Gadgetory

what's up guys and welcome to the long-awaited review of the new AMD Radeon 7 graphics card which AMD sort of announced the beginning of the year and now we actually have it in our hands to test now what I've been doing is running a bunch of tests on the our TX 2080 because the question that you might have in your head right now is Paul I've got about 700 bucks to spend on a graphics card should I buy the 2080 or the new Radeon 7 this video should help you decide today's video sponsored by Squarespace click the sponsor link in the description to save 10% off of your Squarespace order or wait till the end of the video to find out more this is an interesting graphics card it was somewhat unexpected AMD was expected to announce a bunch of 7 nanometer stuff at CES this year back in January which they did but the next-generation architecture for the GPUs that they're working on is called Navi this is not a Navi based GPU it is still using the Vega architecture but they've shrunk it down to the 7 nanometer manufacturing process and what that has done is provided them a lot more space as you can see the previous diarrhea for a Vega 64 was 495 square millimeters versus the updated Radeon 7 GP u which is 331 square millimeters that's provided them a lot more space to put four stacks of HP m2 memory with 4 gigs on each stack giving you a total of 16 gigs of HP and 2 memory on this graphics card that's a lot and actually significantly more that you can get on any consumer level graphics card whether you're talking about HP M memory or gddr5 or 5 X or 6 you might even argue that it's too much memory for what today's games actually use but AMD has done their best to make a point that games are using more and more memory everyday and high resolutions use more memory so you might actually be able to make use of all that HP m - that's and they're sort of pitching this as a cross over production content creation card so the HBM to memory might help you there as well depending on the software they use aim D also says that they have added more thermal sensors integrated into the GPU die itself so you can actually get more accurate temperature reading in fact they're basing their performance boost functions like automatic throttling of the GPU frequency on the edge temperature versus the junction temperature this also allows them to throttle the fan speed so according to their measurements they got about 2% more performance by measuring the edge temperature although the junction temperatures they're listing here are us significantly higher now I have already gotten some feedback from some other people I know who have tested this card the temperatures might potentially be an issue depending on the card we're still waiting for more feedback on that but that's gonna be one of the things I'm testing immediately when I install this here is what kind of temps we're getting out of this card as for specs the Radeon seven uses the Vega 20 GPU that's based on the seven nanometer manufacturing process as opposed to 14 nanometer has thirteen point two billion transistors in there but a shrunk down die size at 331 square millimeters you're gonna get 60 compute units compared to 64 that you get with the Radeon Vegas 64 so even though that is down and you're gonna get fewer stream processors as a result 3840 versus 4096 you get much higher frequency in fact the boost GPU clock is at 1750 peak should be about 1800 megahertz out of the box and that's a good 200 megahertz plus frequency boost over the Vegas 64 this also means your GPU compute performance is up to fourteen point two teraflops you get 64 ops you get 16 gigs of HBM to memory with the total memory bandwidth of one terabyte per second and a 4096 bit memory interface board powers only up five watts to 300 Watts versus two Vega 64 295 I didn't do an unboxing video of this when the unboxing embargo lifted earlier this week but I already kind of showed you guys this when I saw it at CES for the first time but a quick once-over of the card shows you that it is a very minimal design very simple it has a squared off metal shroud with a nice bevel around the edge that shows a little bit of an accents although you have sort of a powder coating over most of it so it's not too reflective 392 millimeter fans at the middle and a very substantial thin stack array underneath them and the fin stack actually raises up on the sides here so when the fans are spinning it's pushing air out across those as well as down and over them there been some tear downs done on this card already there is a graphite pad between the GPU itself and the HBM 2 stacks and the cooling solution it uses 10 millimeter flattened copper heat pipes to help move some of the heat away from the hotter areas of the card and it has dual 8 pin PCI Express graphics power connectors also of note is that this card is not crossfire compatible so you can't connect two of them up at the same time for crossfire which is kind of sad because I would have been sort of interested to see what two of these did versus like a 20 atti also missing is a built-in bios which which AMD has done on reference design cards in the past so that's kind said that it's not there but you can still of course go in and adjust everything using third-party software or the AMD software as well the shroud itself is also pretty easy to remove especially if you compare it to the founders edition cards from Nvidia and finally for display outs you have three full-sized DisplayPort as well as an HDMI 2.0 also of note is that those are all in a single row which means if you did want a water cool this you could get it down to a single slot solution so I have waited long enough I am ready to install this in the test bed and see how it compares to the r-tx 2080 that's the founders Edition by the way which I'm comparing it to because it is literally the only r-tx 2080 that I have that's what we're going with stock out of the box frequencies for both cards the processor I'm using is the 9900 k-8 core 16 thread processor from Intel which is running at 4.8 gigahertz the motherboard is the asrock z3 90 tight sheet ultimate for memory I have 16 gigs to a cake sticks of g.skill Trident Zr GB memory that's running at 3200 speed casa latency 14 for my main operating system drive I have a Samsung 970 pro 512 gig nvme SSD and the CPU is being cooled by a cooler master master liquid 360 are 316 millimeter radiator all in one liquid cooler for some extra game storage I have a SanDisk Ultra - one terabyte SATA SSD everything is housed in this lammle PC 0:11 air dynamic chassis the Devourer Edition in whites is a 650 watt EVGA 80 plus gold rated power supply powering everything and I'm running everything in this test system as you see it here with the side panels on and everything in order to get temperature measurements with all that said though here are the benchmarks actually let me install this version so first off let's run through a set of productivity tests and these were run with spec view perf 13 this is a popular CAD and cam visualization and digital content creation test suite that uses applications for that type of thing starting with 3d studio max this is version 6 and it's running at 1920 by 1080 here the r-tx 2080 starts out with a pretty commanding lead and a score of 2 it and thirty seven point one fps remember higher is better here the Radeon seven comes in with 160 8.3 fps when rendering this test next up is the Katia test oh five and here I bumped the resolution to 4k or 3840 by 2160 here the Radeon seven healthy lead with a score of 150 9.5 fps and that outpaces the r-tx 2080s score of 86 point to the next test in the suite is creo 2 this is also running at 4k 3840 by 2160 and here the r-tx 2080 again takes the lead without and 64 FPS average framerate the Radeon 7 meanwhile has a score of a hundred and 5.3 FPS and the final test I ran from the sweetest Maya o 5 again running at 4k 3840 by 2160 resolution and here we are a little bit closer between the two cards but the RT X 28 II took the lead with 180 point 8 fps compared to the Radeon 7s 159 point eight so the Radeon 7 was only able to win one out of these four tests moving over to gaming tests and I'm starting out with several synthetic tests from the 3d mark Suites starting with 3d mark firestrike ultra which is a 4k test DirectX 11 and here the Radeon 7 with a score of six thousand six hundred and ninety seven overall and that's due to the graphics score of six thousand seven hundred and ninety-two compared to the RT X twenty eighty founders additions to score of six thousand two hundred and forty five next up is 3d mark time spy extreme which is also a synthetic test this time using DirectX 12 also running at 4k the r-tx twenty eighty wins this time with the score of five thousand one hundred and fifty five that's beating out the Radeon seven square 4376 with a graphics score 4268 that is nine hundred points behind the r-tx twenty eighty founders Edition score can't quite tell why it's not performing as well in the DirectX 12 test I was hoping to do some ray tracing testing with the 3d mark portrayal tests but unfortunately the drivers I have for the Radeon seven aren't currently compatible so it would not run I'll have to save that for a future date but I was able to run VR Mark blue room and there we got a score of three thousand five hundred and thirty seven for the r-tx twenty eighty founders Edition that is again a healthy nine hundred point lead over the Radeon seven with a score of twenty six thirty seven and a frame rate at fifty seven point five so when it comes to VR and this test at least the r-tx twenty eighty has a healthy advantage moving into some actual games that I'm testing at 4k 3840 by 2160 as well as 2560 by 1440 to get a couple scores for each test ashes of the singularity escalation which is a directx12 test the r-tx 2080 founders edition wins once again with a score of 63 point two average frames per seconds the Radeon seven came in with fifty three point three average FPS when we look at 2560 by 1440 scores the founders Edition wins once again was sixty nine point eight a verge frames per second compared to the Radeon 760 point seven next up is shadow of the Tomb Raider this is also running in DirectX 12 mode at 3840 by 2160 4k the twenty eighty founders Edition wins just by a little bit with forty seven FPS versus the Radeon seven to forty five fps and if we move it over to 2560 by 1440 the r-tx twenty eighty ones yet again the score of 93 average FPS compared to the Radeon sevens eighty two we have disappointing results for the Radeon seven once again in GTA 5 @ 4k 3840 by 2160 it scored 66 average FPS compared to the RT x twenty eighty s 76 average FPS and at 2560 by 1440 the Radeon seven manage 118 average FPS compared to the RT x 28 es 139 the Radeon seven did manage a win when it comes to battlefield 5 I am running this in DirectX 11 mode because I was having some difficulties with DirectX 12 and I needed to get two benchmarks runs so at 3840 by 2160 the radiance having got 69 average frames per second that's about 5 fps more than the r-tx 2080s 64 and then again at 2560 by 1440 we had a hundred and seventeen average FPS for the Radeon 7 computer the r-tx 2080s 107 and my final test here is overwatch at 4k 3840 by 2160 and this is at epic settings we have 93 average FPS for the RT x 2080 that is more than the Radeon 7s a ver egde fps of 87 and then finally at 2560 by 1440 we have 175 FPS average for the archie x 2080 165 average FPS for the Radeon 7 one during what frequencies these cards are running at the Radeon seven has a base clock of 1400 a listed boost clock of 1750 I found that on average it was running at about 1800 or 1807 and it peaked at 1823 maximum frequency I didn't dive into overclocking for today unfortunately I didn't have time for that but that is compared to the RT x 2080s frequencies of 1515 base 18 boost about 1905 on average and 1980 peak temperatures are what we need to talk about next and what the Radeon seven are weird in the reviewers guide they list that there are a bunch of different thermal sensors on the actual die and they have they have what they're calling edge sensor temperature reading and Junction sensor temperature reading and the junction sensor temperature reading is much higher it also seems to be what most third-party apps are picking up so looking at hardware info 64 that I use pretty often I was seeing GPU temperatures that would go up to 95 and then 100 and then all the way up to like 111 maximum which is way too high for a GPU temperature to be however if we're talking about a GPU temperature that were not used to seeing then maybe that is okay if you look at the edge temperature and that is what the Radeon watt man utility was reading and showing most prominently at least those temperatures were much more reasonable I was heading around 65 to 70 degrees Celsius on average maybe peaking at 72 or 74 degrees at max went under a heavy sustained load now since we don't have any other seven nanometer GPUs to compare this to we probably need to wait for third-party monitoring application developers to sort of catch up to the technology that's built into the Radeon seven for now I'm going to set that aside I'm hoping that's that high of temperature that we're seeing isn't actually like comparable to an old-school GPU temperature I think that's just something else we need to take into account now but that remains to be seen the one thing that I am able to test is just what it actually sounds like when under peak load unfortunately it sounds like this this is my informal sound test it's just running time spy ultra right now I will tell you that is loud it's a bit louder than I would want it to be especially for a card with a massive cooling solution and compare that to this when there is no load on the GPU so unfortunately when compared to the founders Edition r-tx 2080 and especially when compared to aftermarket coolers that I have tested this is a loud card when under load that could probably be mitigated by adjusting some settings somewhere unfortunately the follow up to that is that there are some bugs going on with the software and the Trivers so far I encountered a few different issues including the game freezing entirely while trying to test shadow of the Tomb Raider I was able to get it to unfreeze and sort of restart the test but then it would happen again I was finally able to get it to work by closing down wat man but then I didn't have monitoring going on in the background so that's not good I also had a situation and overwatch where everything just kind of turned blue I have no explanation for that I didn't really dive into it but it ended when I closed the game and then my final complaint I guess would also be going back to wot man and that there are different temperature readings there's supposed to be a chart across the top that you can scroll over to sort of see your history and what frequencies were there but that wasn't updating at all and then there's different temperatures so you can see the junction temperature and the normal GPU temperature but then further down there's another listing for the junction temperature and the GPU temperature and that's not the same as what it says up above so the software definitely still needs some work as well here so in closing you might be thinking to yourself well it's not quite as fast as the RT X 2080 for the most part but it seems like it's cheaper to write it's only 700 bucks compared to the founders Edition RT X 2080 which is $800 however there are RT X 2080s third-party add-in board and manufacturer designs for it which are selling and available right now for 700 bucks so this really should be an equal comparison of two GPUs at the same price and unfortunately the Radeon 7 just isn't stacking up to what the RT X 2080 is currently able to offer when it comes to both frame rates as well as noise add to that that Nvidia has recently opened the floodgates for free sync monitors that can work with g-sync GPUs and you also lose the former advantage that Radeon cards have that you could pair it up with a less expensive free sync monitor that is no longer the case because those free sync monitors not also working with Nvidia graphics cards so I think the Radeon 7 is gonna remain kind of a niche product for people who really like Radeon products I suppose and I think there are going to be some edge cases some specific use cases that actually make use of tons of video memory that it will be useful for when it comes to the production side of things but since those cases are kind of more niche and more specific it's going to be up to you to decide if it works for you if it happens to be better at the certain games that you want to play or if those specific applications that you want to use speaking of applications you might want to use I have been using Squarespace recently actually for the past few years to power my store Paul's Hardware Nets and you guys should also try out Squarespace if you want to put together a website I have a link in the video's description and you should check that out Squarespace basically helps you do the internet better by helping you set up a website they have templates to help you get started with responsive designs so you can get website looking good whether it's on a cell phone or a desktop or any other device so whether you need a website for your business or for a hobby or for anything that you might want to create a website for Squarespace is good for creating that website they have 24/7 support via live chat and email and they have commerce functions available so you can integrate products to sell and set up a store just like mine at pulse hardware net especially if you have super-sweet merch to sell like I do so click the sponsor link in the description or go to Squarespace comm slash Paul's hardware you will get 10% off of your first purchase and a big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring my youtube channel thank you guys also for watching this video I hope you've enjoyed it and learned a little bit more about the Radeon seven disciplines for NVIDIA when it comes to the high end graphics card space really would have been cool if they had included crossfire though like a 2-way set situation with one of these might have actually been somewhat interesting that's all the time I got for now though guys hit the thumbs up button on your way out and we'll see you in the next video