Gaming graphics card giant AMD recently revealed their latest GPU, the Radeon VII, the world’s first-ever 7nm GPU that seeks to jostle fiercely with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series GPUs for the graphics card slot in PC gamers’ desktops.
The Radeon VII builds on the architecture on the Vega series, with the 2017 RX Vega 64 being the last GPU made by AMD. The VII improves on the memory (2x) and the memory bandwidth (2.1x) upon its predecessor. The Radeon VII also provides a welcome transition from Standard Definition Resolution (SDR) to High Definition Resolution (HDR) graphics at 1080p, ultrawide 1440p and 4K, which allows you to play games such as Battlefield V and the upcoming Anthem at photorealistic quality.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the terminology, “nm” stands for nanometer, and in this case the size of the transistors in a processor. The smaller they are, the less energy is consumed and the more you can fit on to a processor core, enabling more performance, lower power, and lower temperatures. Basically, this allows the PC’s graphics to perform at optimal levels, without having to compromise on power consumption and motherboard space.
Up until now, we’ve enjoyed quality graphics performance with 14nm GPUs, which is already pretty powerful all things considered. By this rubric, the Radeon VII stands to one-up its graphics card competitors with a smaller, more efficient and powerful processor.
Other key features of the Radeon VII include:
- 60 compute units, 3,840 stream processors and clocks up to 1,750 MHz drive high-performance gaming and hyper-realistic images.
- 16GB HMB2 with 1 TB/s memory bandwidth and a 4,096-bit memory interface enable ultra-high resolution textures, hyper-realistic settings and life-like characters.
- Exceptional DirectX 12 and Vulkan performance, including improvements of 35% in Battlefield V and 42% in Strange Brigade compared to the Radeon Vega 64.
- Performance to drive 3D rendering, video editing applications and next-generation compute workloads, including up to 27% higher performance in Blender, up to 27% higher performance in DaVinci Resolve 15 and up to 62% higher performance in the LuxMark benchmark compared to Radeon Vega 64.
- As the world’s largest ecosystem of adaptive sync gaming display technology, Radeon FreeSync offers more than 550 supported displays, delivering smooth, stutter-free gaming at every price point. Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR offers more than 2X better brightness and colour volume compared to sRGB.
The Radeon VII is now available on AMD’s official website for MSRP US$699. AMD is also rolling out a Raise the Game Fully Loaded bundle, which will provide gamers who purchase a Radeon VII or Radeon VII-powered PC complimentary PC versions of Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5 and The Division 2, three of 2019’s most anticipated titles.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.