I am no nvidia fan BUT what does Radeon VII really bring to the table.
Same performance as 2080 BUT nothing new, really only upp the memory to 16GB.
Prices of the 2080 will be just about the same as Radeon VII at release.
At same price what would you choose, RTX 2080 with RayTracing, DLSS and AI
OR
Radeon VII, revamped old VEGA with really nothing new, only 5GB more memory
In games with DLSS the 2080 will make the Radeon VII suck it's tailpipe with 25-35% higher frame rates.
Also if Radeon VII even come close to affecting the 2080 sales nvidia will instantly drop the price to counter.
Really do not see an upside for AMD in this battle at the moment with Radeon VII
If they did RADEON VII with 8GB memory at 499 USD, that would really make a splash in the graphics market.
As is now i feel that AMD just is trying to align it self with nvidias RTX overprices with essentially shrinked old VEGA tech
Radeon VII is not supposed to be "new". It's just 7nm Vega tech, but that is pretty powerful in itself.
Hell, this card wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for AMD having a stream of faulty chips from their professional card output.
The fact that it's a 60 proc GPU and not a 56 one, speaks volumes on how well that 7nm process is performing - AMD didn't joke about that.
Anyhow, the way the Vega architecture is designed does not allow them to install less than 16GB 4096bit HBM2 on the GPU package.
Compared to Vega 64's $499 pricing, the $699 price tag is fair as this 40% increase gives you 30% more performance and twice the memory, which while not exactly needed at the moment does make the card future proof. People scoffed at R390(X)'s 8 gigs of VRAM back in 2015, but that card is still a capable performer at 1080p and 1440p well over 3 years later.
Also AMD have finally released a card with proper, premium, air-cooled design, meaning for once people don't have to wait on Sapphire to release their treatment to get the good stuff. So yeah, this thing is really worth the money.
As for whether it's a better choice than RTX 2080, the answer is ofc - it depends.
If you want RT reflections (or shadows, or global illumination - whatever the game in question has, but note that you get only one of these) you will have to forget about native 4K gaming. Obviously at this price level we are not talking about any lower resolutions than that. DLSS is supposed to balance this issue by upscaling 1440p to 4K without loss in quality, but it doesn't work like that because high quality textures get the middle finger in said scenario no matter what.
So it comes down to this - do you want the best textures or the best reflections/etc. at 4K? I can tell you that for me the textures win every time as they contribute to image quality the most (after the resolution itself ofc), while screen space reflections are so good at this point that you can hardly tell the difference in actual gameplay.
So you ain't right mate - plenty of upsides right there. Indeed I'd actually shell the cash for the damn thing if I didn't have a Vega 64 already (which I would have passed on if AMD didn't deny Radeon VII's existence so vehemently up until CES, but oh well - it's marketing, I get it lol).
