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Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards are all over the place you look, whether or not it’s in desktops or laptops. Ray tracing controversies apart, they’re highly effective cards. But now, AMD has an alternative solution!
The AMD Radeon VII is a real successor to the Vega 64 in more methods than one. It’s constructed on the second-generation, 7nm Vega architecture, and it’s the first high-end graphics card AMD has launched since its Vega predecessor. There’s no doubt that it’s more highly effective than that card, however, how does it compare with its primary competitors?
AMD Radeon VII versus the Nvidia RTX 2080
Table of Contents
Performance
AMD’s Radeon VII is perhaps a successor Vega architecture, however, its design is sort of totally different than its predecessor. The 7nm course of makes the GPU itself smaller and facilitates a shrinking of the entire die from 495mm² on the Vega 64, to 331mm² with the Radeon VII. It’s fitted with 4 stacks of second-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM2) and runs at a lot higher frequency than the first-generation Vega cards.
Nvidia’s RTX 2080 is constructed on Nvidia’s new Turing structure and is paired with GDDR6 reminiscence that runs at the next velocity than the 10-Series Pascal graphics playing cards. Turing playing cards enhance performance over their last-generation counterparts by growing the variety of CUDA cores and reminiscence velocity. Clock speeds stay a lot the identical when operating at inventory, although automated 20-Series overclocking does help performance.
Nvidia and AMD use totally different designs of their graphics playing cards manufacturing, so the specs aren’t essentially instantly comparable, however right here they’re nonetheless:
| AMD Radeon VII | Nvidia RTX 2080 | |
| Architecture | Vega 20 | Turing |
| Node course of | 7nm | 12nm |
| Die measurement | 331mm² | 545mm² |
| Transistor rely | 13.2 billion | 13.6 billion |
| Processor cores | 3,840 stream processors | 2,944 CUDA cores |
| Base clock | 1,400MHz | 1,515MHz |
| Boost clock | 1,750MHz | 1,710MHz |
| Memory | 16GB HBM2 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory interface | 4,096-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,000GB/s | 448GB/s |
| TDP | 300w | 250w |
| Price | $700 | $700 |
To see how these playing cards carried out face to face, we fitted them to our gaming check bench that’s operating an AMD Threadipper 1950X (in-game mode) and 32GB of reminiscence. In every case, we ran the newest drivers that have been obtainable on the time, although do needless to say the Radeon VII drivers are technically nonetheless pre-release variations.
In 3DMark Fire Strike, the outcomes have been spectacular for each cards, however noticeably more so for Radeon VII. AMD’s new card was anticipated to carry out higher towards Nvidia’s GPUs at greater resolutions, however within the base Fire Strike check, it did not solely beat out the RTX 2080 however carried out comparatively nicely to the RTX 2080 Ti, a lot more costly GPU.
In gaming benchmarks we noticed related outcomes at 1080P, with the Radeon VII delivering body charges in Battlefield V at each medium and Ultra settings nicely above 100 FPS, beating out not solely the RTX 2080 however the 2080 Ti as nicely. The always-taxing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided proved more difficult, however, the Radeon VII nonetheless pulled forward of the 2080 and 2080 Ti with a median 90 FPS when on High, and 86 FPS on Ultra settings.
At 1440p, the 2080 Ti takes its rightful place on the head of the pack, however, Radeon VII takes a good larger lead over the 2080 and makes its predecessor, the Vega 64, look very very like the last-generation card it’s.
When we improve resolutions to 4K, the entire playing cards wrestle to take care of 60+ FPS in Battlefield V. Only the 2080 Ti manages it in Deus: Ex at Medium settings, however, the Radeon VII stays out in front of 2080 in all circumstances.
Features
As highly effective as Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards are, Nvidia spent a lot of the launch occasion speaking about new options slightly than performance. Ray tracing and deep studying tremendous sampling (DLSS) — made doable with onboard RT and Tensor cores, respectively — have been huge information. While in early 2020 they nonetheless weren’t supported by many games, the numbers proceed to develop. In some circumstances, they’ll have a dramatic impression on games.
Ray tracing makes sure games look prettier, albeit with a giant performance cost, and DLSS exhibits indicators of constructing games each looks higher and run sooner.
Although AMD does have functioning ray tracing within the type of Radeon Rays utilizing the Vulkan API, that’s not a technology that’s carried out in any games at the moment, and AMD hasn’t made it viable with the Radeon VII. Nor is DLSS obtainable, although AMD has steered that its playing cards’ basic compute items are able to one thing related. Furthermore, it might even implement it sooner or later utilizing Microsoft’s open commonplace, DirectML.
Both playing cards help totally different body syncing applied sciences out of the field. Nvidia’s RTX 2080 helps its bespoke G-Sync which is just obtainable on suitable screens. AMD’s Radeon VII helps FreeSync and FreeSync 2, that are solely obtainable on suitable screens, although they do are typically cheaper and more plentiful than their G-Sync counterparts.
Both cards help the total gamut of gaming APIs together with DirectX11, DirectX12, OpenGL, and Vulkan.
Nvidia’s RTX 2080 additionally helps SLI through NVLink for a number of GPUs. AMD has mentioned that it doesn’t plan to supply its conventional multi-GPU technology, Crossfire, with the Radeon VII. However, each Vulkan and DirectX12 have help for a number of graphics playing cards as an open commonplace referred to as MGPU, so it might be that if supported by games (like Strange Brigade), two Radeon VII cards could possibly be run in tandem utilizing that technology.
Compatibility & Price
Nvidia’s RTX 2080 launched with a Founders Edition priced at $800 however has since seen the discharge of more inexpensive third-party alternate options. Today these vary in worth from $700 to around $900 relying on the cooling choices and aftermarket options. These can usually be discovered with a free game or two.
The AMD Radeon VII launched with a price of $700, however, it’s exhausting to find anywhere at anything near affordable. AMD initially provided three free games — Resident Evil 2, The Division 2, and Devil May Cry 5 — as a part of its Raise the Game promotion, however that has concluded.
When it involves compatibility, you’ll desire a motherboard that helps PCI-Express 3.zero x16 to take full benefit of each cards. If your system has a PCI-Express 2.zero x16 or PCI-Express 3.zero x8 slot as an alternative, each card ought to nonetheless work, however you might even see a small performance lapse as a consequence of bottlenecking.
Power necessities for these cards are moderately steep, however, the Nvidia GPU isn’t fairly as demanding. It requires around 250 watts of power and cooling potential when in use, whereas the Radeon VII is rated at 300 watts. You need no less than a 600-watt PSU in case you’re operating the RTX 2080 or a 700-watt for the Radeon VII.
AMD raises its game
It’s been a very long time since AMD legitimately competed with Nvidia on the prime finish of the graphics card market. The Radeon VII isn’t fairly sturdy sufficient to be a direct competitor for the likes of the RTX 2080 Ti, particularly at greater resolutions, nevertheless, it’s not far off that. At a $700 asking worth it’s costed competitively sufficient with the RTX 2080 that Nvidia raised its game in 2019 to remain forward. We’ll get to that in a second.
Our testing isn’t exhaustive, nevertheless, it means that the Radeon VII can be a more capable card than the RTX 2080 in a variety of games and at most resolutions and element settings. It could also be a bit of more power-hungry, however, the newly shrunk GPU and the huge quantity of high-speed reminiscence make it probably the most thrilling graphics cards obtainable at the moment.
Although AMD hasn’t made it official, studies claimed in August 2019, that the Radeon VII had already reached its finish of life. AMD’s “Big Navi” GPU constructed on the 7nm+ course of node and its RDNA 2 structure will probably take its place when it arrives later this yr. As it stands now, the present Radeon VII inventory is minimal at greatest, now largely showing in desktop configurations for workstation machines.
Nvidia strikes again
Not content material with its RTX 20-Series household and the cool new options it dropped at PC gaming, Nvidia launched its RTX 20-Series SUPER cards in July 2019. The firm mentioned these cards would improve performance by as much as 25% over the non-SUPER cards because of enhancements to the Turing structure. The new household consists of the RTX 2060 SUPER, the RTX 2070 SUPER, and the RTX 2080 SUPER.
But Nvidia’s onslaught doesn’t cease there. Nvidia simply revealed its next-generation Ampere GPU structure, although the primary implementations will reside in chips for servers and workstations together with the DGX A100 for A.I.-based workloads. Nvidia’s RTX 30-Series based mostly on consumer-level Ampere GPUs isn’t anticipated to reach till later this yr.
That all mentioned, we’re anxious to see how the RTX 3080 and the Radeon VII successor will duke it out when it comes to performance and pricing.
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