Today is the big day; the AMD Radeon VII has officially arrived in the international market, and India is among the chosen countries where we can buy the Sapphire model at a price of Rs 54,990, although it is true that, at the moment, it is only possible to obtain it in versions that follow the reference design.
The AMD Radeon VII represents the latest twist Sunnyvale’s signature that has given it, the GCN (Graphics Core Next) 5.0 architecture, used in the Radeon RX Vega 56 and 64 graphics cards, and is the prelude to Navi, a graphical architecture of next generation that will mark the definitive abandonment of GCN. This is very important because as our usual readers know, the GCN architecture has reached its peak and has insurmountable limitations.
Precisely, the AMD Radeon VII is an example of how to re-squeeze an architecture that seemed to give no more than itself. This graphics card makes the leap from the 14 nm process seen in the Radeon RX Vega 56 and 64 to the 7 nm process, an important advance that, together with small touches at the silicon level, has allowed AMD to give an important boost to a performance by maintaining a consumption that places it at almost the same level as the Radeon RX Vega 64.
AMD Radeon VII: Specifications and performance
No doubt, the AMD Radeon VII is a powerful graphics card since it mounts a GPU whose architecture has reached the point of depletion and relies, however, on the leading process of 7 nm and high-performance HBM2 memory.
Indeed, there is a certain decompensation if we put in relation the real potential of the GPU with the advanced of its production process and its graphics memory, but these two elements have been fundamental so that AMD can improve the performance of the GCN 5.0 architecture until arriving a level so high that it can, in theory, compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080.
We say in theory because, as we will see below, it is a half-truth that has many nuances. Before entering to see the performance tests, we will remember the final specifications of the AMD Radeon VII:
- GCN architecture (second generation Vega) in the process of 7 nm.
- 3.840 shaders to a maximum of 1.8 GHz.
- 240 units of texturing.
- 64 units.
- 4,096 bits.
- 16 GB of HBM2 memory with a total bandwidth of 1 TB / s.
- 13.8 Power TFLOPs.
- TDP of 295 watts.
- Price: 54,990. It includes three games: Resident Evil 2 Remake, The Divison 2, and Devil May Cry 5.
In general, it is similar to a Radeon RX Vega 64 with a small clipping of shaders, a significant increase in frequencies, and twice the HBM2 memory. This last one is translated, in addition, in a new bus of 4,096 bits, which drastically increases the available bandwidth. In terms of performance, AMD said it was competing with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080, and indeed it is, although it might be more correct to say that it does in some cases, and not in all since it can be at higher levels, and also inferiors, depending on the game used.
