS being a game that uses a lot of VRAM but not necessarily the newest technology, and more and more people going for VR (which means high resolutions) I would really like to see someone try that card in DCSW.
It might just work…

…but then… Not too optimistic, in the last few years it seems Nvidia cards always were faster in DCSW.

11

I’m surprised ATI even went with another release before Navi. I thought they were going to throw everything they have at the CPU market (where they are actually competitive right now).

12

I think this was a case of not leaving money on the table. There are people that would buy it at $699 so why not? They probably thought they’d have to price it at $499, and that wouldn’t work, so forget it. Then nvidia pulled the RTX pricing stunt and AMD said “oh, in that case…”

I used to hop between AMD and nvidia every couple of years, but my last AMD card was…X1300 or something? It’s been many years now.

If you’re on a strict budget, AMD has offered more in the mid-range for your money than nvidia. If you care more about performance, AMD hasn’t been able to reliably compete. As it is, their top cards run hotter and take more power due to lesser efficiency, but if you don’t care about that Vegas have been acceptable at the lower end of the upper range–“upper middle class cards”?

I’ve been an nvidia x70 user for many gens now…570, 770, 970, 1070. I was put off by the 2070’s higher price, but the 2060 is a compromise (at 6GB) I’m not willing to make, so a sale I await.

13

I’m really curious why AMD is so far behind in the TDP department since they actually use a smaller node at 7nm vs nVidias current 12nm node.

14

This is a shrink of the Vega chip, not a rework. So it has all the same inefficiencies, they’re just not as glaring.