During today’s CES 2019 keynote, Lisa Su’s presented the Radeon VII, the successor to AMD’s current top performing video card, the Vega 64. The new card is aptly named Radeon VII, as reference to it being produced on a 7 nm process.
Performance
The process shrink gives the new Vega Second Generation headroom in multiple dimensions. Not only does it provide twice the memory bandwidth, the memory is also doubled. The maximum clock speed is increased to 1.8 GHz, which results in 25% more performance, all while using the same energy as it’s predecessor. The Radeon VII graphics chip is fitted with 60 compute units and 3840 stream processors.
This all is needed to provide high frame rates and butter smooth performance while gaming on ultra-wide 1440p and 4K monitors. Compared to the Radeon Vega 64, the Radeon VII performs on average 29% better in gaming benchmarks.
Graphic professionals and content creators will be glad to hear that the new card performs on average 36% better in content creation applications.
In the keynote, Lisa Su compares the card quite favourably to the Nvidia RTX 2080 and the Radeon Vega 64.
Game benchmarks
| AMD Radeon VII | AMD Radeon Vega 64 | Nvidia RTX 2080 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strange Brigade | 87 fps | 61 fps | 73 fps |
| Battlefield V | 62 fps | 51 fps | 61 fps |
| Farcry 5 | 62 fps | - | 61 fps |
Pedigree
The new gpu is a direct descendant of the Vega series as introduced during CES 2017. AMD therefore calls it the second generation Vega architecture.
The specifications also show a remarkable resemblance with the Radeon Instinct MI50: it has the same amount of memory, number of compute units and number of streaming processors. It is safe to assume that the Radeon VII is the consumer version of the Radeon Instinct MI50.
Radeon VII specifications
| AMD Radeon VII | AMD Radeon Vega 64 | Nvidia RTX 2080 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memory | 16 GB hbm2 | 8 GB hbm2 | 8 GB gdr6 |
| Bandwidth | 1024 GB/s | 484 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
| Compute Units | 60 | 64 | |
| Streaming Processors | 3840 | 4096 | 2944 Cuda cores |
| Clock Speed (boost) | 1800 MHz | 1247 MHz (1546 MHz) | 1515 MHz (1710 MHz) |
| TDP | currently unknown | 295 Watt | 215 Watt |
| Adaptive sync | FreeSync 2 HDR | FreeSync | G-Sync |
| Bus interface (bandwidth) | currently unknown | PCIe 3.0 x16 (15.75 GB/s) | PCIe 3.0 x16 (15.75 GB/s) |
| Release price | $ 699 (01/2019) | $ 499 (01/2017) | $ 699 (09/2018) |
Bundled games
The card will be available from February 7, for a suggested price of $ 699. To spice up the deal, AMD also offers three complimentary games with the card: Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5 and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 .