AMD's Ryzen CPUs (Ryzen/TR/Epyc) & Vega/Polaris/Navi GPUs

It's going to be up to driver updates over the next months / year to balance out the performance. The same happened with the RX 4xx / RX 5xx / RX 56 / RX 64, with the RX 480 performance below a 1060 then at the same rank, then above over time.

AMD's a small company, fewer people to assign to the task of optimization and working with partners at gaming / software companies, so it will take time to move forward in the same way as they usually do.

AMD has become persistent in these driver and software optimizations over the last few years, now that they have consistently improving hardware to work with they can get the attention they need to do the improvements.

The good part is when tuned well for the AMD Radeon VII the performance soars above the 2080ti in productivity software, which is a big reason people will buy this much cheaper than the MI 50 / 60 GPU and they can still game - at the same price as the RTX 2080, avoiding the RTX drama-baggage in tow.

The first thing AMD needs to get sorted is that Wattman tuning for the Radeon Vega VII - and general stability by driver and firmware updates.

 

Apparently You Really Do Need That 16GB Of HBM2 In AMD's Radeon VII
Jason Evangelho, Feb 7, 2019, 02:11pm
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...o-need-that-16gb-of-hbm2-in-amds-radeon-vii/#

"AMD is pitching its brand new Radeon VII graphics card as a dual-purpose product targeted at two types of customers: gamers and content creators. To cater to the latter, it has equipped the $699 Radeon VII with a whopping (and expensive) 16GB of HBM2 memory alongside an insane 1TB/second of memory bandwidth.

That's 5GB more than even Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti ships with. AMD insists that 8GB isn't nearly enough. That 16GB is vital for a degree of future-proofing, especially if you're a video producer working with 8K video. But who is really working with 8K video?

The reality is that if you're producing video content you may need that 16GB of HBM2 right now.

In the process of absorbing Radeon VII reviews today, I noticed an alarming real-world scenario from Richard Leadbetter at Digital Foundry, who's working with 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro every day. Leadbetter's workstation includes an Nvidia Titan X Pascal GPU, which sports 12GB of video memory.

Skip to about 5:30 in the below video to zero in on this example:

Digital Foundry frequently does head-to-head performance showdowns of Xbox One X versus PlayStation Pro games. PC versions also enter the mix. So Leadbetter shows us a basic timeline that includes side-by-side 4K clips and a couple transitions. Radeon VII and Titan X Pascal have no trouble exporting the project.

Then things get interesting. Leadbetter lines up a 3-way head-to-head (not an uncommon scenario at Digital Foundry) with 3 transitions. Midway through the export, his system with the Nvidia Titan X Pascal with 12GB of VRAM just gives up the race.

Adobe Premiere declares that it can't render the frame -- a result of not enough video memory. Had this been a longer video, this would have resulted in more lost time, some frustration, and possibly a downgrade in the overall quality of the finished product to satisfy the performance ceiling.

"This isn't down to drivers or compute power, but 100 per cent down to GPU memory," Leadbetter writes. "For content creators pushing 4K video hard, Radeon 7 is still expensive - but it's offering a pro-level memory allocation that make working with challenging projects easier."

It's worth mentioning that the accompanying Digital Foundry review demonstrates that 16GB of HBM2 may still be overkill for gaming, even at 4K. But some games such as Battlefield V are turning into video memory hogs, sucking up between 8GB to 11GB at Ultra HD resolution.

But for those of you producing hi-res video now or entertaining it in the near future, AMD may be onto something here -- like opening more doors for amateur producers on a budget. I also suspect that certain compute workloads may see considerable benefit from the hefty amount of HBM2 and the corresponding 1TB/second of memory bandwidth.

I do have a Radeon VII in hand and will be kicking out several articles in the next week focusing on gaming, pro graphics and compute in both Windows and Linux environments, so stay tuned."

 

Was the memory able to be overclocked on Fury? Are we seeing a resurgence of that again?

 

Skip to 7:49



Skip to 9:55

"Somone spending $30,000 plus on 8K camera gear is not going to be using a gaming card". He also found no render difference time between a 1070 Ti and a brand new Radeon 7. Bottom line is everyone's work flow is different and therefore differing needs. There is no one single magic bullet for anything.

 

AMD tunes for maximum performance out of the box for their CPU's and GPU's with extreme cooling you can get some benefit and better scores, but that's not an operating mode most people will be able to use on a daily basis - so I'd rather have AMD deliver the maximum performance to everyone out of the box.

It's not unusual for those 3rd party tools to not work even with Intel / Nvidia hardware, and I'm sure they will all be updated to support the Radeon Vega VII in time.

For all his complaints IDK why he is surprised at any of this as he's seen it before for Intel / Nvidia as well as AMD, 3rd party tools have their own update schedules and aren't beholding to the hardware vendors.

I'd rather have AMD ship hardware on time than wait for 3rd party support. Get the hardware out there and into owners / developers hands and let them update their tools and software quickly as well.

It's great news that he found the GPU will OC past 2ghz and as wattman and other 3rd party tools are updated this added headroom can be played with.

Wattman and other AMD software tools for OC are usually lagging as it's not a gating factor for shipping. OC'ers are a small minority of people and the other 99% of potential owners shouldn't have to wait to see their hardware because OC software isn't ready.

Hopefully AMD will issue updates as quickly as previously and sort out the OC tuning software quickly.

Then we can see @der8auer hit the LN2 hard and get some new top scores.

 

Despite all the reviewer struggles... I have to say I'm really entertained by the business side of this. I think it's hilarious that AMD managed to take advantage of NVIDIA's ridiculous pricing to basically sell even a limited number of what are basically failed productivity GPUs. No way they recoup those losses to this extent if the RTX series was even a bit better value.

On the other hand I'm sad at the image of Lisa and Jensen both laughing on the way to the bank at our expense. I'm sure someone has compiled a picture somewhere.

 

He didn't show the GPU utlization's for those Adobe tests, given slower GPU's among the Nvidia group showed no time differences - rather unexpected - it's clear there isn't good GPU render utilization being done by Adobe on any of the GPU's, not a good comparison.

There are other reviewers that found differences due to usage of filters, perhaps the raw vanilla renders aren't as effective in putting the GPU's / VRAM to work, or Adobe did that on purpose too allow resources for filters to be used.

As with any professional software you need to get specific with the testing and application of tools and do the benchmarking yourself, and explore features you haven't been using because the previous GPU's didn't have the horsepower to even contemplate using them - the Radeon Vega VII should allow for heavier filter and processing to be applied.

Due to the differences in support for Nvidia / AMD preferred in the games 50% better on AMD and 50% better on Nvidia, the mix of games tested will tip the balance in favor of one or the other, but on average the small difference Hardware Unboxed found 2%/4% 1080ti/2080 @ 1440p is the most balanced so far.

With some reviews showing higher %'s due to having 1 or 2 more games that favor Nvidia over AMD. They could just as easily put a mix together of mostly AMD perferred games, and that would show a wide % improvement over the 1080ti/2080.

It will be fun to see the performance improvements over time as AMD puts out Wattman software + driver improvements along with gaming and productivity software updates to improve performance.

In addition, with AMD shipping the much more expensive MI50 / MI60 GPU's based on the same Vega 20 for productivity and professional software AMD's performance improvements can be used to carry the Radeon Vega VII forward in creative performance improvements.

 

Maybe not "failed" productivity GPU's, just because it's got the same count of elements as the MI50, and not as much as the MI60, it doesn't mean they are bad parts.

Actually the Radeon Vega VII clocks much higher out of the box than the MI50, so if anything these are binned GPU's for better than stock rated MI50 performance.

 

Radeon VII, a pretty horrible product/launch in my evaluation in terms of gaming. After reading Guru3d review ( https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_vii_16_gb_review,31.html)

• Noisy: the loudest card Guru3d has ever tested at 50dB!
• High power consumption: 300W
• Performance in the RTX 2070 / GTX 1080ti zone and up to RTX 2080 depending on game.
• Expensive: 699USD, while RTX 2070 costs only 579USD, although RTX 2080 costs $799, so it sits slap bang in the middle of those two.

But the Radeon VII compares so badly to both RTX 2070 & RTX 2080:

• RTX 2070 is 100USD cheaper
• RTX 2070 nearly half the power consumption (https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_vii_16_gb_review,6.html), while RTX 2080 consumes 70W less but outperforms Radeon VII almost everywhere.
• RTX are silent GPUs under load, only 34dB & 37dB vs the ridiculous 50dB of Radeon VII (https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_vii_16_gb_review,9.html)
• RTX can do ray tracing
• RTX can do DLSS for even further increased framerate with limited or no quality loss (yet to be properly seen though in games)

Yeah, NVidia are silly overpriced for their RTX cards, and AMD are now overpriced in comparison to NVidia - madness! I think Guru3d got the proper value of the card about right though in their conclusion, 499USD vs the 699USD they're asking for. Performance wise considering it's slightly faster than the RTX 2070 but missing the RTX & DLSS features I think those 2 facts make this product worth the same as the RTX 2070 (579USD), but then I think you've gotta then subtract some more for the practically doubled power consumption and insanely loud noise of the card during gaming - so yeah 499USD!

The one saving grace of the Radeon VII is that it has 16GB of VRAM which is useful for some scientific computational stuff (as well as some other parts of the GPU that are useful for this), but that's only a very niche area - for gaming it's a bit of a disaster product really.

 

They can’t reduce the vRAM without sacrificing bandwidth and some big performance. The problem for AMD is that the HBM is reported to be over half the price of the card. Then they have the expensive brand new 7nm process. A process that was designed to be extremely power efficient and they managed to take that and create a power hungry under performing for the process chip. AMD is mortagaged to the hill on these cards. One reported they’re selling them at cost or no profit. Another reviewer said there are no aftermarket cards coming to market. That alone should be extremely telling as to the purpose of this card. It’s nothing more than a stop gap card. It’s to put something on the scoreboard for AMD, even if that means releasing an expensive half baked product that makes them little or no profit.

 

Price is fair. There are not many of them on the market at all (smart move) so there will be enough buyers for 16GB AMD card.

 

The weird part about some of these negative reviews is that I thought everyone knew that already? From the leaks thus far, it seemed relatively easy to discern where the Radeon VII was going to fall in benchmarks. While I am a little surprised at the noise and power consumption, I think it accomplishes its goal.

AMD set out to create a card to compete against the 2070/2080 for gamers, which it does, as well as provide some new and interesting features for a niche market, which it does. It was also meant to serve as a stopgap to keep AMD relevant, which it does. Given the success of the Vega IGPs, the pricing of the RX 5x0 series on the low and midrange segments and the Radeon VII now competing in the high-end market, AMD is relevant in all GPU market segments for the foreseeable future.

 

I agree, I think AMD did a good job, got it out on time, with the usual driver / software issues that get cleaned up in the first weeks / month of release.

No surprises except for the fan noise, probably it's the fan blades themselves that are the problem, hopefully fan replacements will be found by DIY'ers, and this gives AIB's the ability to sell Reference boards with quieter fans to gain sales.

What noone has mentioned is AMD might have a ton of these still waiting to ship, and it's the vendors that have ordered small test quantities to see how buyers react initially.

Then they will continue to order enough to fill orders so they don't get stuck with inventory that takes months to offload - like the 10 series stuff they probably still have sitting around, not to mention the RTX GPU's gathering dust waiting for new RT games to be released.

 

It looks like AMD has decided to open up some of the professional features of the Radeon Vega VII.

FP64 on Radeon VII is 1:4 at 3.52 TFLOPS!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by u/avimanyu786, 12 hours ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ao48bk/fp64_on_radeon_vii_is_14_at_352_tflops/
The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
FP64 Performance and Separating Radeon VII from Radeon Instinct MI50
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM EST
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13923/the-amd-radeon-vii-review/3
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13923/the-amd-radeon-vii-review/15

 

His card won't even boot anymore.

Looks like Nvidia is not the only one that has initial launch issues. Others reported needing to reinstall their OS after it crashed the entire system. Yikes. Not recommended to buy at the moment according to GN and Tech Yes City with it's issues.

 

Baaahhhaaaaa!!

Wait to draw similarity to the 2080ti's "dropping like flies" until an owner reports 2 dead Radeon Vega VII's and they are on their 3rd GPU - crossing fingers it lasts for the long term, like you, before banging your drum.

Baaaahaaaaaa!!

He's a good guy, but he's easily confused, per his own admission, and pulling at straws of coincidence for explanations. Like I said I like him, and watch his channel, but there are limits to his technical skills.

The same goes for Jay, he "plays the bumbler" cause it's easy to pull off and "funny", it's his thing to screw up AMD reviews, look at all of them. Again, he's a nice guy, but I wouldn't look to him for technical prowess.

These aren't "scientists" operating under carefully controlled and calibrated environments, these are Youtube guys that are just trying to make a buck and have fun. And, a little "drama" sells better.

der8auer played the drama card this time too, a bit disappointing actually.

PCWorld had no driver issues, and they didn't see the drama some other channels found.

Comments from that TechYesCity video:

ASDF_9000 7 hours ago (edited)
"Have you tried underclocking the Vega 64 and or te Vega VII? I recently got a Vega 64 and undervolted it by 5mV I got a 16% performance increase. Turns out at least the Vega 64 cant handle its default voltage and I wonder if the VII is the same? If I learnt anything from the last 2 days of playing around with my 64 its that you don't get performance for overclocking as the card auto clocks up and down based on voltage/load/heat, the only way I improved card performance was to hit the voltage into the negatives."

obee doobee 8 hours ago
"You tried undervolting it?...seems others have had good results with this.."

Daniele 19 hours ago
"Considering that the vega 56 and 64 perform much much better when undervolt I would have try also on this card"

SpirallingOut 21 hours ago
"Going by what all the current review & benchmark videos are telling me, the things I'll be waiting for are: Improved drivers Undervolted Radeon VII testing Stock increase"

Given TechYesCity doesn't have experience with AMD Vega / RX GPU's undervolting and OC'ing, it's not a surprise he had problems, check out this video where he undervolted and OC'd just fine:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ga-polaris-gpus.799348/page-552#post-10861517

 

Radeon VII review, GTX vs RTX laptops, Q&A | The Full Nerd ep. 84
"The Radeon Vega VII is - Whelming"
"No Driver Issues"
Starts @ 07:25
PCWorld
Streamed live 15 hours ago
Join The Full Nerd gang as they talk about the latest PC hardware topics. In today's show we are diving deep into the Radeon VII reviews for both gaming and content creation to see where it stacks up against Nvidia's cards, and whether you should buy a GTX or RTX laptop right now. As always we will be answering your live questions so speak up in the chat.

 

Wow, a "newb" was able to undervolt and OC without drama, including reducing power at stock with same performance, and getting a nice performance bump with an undervolt + OC, he also OC'd the 2080.

He modestly suggested he got a "good card", but I think it was mostly a technical focus on getting the job done, without looking for drama.

A good straight forward simple guide with clear examples and explanation, and no drama.

Overclocking & Undervolting Radeon VII – A Stability Nightmare?
Optimum Tech
Published on Feb 8, 2019

 

Stepped up my game. 5670 - RX 570 - R VII
Submitted 14 hours ago by KuyaG
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aod2ay/stepped_up_my_game_5670_rx_570_r_vii/

KuyaG AMD R5 2600 + Radeon VII[ S] 23 points 4 hours ago
"Based on the one test I did. Rise of tomb raider, my RX 570 at 1440 averaged 45 fps. Same settings RVII is 120+"

 

Funny, I was editing to post this:



I didn't see that HU video yet, but it looks like all "5000" have been sold. Must be far more popular than AMD expected. It looks like there were a lot of potential RTX 2080 buyers that just couldn't bring themselves to buy the RTX crap, but needed a new $699 GPU.

I hope AMD cranks out another 50,000 of those Radeon Vega VII's, allowing AMD to lower the price a tad.

Maybe come out with an AMD Radeon Vega LX (MI60), and Stick it to that Green Monster.

 

AMD always impressed me with consistent frame time even though FPS was low. I'm a former AMD GPU user but I'd love to get back to AMD from nvidia.

 

FINAL ANSWER! - GTX 1060 vs RX 580/590
UFD Tech
Start @ 04:40 for scores...
Published on Feb 8, 2019


Francois Smit 1 minute ago
"I watched 570 vs 1050Ti the other day and the 570 had double the performance of the 1050Ti in most games and beating it in all the games. Also, the 570 cost less than the 1050Ti. So who the hell would ever buy a 1050Ti after seeing that."

Michael Farmer 43 minutes ago
"I was kinda fine just sitting on my 1060 until this video. Makes me feel like I'mma need a new GPU soon. Radeon VII is clearly a no-go and the 20 series is a bit too much for my budget so here's to hoping AMD hits us with a super value card soon."

Jeff Morse 1 hour ago
"Used RX 580s are pretty darn cheap in the US right now. If I needed a mid range card I'd probably go that route for $100-$120."

Goran CTD 23 minutes ago
"Still playing all my games on a MSi 480 Gaming X 4GB with Ryzen 1700 and 16GB of ram without any problem, and with freesync monitor games are very smooth. Waiting for a navi to replace my card."

 

He's a drama queen, and quite happy to milk this for all it's worth.

Fun to watch, not realistically useful in it's entirety, not technically helpful or shareable, and that's why I stopped posting his video's.

Maybe he will have useful content to share in the future.

 

Lots of happy AMD Radeon Vega VII owners happily undervolted down to 200w (210w-230w) power draw undervolting .9-1.0v reporting in to reddit.

Spoiler: AMD Radeon VII Review

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...eview-this-isnt-the-7nm-gpu-youre-looking-for

Power Consumption, Heat, and Noise
Note: My GPU test rig uses a V3 Voltair CPU cooler, which includes a Thermo-Electric Cooler, or TEC. This consumes additional electricity. As a result, our idle and power consumption figures may be higher than elsewhere on the web. Running 32GB of RAM in XMP at DDR4-3200 also substantially increases power consumption compared with stock voltage and DDR4-2400.

Our power consumption figures are taken from the third loop of a Metro Last Light Redux benchmark run at 1920×1080. All detail settings conform to those used for our GPU reviews.

AMD’s absolute power consumption has scarcely budged compared with Vega 64, but its performance per watt has improved significantly. Using the automatic undervolting option on our Radeon VII decreased power consumption by ~7.5 percent without harming frame rates at all.

Once you factor in the Radeon VII’s increased performance, the GPU is indeed significantly more efficient. The Radeon VII consumes roughly 75 percent as much power as the Vega 64 per frame of animation drawn. Activate its underclocking feature, and this drops to 70 percent. But the RTX 2080 consumes just 63 percent the power of the Radeon Vega 64. AMD’s 7nm GPU draws roughly the same amount of power as its Nvidia rival, but it isn’t quite as efficient on the whole.

Here's a few interesting reddit threads:

Vega VII undervolt makes it quiet and a champion

Just got my Radeon VII, So far its pretty awesome! Initial 3dmark Stock Benchmarks and Fan Noise review

Giantmonkey101[ S] 8 points 2 hours ago
"Whatever they are saying about the Fan noise? Its total garbage, its a good kind of loud, very easy going And i hate NOISE thats why i bought the liquid Vega 64........"

IDK German: Radeon VII undervolt, around 200 watts power consumption? (video is german, reddit thread is english)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aohuz2/idk_german_radeon_vii_undervolt_around_200_watts/

Overclocking & Undervolting Radeon VII – A Stability Nightmare? (youtube video)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aoepob/overclocking_undervolting_radeon_vii_a_stability/

Sledgemotoi7 6700k @ 4.7 | VII 43 points 13 hours ago
"This guy needs more views. He did a great job with the review and was one of the only reviewers that was able to under volt and overclock the card successfully"

draw0c0ward 19 points 12 hours ago*
"Agreed! This guy is one of the best hardware YouTubers! He knows his **** and has great production."

So AMD slightly lowered FP64 on the Radeon VII to 3.46 TFLOPS. But would you look at that!..:

nvidia_shill_4life i9-9900K | RX Vega 64 Nitro+ Limited Edition 57 points 16 hours ago
"Ok this is just ****ing insane. Completely obliterates a Quadro P6000 lol wtf? Epic."

Radeon VII: Insanely overvolted? Undervolting surpasses 2080 FE efficiency

Naekyr 2 points 1 day ago
"This is 100% true. GPU CPUs etc are all overvolted to make sure they are 100% stable out of the box. That's why on most GPUs and CPUs you can achieve an small overclock by raising clock speed without even touching the voltage/power"

The Performance Benefits To Running AMD's Radeon VII With Linux 5.0 + Mesa 19.0

Does Radeon VII Battlefield V's performance demonstrate future multi-threaded game performance?

"Looking at many reviews in the past 24 hours, I'v come to a conclusion. Better, let's call it a theory. A theory that Radeon VII will age better in future games then the current RTX and GTX cards. So why do I think this? Looking at BF V, it's surprising that AMD is performing better with RX, Vega and Vega VII compared to the Nvidia counterparts. Especially since it's a title where Nvidia and DICE worked together to implement Raytracing."

SilverforceG 7 minutes ago
"The amount of load the 2080 puts on the 8700K @ 5ghz is insane compared to the R7, for similar FPS output..."


https://www.reddit.com/r/AyyMD/comments/ao6rh8/_/

TheDarkSkeleton 10 points 23 hours ago
" Isn't it funny how amd beats novideo in the game that they gave away"

middle_twix Vega is Perfect, Reviewers Didnt Know What They Were Doing 6 points 21 hours ago
"Now imagine this card with pptable mods, proper drivers in 6 months time, and an AIO. Memes and cherry picking aside, if this card goes the route of Vega it will probably be one of the best examples of Fine Wine to date."

 

AMD doesn't have significantly lower FPS than NV counterpart GPUs... and a lot of those 'issues' tend to be ironed out with future drivers (which at this point seem better than NV).
However, it depends on which GPU you are currently using and whether it meets your needs.

Remember that AMD uArch is mainly oriented towards compute, as such, its gaming performance won't be 'top notch' but it will be high enough where you probably won't have to worry about replacing it anytime soon.
Plus, on the AMD end, you basically end up getting a professional GPU with massive compute on the cheap which is also a capable gaming chip to boot (NV doesn't offer this kind of option).

 

AMD Ryzen™ Processor Software Optimization (Presented by AMD)
Ken Mitchell (Senior Member of Technical Staff, AMD)
https://schedule.gdconf.com/session...software-optimization-presented-by-amd/864865
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ao8x78/amd_to_present_zen_2_core_architecture_at_gdc2019/

Pass Type: All Access, GDC Conference + Summits, GDC Conference, GDC Summits, Expo Plus, Audio Conference + Tutorial, Indie Games Summit - Get your pass now!

Topic: Programming

Format: Sponsored Session

Join the AMD ISV Game Engineering team for an introduction to the AMD Ryzen™ family of processors followed by advanced optimization topics. Learn about the Ryzen line up of processors, profiling tools and techniques to understand optimization opportunities, and get a glimpse of the next generation of "Zen 2" x86 core architecture. Gain insight into code optimization opportunities and lessons learned with examples including C/C++, assembly, and hardware performance-monitoring counters.

GDC
March 18-22, 2019
San Francisco, CA

 

I was remembering my 5750 Radeon performance when compared to Nvidia. It had less FPS but no stuttering at 720p in 2010. I always did LTC on 5750 with 5830 GPU core clocks and it worked perfectly!

 

Radeon VII Owners: Lower temps 10c with simple "Washer mod"?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aopfxi/radeon_vii_owners_lower_temps_10c_with_simple/

"Techpowerup in their review ( link) of the Radeon VII made a interesting claim. They claim to have lowered temps 10c by simply adding a washer to each of the (4) screws in the X shaped bracket encasing the back of the GPU. The idea is this increases the mounting pressure of the heatsink onto the GPU thus providing better thermals. This mod sounds interesting and independent confirmation as to the effectiveness of it would be great.

So, I have two requests...

1. Techpowerup did this washer mod "after" removing the stock thermal pad and the 10c tempature drop was observed with aftermarket thermal paste. Looking for volenteer(s) to test and report back to us your before and after results with the factory thermal pad intact.

2) For those of you who intend or are already using your own thermal paste, can you try this mod and report back to us what paste you used and your before & after thermals? Any takers?"
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_VII/33.html

Ceiu 8 points· 6 hours ago
"I'd want to know what thickness of washers are "safe" to use before I would even attempt this, as well as how much you can tighten the screws. Do the screws run out of thread without the washers? If so, how close do you get to that same relative position with them?"

level 2 WizzardTPU TechPowerUp / GPU-Z Creator17 points· 5 hours ago
"I used 0.5 mm thick washers"

Iceshot76 4 points· 5 hours ago
"Thanks for the washer thickness feedback. Any details to share on before & after thermals? Stock thermal pad or did you disassemble and apply a different thermal paste? You recall how many turns past snug you turned the screws?
Edit: Oh, you wrote the review on TechPowerup?!"

level 4 WizzardTPU TechPowerUp / GPU-Z Creator2 points· 1 hour ago
"Yeah that's my review

My review work flow is to do all testing, then photos + disassembly, so if I break the card I won't lack results and have tested with the original tim

As mentioned in the review, changing to paste dropped Hotspot by 1-2degrees, adding the washers dropped another 8-9"

 

Yes, but these aren't 5xxx series gpu's we're talking about... so, not really comparable.
While its accurate that in a lot of titles, the 2080 may be faster, the differences won't usually be huge, and the predominant reason for this performance difference lies in the fact that NV paid devs to optimize games for NV proprietary features and hardware in general (which makes it impossible for AMD to fully optimize for those games and close the gap to levels that would render the issue moot - problem is that AMD optimized games may perform better on AMD hardware in turn, but NV will be able to easily optimize for those titles as AMD uses open-source features for games that does the same thing as NV with less strain on the hardware - sans of course real time raytracing).

Apart from that, also bear in mind that AMD usually overvolts their GPU's from factory, which makes them heavily susceptible to further optimizations... such as dropping the power consumption and temperatures, and of course potential for overclocking while you are undervolted at the same time (which at 7nm might potentially turn out a lot better than on GLOFO node).

 

I don't want to talk about driver optimisation because nvidia cripples older gen once new GPUs are released.
Even Nvidia overvolts their GPU from factory as well you can see 95% of the people undervolting using MSI AB for lesser temps and high OC potential along with steady state Frame times.

 

I'm too tired for this

1 - They do not cripple older GPUs
2 - You cannot "undervolt" and also "gain high OC potential". Overclocking is "undervolting" lower clockspeeds in the first place. You can tune the curve to some extent after overclocking, but it cannot really be called an undervolt. On power-limited mobile GPUs, undervolting holds more usefulness, but is unnecessary on the desktop cards.
3 - Even considering what I said on point 2, the curve changes its own position fairly often depending on games and temps and whatever the hell else random crap happens, so it's not like it's even something you could say is set in stone.

 

I'm using Maxwell 2 980M. On Pascal cards I didn't see Crippling drivers rather than their nvidia classical Swiss cheese.
I can't undervolt on the fly on Maxwell 2.
They are slowly throttling Maxwell and older on generic drivers and I'm using j95 driver mods now.

 

1 - My 780Ms never slowed down right up until they died, quite a bit after the launch of Pascal
2 - Maxwell undervolting is impossible because of there being a voltage range observed... without forcing voltage to a constant with vBIOS mods, the voltage range can differ by over 100mV for a single frequency range. This is to say at 1200MHz you could go from 0.98v to 1.1v up and down like a yoyo. Undervolting without first locking voltage (and causing the card to draw excess amounts of power on GM204 and under) would simply cause your cards to crash repeatedly. In fact there's old OBS posts where people were crashing outright from demanding games like the Witcher 3 while trying to livestream... my fix was to tell them to overvolt by 25mV (allowed even on mobile cards) and every single user reported stability after doing so... because the problematic "low" voltage issue was rectified, at the cost of average voltage (and heat, and power draw) rising.
3 - Nvidia is not throttling older cards. Any performance drops you witness are because newer games are using tech older cards cannot calculate as efficiently. Turing does MUCH better at DX12/Vulkan and Async compute than Pascal. AMD does much better at async compute than Pascal. Does this mean if developers start tossing in async compute tech into games 2 months from now that Pascal, or Maxwell (which is far worse than Pascal at async compute) is being "crippled"? No, it means that tech is advancing and they don't age as well. There is a difference.

Nvidia makes cards for "right now". AMD makes cards for "five years from now". AMD cards "age better" because when new tech is introduced years later, they are capable of handling it. Go back and test games of the times... the old cards will perform exactly like the new cards. 780Ti vs 980 vs 1060 in Metro Last Light? 780Ti wins. 780Ti vs 980 vs 1060 in Doom 2016 in Vulkan? 1060 wins. Does it mean the 780Ti was nerfed? No it does not. It is however why I tell people to ignore older Nvidia cards the second newer ones launch unless they get an exceptional deal. 1080Ti for $400? Ok grab it. 1080Ti and 2080 cost roughly the same price? I only see the 2080 as a choice in the matter. It WILL last longer.

Unless you have a lot of proof where new drivers cut your fps heavily in a multitude of older titles in a wide range of newer drivers, then you're simply spreading misinformation based on your own lack of understanding of the subject.

 

My card uses too much voltage at default about 1.075V. Even a minor overvolt 25mV causes it to spike to 80-85C(Ambient temps averaging at 30-38C)
I agree with you on Point 3 and I know that now every feature of games work on older GPUs. Dx12 is a nightmare on Maxwell and older 99% of the times games crashes it just rage quits no error log nothing to pinpoint what caused the game to crash so given a choice of Dx11/12 on Maxwell I'd choose DX11.
Lot of proof? A sample space <10 who plays older games just for fun manages to find that FPS are low somehow even on medium/high settings without any eye candies. That kind of small sample space of users is pretty much insignificant to a majority of users. So, I keep a copy of old drivers when I get these kind of issues so, I use DDU and revert to older versions. I update drivers only when new W10 OS is released so that I've certified driver for W10 XX version.

 

This is not true at all.

Even ancient Kepler, the oldest architecture supported by current drivers, is still benefiting from driver optimizations.

When I compared drivers 3 years apart on Kepler GT 650M SLI, there is a small but measurable and consistent performance increase with the newer driver. Metro: Last Light Redux saw the biggest jump, about 10%.

Same hardware, same clocks, same Windows install, same in-game settings, and the games have not received any patches after 2014, so the difference is solely due to driver optimizations.

368.95 (2016) vs. 417.71 (2019)

Metro 2033 Redux


Metro: Last Light Redux


Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

 

Very good.

 

AMD's Radeon VII Is a Solid Gaming Card, But That's Just the Beginning
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/02/am...lid-gaming-card-but-thats-just-the-beginning/

And this is why I think the $700 is justified (would it be better if the price was lower? Of course, but that's obviously not how AMD sees it).
It utterly smashes the RTX lineup in compute performance, while still giving decent gaming performance at LESS than 300W (not undervolted)... which NV GPU does the same at the same price range?
None.

Compute (and by extension, professional software use) is by FAR more relevant/widespread than real time raytracing considering its used in exactly one game (and even then, raytracing provides minimal visual impact that most people don't even notice for a massive performance loss).

On the power consumption side, even though its rated at 300W, Radeon VII seems to pull less than that... it's actually similar to 2080 in power draw on stock... undervolted it pulls even less.
This is actually a pretty big deal considering how powerful its compute capabilities are in comparison (and how power intensive they are by default).

Mind you, the Radeon VII is not without its flaws... it still has lower ROP's and texture units which sometimes show in games, and its more of a professional GPU than a gaming one, but given that AMD effectively salvaged it from MI50, uses newest commercial technologies, etc...

I mean, am I the only one who's looking at Radeon VII from both gaming and pro angles and not just the gaming aspects that many seem to?

 

That's your ASIC's issue.

And even though I just explained the voltage issue, you're trying to tell me it's wrong. It's not wrong. You either don't get it or are denying that it exists.

Also, where is your proof? You have a sample space but I'm not seeing comparisons. Where's tests on older drivers vs newer ones where the newer ones have notable drops across a fairly wide range of drivers, consistently lower in all the games? I.E. not a once-off issue?

 

The sound of Power!!

AMD Radeon VII (Seven) | Noise and Temperatures | Cooler Performance | Vega 20 7 nm
Microwilli
Published on Feb 7, 2019
Testing the Noise and Temperatures in Furmark and Battlefield V as well as Idle Scenario


Zero939 3 days ago
"Passengers of flight AMD 747 please fasten your seatbelts as we are about ready for takeoff. We are looking at a smooth flight ahead with mild turbulence from a leftover storm. We thank you for flying AMD"

Squating Slav 3 days ago
" @Microwilli Can you see what kind of difference undervolting does to the temps and noise? Like Vega 64 it undervolts very well."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ao43xl/radeon_vii_insanely_overvolted_undervolting/

Microwilli 3 days ago
"my card undervolts to 1V which is quite good. clockspeeds dont change much, about 20-30 MHz more. the gpu temp is higher because the hotspot temperature is lower and the fans ramp up less.. As i said when the drivers arent beta anymore i will do a video about it. It will be in german, but youll see what im doing on screen as well as hear the results ;-)"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ao05xo/radeon_vii_reviews_megathread/

 

Good news!, preview driver was the stability problem, the new publicly available driver HU used for this video was stable.

Not much new from the 12 game review video, more games favoring Nvidia arch drags down the average a few points.

AMD Radeon VII Mega 33 Game Benchmark vs. RTX 2080, GTX 1080 Ti, Vega 64 & More!
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Feb 10, 2019


Pinned by Hardware Unboxed
Hardware Unboxed 14 hours ago
1080p and 4K graphs can be download here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/amd-radeon-vii-24597821

 

Liquid Metal TIM Shaves 5°C Off Radeon VII Junction Temperatures
Techpowerup.com by btarunr Today, 03:45

Replacing the thermal pad between the Radeon VII GPU and its cooler with liquid metal TIM was found to lower the GPU's maximum junction temperature by 5 °C, and a 24 MHz gain in minimum sustained engine clock speed was observed, by German professional overclocker Roman "der8auer" Hartung. AMD uses a strip of highly conductive Hitachi Chemical TC-HM03 thermal pad as the interface material between its reference Radeon VII cooling solution and the "Vega 20" MCM.

 

I wish this card sells well so we can have a great battle for supremacy this upcoming next gen cards.

 

AMD's Radeon Vega VII's got a good start, it sold out on the first day!!

AMD can't sell more than they've made, so I hope AMD kicks production up a notch or two.

R7 will have to do until October...of course the rest of the RX GPU gang are still price competitive in their respective classes, so there's still plenty of good AMD GPU's for sale.

 

Yes its my ASIC value.
Where did I deny the voltage issue, I said my card can't overvolt just because of temp limit. I found a way to keep the dGPU clocks very low using TrayPwrdown which forces the dGPU to be in lowest clock possible.
I do have many screenshots but which driver was used exactly, I don't know and even then those older drivers refuse to install on RS4 and above. Let me check.

 

Went out to buy a 1TB SSD, came home with this instead.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/apemt3/went_out_to_buy_a_1tb_ssd_came_home_with_this/

It looks like there's still some on the shelves out there, no armchair shopping online for now, so go out there and find'em.

 

The Complete AMD Radeon VII Tech Briefing + Q&A Session
Tech ARP
Published on Feb 11, 2019
Here is the official AMD Radeon VII tech briefing + Q&A session!
Full details: https://www.techarp.com/computer/amd-radeon-vii-tech-briefing/


Radeon VII Undervolting and Noise Test
Game Tech Reviews
Published on Feb 10, 2019
This is how to make the Radeon VII quiet.
Default fan profile hits near 3000 rpm.
With this custom fan profile in wattman we are now running at around 2200rpm. The resulting noise profile is similar to a stock GTX 1080 FE making it relatively quiet and easy to live with.

 

AMD Ryzen Gets 35% Performance Increase in WoW's Latest Patch

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-wow-patch-performance,38586.html

Nice. Looks like devs still stand to give ryzen decent performance improvements with proper optimization.
Makes you wonder just how many other games and industry software would benefit from similar improvements on ryzen and how it might change the overall picture.

 

Radeon VII available on AMD.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/apgnho/radeon_vii_available_on_amdcom/
https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-vii


Google translated from German...

Radeon VII gets Radeon Pro software support
Published on: Monday, February 11, 2019 at 15:00 by Andreas Schilling
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.p...kommt-radeon-pro-software-unterstuetzung.html

"AMD has released the first 2019 version of its Radeon Pro software driver. As in the previous version, there will also be a new driver every quarter this year. The driver with the somewhat bulky name Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition 19.Q1 should be between 8 and 33% faster than the Enterprise Edition 18.Q1. More interesting would of course be compared to the Enterprise Edition 18.Q4, because usually the most recent driver is likely to be used and not one year old.

Not only in terms of performance AMD sees itself against the competition from NVIDIA by the software at an advantage, but also by the widest possible support of the driver.At the start, 320 applications have already been certified.

AMD Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition 19.Q1

The image boost technology is also intended to help ensure that the display quality is higher in conjunction with VR applications.

AMD Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition 19.Q1

In addition, AMD announces that the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition 19.Q1 or later release will also support the Radeon VII (test) . In the first generation of Vega, only the Frontier editions were supported by the Radeon Pro software, while the Radeon RX Vega models had to do without the Enterprise driver. However, it is unknown what exactly the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition will be released for the Radeon VII.

The Radeon VII could well be worthwhile as an acquisition in certain areas due to their higher FP64 computing power. The comparison to the Radeon RX Vega 64 shows this quite clearly.

Computing power of the Radeon VII

The Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Edition 19.Q1 can now be downloaded directly from AMD."

AMD Radeon VII will get Radeon Pro Software support soon
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aph39l/amd_radeon_vii_will_get_radeon_pro_software/