Radeon VII Review – Should you get this or the RTX 2080?

AMD announced the Radeon VII back at CES 2019 in January, and just released it last week. It’s the first graphics card built on a 7nm manufacturing process with AMD’s second-gen Vega architecture, and is the successor to the RX Vega 64 released back in 2017.

Pricing & Availability

The Radeon VII is priced at $699 USD, sitting right between the RTX 2070’s $599 and RTX 2080’s $799 MSRP. In India, the launch pricing of this GPU is 54,990 INR.

UPDATE – The pricing for the Radeon VII in India seems to be around 65,000 INR instead of 54,990 INR, as per some of the listings appearing on the websites mentioned below.

The GPU is available many retailers like Newegg and Amazon in the US. In India, you’ll be able to find it through retailers like VedantComputers,  MDComputers, PrimeABGB, and Amazon India.

Disclosure – Some of the buying links mentioned are affiliate links, meaning that at no extra cost, a percentage of the sale goes towards supporting us.

There’s limited availability for this GPU at launch, so if you really want to get your hands on the Radeon VII, it’s best to wait. NVIDIA’s RTX 20 Series GPUs also suffered from supply issues and other problems at launch, but the stocks and prices are quite stable now.

The RTX 2080 is also priced closely at around $700, if you look around enough. So which one should you get? You’ll find out in this review.

The Radeon VII also includes a game bundle, which gets you $180 worth of free games included with every eligible purchase. More information on AMD’s website.

World’s first 7nm GPU, but with no fancy ray-tracing tech

The Radeon VII is the world’s first GPU built on an incredibly efficient 7nm process, with 16GBs of HBM2 Memory. With its $699 MSRP, it competes with NVIDIA’s high end RTX 2070 & RTX 2080 GPUs. These RTX 20 Series GPUs feature real-time ray-tracing, DLSS, AI-enhanced graphics, and other new tech powered by the Turing architecture.

AMD’s Radeon VII doesn’t feature any of this fancy new tech. But does that really make a difference? At this point of time, not really.

A story I wrote earlier (NVIDIA stocks down by 50% – Is RTX a failure?) emphasized on how a plethora of issues took place with the launch of NVIDIA’s RTX 20 Series GPUs (which were later fixed), and how the new ray-tracing & AI technologies introduced are big advancements in the industry, but they’ll take time to become mainstream in AAA titles.

Ray-tracing is a great feature, but since it isn’t mainstream yet, it’s not that important of a feature to consider when buying a new GPU.

Performance Review & Comparison

Let’s get into benchmarks. The graph below shows the average performance on the latest games, comparing the GPU to the competition.

The 4K Performance of the Radeon VII is pretty solid, but still seems to be falling behind the RTX 2080. It’s very capable of handling 4K Gaming, but in some titles you’ll have to turn the settings down a notch if you’re looking to hit 60+ FPS consistently. 

The card handles 1440p Gaming with ease, hitting more than 90 FPS on average at Ultra Settings. As for 1080p Gaming, it handles everything with total breeze, as is the case with every high-end GPU.

If you’re into gaming at higher refresh rates, the Radeon VII is capable of outputting more than 120FPS at 1080p Ultra Settings and same goes for 1440p as long as you’re willing to turn down the settings to High/Very High.

As for power consumption, the Radeon VII consumes around 300W at peak loads, while the RTX 2080 maxes out around 230W. That being said, the Radeon VII does feature 16GBs of HBM2 Memory, which is more powerful than the RTX 2080’s 8GB GDDR6 Memory, and even beats out the more expensive RTX 2080 Ti’s 11GB GDDR6 Memory.

AMD’s intentions of making the Radeon VII an all-rounder card

The Radeon VII excels at other workloads like video editing & 3D rendering, making it a great graphics card for many creators & enthusiasts. Graphics cards aren’t just used for gaming, and many of the Radeon VII’s capabilities are highly important for certain people.

Seems like AMD is targeting multiple markets with the Radeon VII. But until AMD fixes these launch issues, it’s hard to recommend this card to gamers. Till then, the RTX 2080 is the one to get.