AMD Radeon VII is now a reality and it is time to see exactly what its performance is and how it is positioned in relation to the offerings of the competition Nvidia in the upper range. On this occasion we see a performance comparison between RTX 2080, GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2070 all competing with the new AMD option.
Radeon VII is a new graphics card that uses a 7 nm node based on the VEGA architecture with 3840 stream processors, 60 compute units (CU), 16 GB HBM2 memory with a bandwidth of 1 TB/s and a theoretical performance of 13.8 TFLOPs. The graphics processor can work with a maximum top speed of 1.8 GHz.
The following comparison, shared by Anandtech staff, uses the following devices.
TEST EQUIPMENT |
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| CPU | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz | ||||
| Motherboard | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 (F9g) | ||||
| Source | Corsair AX860i | ||||
| Storage | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) | ||||
| Memory | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
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| Box | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition | ||||
| Monitor | LG 27UD68P-B | ||||
| Traffic Cards | AMD Radeon VII NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti |
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| Drivers | NVIDIA Release 417.71 AMD Radeon Software 18.50 Press |
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| SW | Windows 10 x64 Pro (1803) Specter and Meltdown Patched |
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COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE
The four graphic cards were submitted to some of the most popular games, all with their – graphic options to the maximum – . In this comparison, we are going to focus on resolutions 1080 and 4K . Who will be the best stop? Lets go see it.
BATTLEFIELD 1
| 1080p – FPS (Average) | 4K – FPS (Average) | |
| Radeon VII | 163 | 81 |
| RTX 2080 | 160 | 77 |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 160 | 74 |
| RTX 2070 | 147 | 63 |
First of all we have Battlefield 1 , a demanding video game for any modern graphics card. Here we see a parity in 1080p with the natural enemies of the Radeon VII, and a small advantage when we raise the resolution to 4K for the AMD option.
FAR CRY 5
| 1080p – FPS (Average) | 4K – FPS (Average) | |
| Radeon VII | 102 | 59 |
| RTX 2080 | 112 | 56 |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 111 | 54 |
| RTX 2070 | 106 | Four. Five |
Far Cry 5 appears in the comparison and we see that the option of AMD continues to maintain its advantage over the rest in 4K resolution, but not when we lower the resolution to 1080p, remaining below the RTX 2070.
FINAL FANTASY XV (DX11)
| 1080p – FPS (Average) | 4K – FPS (Average) | |
| Radeon VII | 94 | 40 |
| RTX 2080 | 115 | Four. Five |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 113 | Four. Five |
| RTX 2070 | 96 | 37 |
The option of AMD can not take advantage in Final Fantasy XV and stays behind in 4K and further in 1080p, staying in the numbers of the RTX 2070.
GRAND THEFT AUTO V
| 1080p – FPS (Average) | 4K – FPS (Average) | |
| Radeon VII | 99 | 48 |
| RTX 2080 | 108 | 53 |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 112 | 55 |
| RTX 2070 | 105 | Four. Five |
Interestingly, the ‘old’ GTX 1080 Ti defeats everyone in GTA V, a game that is already old but still very much in force. This is another disappointing result for the Radeon VII, which is last in 1080p resolution. In 4K it is placed between an RTX 2070 and the RTX 2080 , but by very little margin.
TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER II
| 1080p – FPS (Average) | 4K – FPS (Average) | |
| Radeon VII | 89 | 35 |
| RTX 2080 | 100 | 41 |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 105 | 41 |
| RTX 2070 | 89 | 3. 4 |
Total War: Warhammer is a demanding game for the amount of units it generates on the screen, so that’s why we understand that in 4K the results are so low on average. The AMD graphics card gets back on par with the RTX 2070 , and with some fps below the RTX 2080. When we lower the resolution to 1080p, it’s more of the same. It does not look good.
F1 2018
| 1080p – FPS (Average) | 4K – FPS (Average) | |
| Radeon VII | 145 | 74 |
| RTX 2080 | 149 | 77 |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 143 | 74 |
| RTX 2070 | 130 | 64 |
Finally, we have F1 2018 that shows a clear parity between Radeon VII and RTX 2080 / GTX 1080 in any resolution.
Calculation tests by GPU |
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| CompuBench – N-Body 1024k | CompuBench – Optical Flow | GeekBench 4 – GPU | SiSoft Sandra – GP | |
| Radeon VII | 140 | 82 | 222K | 18.5 |
| RTX 2080 | 81 | 62 | 417K | 17.2 |
| GTX 1080 Ti | 73 | 61 | 229K | – |
| RTX 2070 | 74 | 51 | 354K | – |
Concerning performance in GPU calculation tests, which will certainly interest the professional sector more. Radeon VII would use a considerable advantage in the CompuBench test, but not in GeekBench 4.
CONCLUSIONS
The Radeon VII is the first GPU for 7nm games, and it’s not an easy task. It may still be a dual-use product for pros/players, but it still lacks some more power to keep up with the RTX 2080. However, it hasn’t stayed that way yet, in the comparisons we see an advantage of 5 to 6% in favor of Nvidia’s option.
Maybe these numbers can be improved by new, more optimized AMD drivers, but that wouldn’t solve the problem of high implementation costs (about 750 Euros), which makes it a not very recommendable option at this time.