Share your thoughts on the Radeon VII launch

[RyokuHasu]

Overall I think the launch FLOPPED. Between sending out bad drivers to reviewers, not prepping them on how to understand the new thermal readings, the XFX version getting sold early (and $100 cheaper), stock shortages, and general confusion about the entire launch made it one of the WORST product launches in a while from a publicity and logistics point of view.

 

However, I did manage to buy one thanks to being signed up for email notifications as soon as they went live, and I personally am not too fussed about the price seeing as they throw in $180 worth of games. I make myself feel better saying the card was $520 and I just happened to be roped into buying $180 in games too. So in my own personal opinion the value isn't that bad, if you are getting the game bundle.

 

What are some of your thoughts on the launch?

[LukeSavenije]

I think it's at least good that they finally came to the high end again with vega, but this is more a workstation card imo. just wait for NAVI

[BobVonBob]

Overwhelming "meh". It's 2080 price for 2080 performance but without 2080 features. But if what you do needs HBM then it's a steal.

[Semper]

To me, this feels like a "testing waters" card to me, or perhaps a "this is what we have for this release cycle".

It's underwhelming, but only because it's up against a very feature-rich lineup of powerhouse cards with Nvidia. I'm beyond happy to see AMD upsetting the market for CPU's again, and can only hope they're able to do so with GPU's. I feel that Radeon VII isn't that competition, but it's a step in the right direction and could help lead to a promising future.

[porina]

They released what they did because it is what they have. I'm actually surprised at the level of negativity, having seen Paul, Kyle, hardware canucks, and Linus videos. Fans of team red now have a high level card option. It's uses outside gaming are also interesting, especially the now higher FP64 rate than was discussed before. Driver problems are always there, I had similar weirdness on my Vega 56 for quite some time after launch but it seems to eventually settle down. 

[Princess Luna]

Why is so many people comparing the Radeon 7 to the RTX 2080? It's clearly a card that competes with the older generation GTX 1080 Ti since it has none of the RTX new functionality and part the reson the card is so meh... I'd buy a second hand 1080 Ti anyday before considering it.

[RAM555789]

51 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Why is so many people comparing the Radeon 7 to the RTX 2080? It's clearly a card that competes with the older generation GTX 1080 Ti since it has none of the RTX new functionality and part the reson the card is so meh... I'd buy a second hand 1080 Ti anyday before considering it.

And that's the issue, it doesnt make sense for them to release this card so far after the 1080 Ti. If they had released it much closer it would have certainly been more justified but at this point it's probably going to get overshadowed by Nvidia.

[Madgemade]

Very soon I will know for sure how it performs. Mine just arrived.

[Mick Naughty]

Looks bad and doesn’t offer much. Think I’ll pass. 

[Awolbrain]

Overall it seems like a great card. Many of the test show it edging out the base 2080. Doesn't have all the bells or whistles as the RTX cards so, regardless of the gimmicky ray tracing, the VII should be pricing lower.

 

Glad to see AMD taking cards seriously again.

[Mister Woof]

I just got a Sapphire Vega 64 reference and counting the value of the games I wanted, it was $320.

 

I'm very satisfied with that and the VII launch only validates my decision.

[Mick Naughty]

Not a conclusive tests from ltt. Most people test the same games over and over so still goesnt show much. 

 

Lacts a lot of features not just ray tracing.

Id buy the 2080 simply for the best encoding. I can also replace thermal paste easily, which can’t be said for the amd card. But as most people can’t maintaine their equipment, I guess that can’t be a pro/con. 

[SolarNova]

Its good that they are 'trying' to do high end, but after the offical info and thall the leaks, the final product is more or less as i expected. Rather lackluster.

 

it hasnt, so far, done anything to the higher price of GPU's this generation, it hasnt realyl given a better 1080ti option, as it still higher priced and barely comparable performance wise.

 

The other issue ofc was the drivers, its inability to OC unless running at subzero.. which ruins any comparison one could have comparing the 2080 OC, the 1080ti OC, and the R-VII oc's.

 

I 'hoped' for more, but expect this.

[mbox]

I think the card is OK, with the game bundle (if you actually want those games) it could also be a better choice than an RTX2080. What I really didn't like was that some of the press didn't understand what this product is, an Instinct card rebranded for gaming. This is totally fine but you need to know it to undersand the product. It explains both VRAM capacity and performance results, otherwise it just seems a weird product.

As for the not perfect launch i guess it's not a problem since the GPU was already developed and any sell is almost free money for AMD.

 

A great review (as always) IMO is from gamers nexus.

[xg32]

8 hours ago, RyokuHasu said:

.

it's a flop, the junction temps are interesting, it does have good dx12 perf, too bad devs aren't really focusing on dx12. No reason to get it over the 2080 (gaming). I have no failh in amd gpu launches, they straight up put out fake numbers before vega launched. I'm actually hyped for zen 2 though

[Zeitec]

I mean they're very clearly just recycled instinct parts, so I'm sure whatever they get for them is better than silicon sitting in a wearhouse. Anything is just gravy for them. As for consumers, I recommend 0% of gamers buy this card. If you need the compute or HBM2 sure go for it, but for actual gaming I wouldn't recommend it to basically anyone. It runs hotter, louder, slightly slower, and consumes more power. I don't see the point.

[Turtle Rig]

WTF is 16GB VRAM for ?  Tested with bunch of games new game AAA titles and the most VRAM taken is Quake Champions at 7.8GB of RAM.  Perhaps at 4k resolution you will use 11GB.. But 16GB vram tells me AMD has fallen short and all they can do is stick 16GB of VRAM to impress people.  I bet it will probably be slower then nVidia equivalent.

[Zeitec]

Just now, Turtle Rig said:

WTF is 16GB VRAM for ?  Tested with bunch of games new game AAA titles and the most VRAM taken is Quake Champions at 7.8GB of RAM.  Perhaps at 4k resolution you will use 11GB.. But 16GB vram tells me AMD has fallen short and all they can do is stick 16GB of VRAM to impress people.  I bet it will probably be slower then nVidia equivalent.

They're just recycled failed Instinct chips, and given the nature of HBM2 they already had the memory installed. If these chips weren't sold as gaming gpu's they would just sit in a wearhouse with the other failed silicon. This way they're not complete wastes.

[Blademaster91]

1 minute ago, Turtle Rig said:

WTF is 16GB VRAM for ?  Tested with bunch of games new game AAA titles and the most VRAM taken is Quake Champions at 7.8GB of RAM.  Perhaps at 4k resolution you will use 11GB.. But 16GB vram tells me AMD has fallen short and all they can do is stick 16GB of VRAM to impress people.  I bet it will probably be slower then nVidia equivalent.

The 16GB of ram is there because it's essentially a recycled Radeon Instinct MI50 card, maybe AMD could have made an 8GB version to keep the cost down, but the chips were already there from the compute card version and it's cheaper for AMD to sell them as gaming cards. The 16GB doesn't make much sense for just gaming although these cards are great if you also do rendering work on the same PC.

 

[Turtle Rig]

You guys rock, thank you for the explanation for the outrageously pointless 16GB VRAM.  sighs

[Zeitec]

2 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

You guys rock, thank you for the explanation for the outrageously pointless 16GB VRAM.  sighs

Yeah it's disappointing. Who knows, I mean the VRAM alone costs like $320 according to reports, so if it had gone with 8gb they theoretically (no idea how this would be in practice) cut like $100 off the price. Had this card launched at $600 I think it would have made a lot more sense.

[pstarlord]

I'm too new to the whole GPU world to have a preference to either the Red or Green team.  I've only owned AMD cards (580 and Vega 56) simply because of the value of the overall package when freesync was strictly an AMD thing.  

 

That being said, as I find that the more I learn about each company, I do feel like AMD is the lesser of two evils in terms of their business practices and philosophies.  So I do find myself rooting for them to do well.  

 

I had planned on buying a Radeon VII, as I said a handful of times here, but I wanted to wait until the reviews were out...as it turns out the cards were gone before I could even watch the reviews. haha.  So, I'll stick with my Vega 56 for now.  

 

As for the overall release, I think they got WAY too caught up in the "VII" of it all.  Vega II, 7nm, releasing it on the 7th day of the 2nd month...etc.  While I do appreciate interesting things like that, I'd preferred they pushed the launch date back a bit until the drivers could have been done right.  Of the reviews I watched, they all said their test drivers were not good, Jay did happen to get them to send over a beta version of some new drivers that gave him a much better experience.  AMD should know that first impressions last a lifetime.  I mean, how many people still think that the RTX2080TI will break on them for no reason, even though that problem has essentially been fixed?  We already knew that RVII was essentially a stop gap card until NAVI, this shouldn't surprise anyone, but now it'll go down as being one of the bigger "flops" in the GPU world because a vast majority of people who will never have will only see the initial reviews and think it was a rip off.  It's not new for a tech company to release something that's not 100% ready, it happens all the time.  But, when you are AMD, and you are already the underdog, you cannot afford press like this.

 

Anyway, if they do come available again, I might pick one up if they properly fix the drivers.  There was a bunch of rumblings about AMD only doing one batch or something, I dunno.  It would be a bummer if they didn't at least give it some time to mature a bit.  

[Turtle Rig]

5 minutes ago, pstarlord said:

I'm too new to the whole GPU world to have a preference to either the Red or Green team.  I've only owned AMD cards (580 and Vega 56) simply because of the value of the overall package when freesync was strictly an AMD thing.  

 

That being said, as I find that the more I learn about each company, I do feel like AMD is the lesser of two evils in terms of their business practices and philosophies.  So I do find myself rooting for them to do well.  

 

I had planned on buying a Radeon VII, as I said a handful of times here, but I wanted to wait until the reviews were out...as it turns out the cards were gone before I could even watch the reviews. haha.  So, I'll stick with my Vega 56 for now.  

 

As for the overall release, I think they got WAY too caught up in the "VII" of it all.  Vega II, 7nm, releasing it on the 7th day of the 2nd month...etc.  While I do appreciate interesting things like that, I'd preferred they pushed the launch date back a bit until the drivers could have been done right.  Of the reviews I watched, they all said their test drivers were not good, Jay did happen to get them to send over a beta version of some new drivers that gave him a much better experience.  AMD should know that first impressions last a lifetime.  I mean, how many people still think that the RTX2080TI will break on them for no reason, even though that problem has essentially been fixed?  We already knew that RVII was essentially a stop gap card until NAVI, this shouldn't surprise anyone, but now it'll go down as being one of the bigger "flops" in the GPU world because a vast majority of people who will never have will only see the initial reviews and think it was a rip off.  It's not new for a tech company to release something that's not 100% ready, it happens all the time.  But, when you are AMD, and you are already the underdog, you cannot afford press like this.

 

Anyway, if they do come available again, I might pick one up if they properly fix the drivers.  There was a bunch of rumblings about AMD only doing one batch or something, I dunno.  It would be a bummer if they didn't at least give it some time to mature a bit.  

I read your entire novel lol,  Here is the thing with nVidia you pay700 more dollars just to get 11GB RAM.  nVidia workstation cards are 14GB and 28GB I believe and one model at 44GB VRAM.  The cost was 2 thousand up to 10 thousand for the 44GB VRAM card.  Which puzzles me how AMD got away with 16GB VRAM for such a low price.  If you wanted a nVidia 16GB VRAM gaming card, you will have to wait years before they release a desktop GPU at 16GB VRAM.  Very pointless, this new radeon can not beat nVidia period.  However check out the reviews and benchmarks before you make any kind of move, until then yes stick with your Vega card my friend.

[Mick Naughty]

Maybe next gen. 30th times a charm. 

[THraShArD]

3 people already paid between $950 to $1,130 for the VII on eBay 

 

I dunno, I don't think prices will be getting any better in the future and when PCIE 4 comes out.