Reviews AMD Radeon VII Review: Seventh Son or Seventh Sin?

Isn't it DX12 AMD are trying to use to make an equivalent to DLSS?

 

Seems to be a lot of hate going around comment sections, don't know why - we all should have known what the outcome would be.

And to be honest, compared to Vega 64, it's actually pretty impressive... just don't try and compare it to anything Pascal (and Turing to a lesser extent).

The push with DX12 is probably more down to next-gen console adoption?

 

It can’t match Nvidia’s fines

Oh I bet it can't ! (last page typo under conclusion). Thanks muchly for the review

 

Disappointed to hear we're not expecting redesigned coolers anytime soon, from breakdowns of the card, noise and thermals, it seems AMD really dropped the ball with that cooler.

 

I wonder if these cards are in short supply not because they're binned Vega 20s that failed to make the grade for Instinct cards, but instead are the handful of top binned Vega 20s that can handle being hot-clocked.

Between the cooler and package is a thermal pad. Not paste, a pad. Likely to head off the issues with the Vega cards having different package heights, which was a major headache for OEMs. Gamersnexus found that cooler-to-die contact was exceptionally poor and inconsistent with the pad removed.

 

Anyone else disappointed by the power consumption of this 7nm GPU?

 

Honestly thats AMD for years, Power Consumption has been off the wall. Its priced competively ( For todays world of prices ) Performs well enough and offers enough for most AMD fans to buy it. My main concern will be the noise of the cooler. I am no AMD fan but this is not a bad card. And If I was in the market for a card would not be too far away if the bundles are good.

 

Considering that it is by this point basically a medieval architecture and given AMDs habit of "give Vega all the volts" it was to be expected.

 

Yeah, I saw a picture on Hard OCP where you could clearly see the height difference between the packages. They also tested by applying some TIM and then seeing how it spread out when the cooler was re-attached and it didn't look great.

 

so every pc ever? lol

 

Yea the poor contact was what i was referring to as the graphite pad isn't really that bad, it's been show the z height effects thermals way more than how effective the thermal solution is, the Gamers Nexus video is where i picked up on how bad (uneven) the cooler is.

It's like AMD outsourced the manufacturing of the cooler and whoever made it presented them with something that resembles the pyrenees and AMD just said "yea, that'll do".

 

Computerbase managed to knock off a massive 69W from the gaming load power consumption with undervolting:
https://www.computerbase.de/2019-02...istungsaufnahme-der-grafikkarte-wolfenstein-2

So its basically confirmed, the "moar volts" strategy AMD employed with the previous Vega cards is still very much alive.

 

I think the voltage thing is more aimed at the professional sector that many buy AMD gpus for. I found out yesterday that the R7 basically has all of the good stuff intact, making their instinct cards a bad buy. So I think they are pitching R7 at both gamers and pros. And in the pro market it needs to be stable, even when it is being completely hammered, hence the volts.

Once they sort out the drivers and overclocking it will be a very simple procedure to lower the volts and make it game stable. That was the first thing I did with my 64. But aye, the drivers are truly horrific ATM. On OC3D the 64 beat the R7 in BFV.

 

Whether the hardware is similar or not, surely one of the selling points of the pro cards is the pro driver support? You're paying for that as much as the actual hardware, so pros will continue to buy Instinct cards for that reason.