AMD Retires the Radeon VII Less Than Five Months Into Launch

[btarunr]

AMD has reportedly discontinued production of its flagship Radeon VII graphics card. According to a Cowcotland report, AMD no longer finds it viable to produce and sell the Radeon VII at prices competitive to NVIDIA's RTX 2080, especially when its latest Radeon RX 5700 XT performs within 5-12 percent of the Radeon VII at less than half its price. AMD probably expects custom-design RX 5700 XT cards to narrow the gap even more. The RX 5700 XT has a much lesser BOM (bill of materials) cost compared to the Radeon VII, due to the simplicity of its ASIC, a conventional GDDR6 memory setup, and far lighter electrical requirements.

In stark contrast to the RX 5700 XT, the Radeon VII is based on a complex MCM (multi-chip module) that has not just a 7 nm GPU die, but also four 32 Gbit HBM2 stacks, and a silicon interposer. It also has much steeper VRM requirements. Making matters worse is the now-obsolete "Vega" architecture it's based on, which loses big time against "Navi" at performance/Watt. The future of AMD's high-end VGA lineup is uncertain. Looking at the way "Navi" comes close to performance/Watt parity with NVIDIA on the RX 5700, AMD may be tempted to design a larger GPU die based on "Navi," with a conventional GDDR6-based memory sub-system, to take another swing at NVIDIA's high-end.



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[Deleted member 158293]

Hmm, AMD possibly stopping marketing this GPU to consumers would be more exact, as there are many corporate clients for this GPU like Google & Apple to name a few. Production isn't stopping...

 

[EntropyZ]

In a nutshell, they made a Fury/Vega Frontier card successor. I wonder if they earned anything decent from selling GPUs with HBM.

There are a bunch of new unsold Vega cards still floating around.

 

[kapone32]

Hmm, AMD possibly stopping marketing this GPU to consumers would be more exact, as there are many corporate clients for this GPU like Google & Apple to name a few. Production isn't stopping...

Vega is meant for the desktop and are basically compute cards. The Instinct cards are what you mean. AMD has no reason to produce Vega anymore. The OP is 100% correct.

 

[Deleted member 158293]

Vega is meant for the desktop and are basically compute cards. The Instinct cards are what you mean. AMD has no reason to produce Vega anymore. The OP is 100% correct.

I mentioned GPU, not card or marketing terminology.

 

[Sandbo]

Hmm, AMD possibly stopping marketing this GPU to consumers would be more exact, as there are many corporate clients for this GPU like Google & Apple to name a few. Production isn't stopping...

To be precise, the production of this GPU has never started/stopped because of R VII, these cards have been the repurposed units from MI50/60 on the first day. They just stop doing that as now there is Navi.

 

[ratirt]

It is a good news. This means AMD is planning to release something bigger based on Navi Maybe I will be changing my V64 after all. Hopefully this year. That would be great

 

[londiste]

especially when its latest Radeon RX 5700 XT performs within 5-12 percent of the Radeon VII at less than half its price.

Radeon VII MSRP $699, Radeon RX 5700XT MSRP $399. This is not less than half.

 

[xkm1948]

Good. It was an awkward card TBH. Not very good for gaming, while not many will used it for computing due to lacklaster support for CUDA and Tensorflow. At least nobody in Academia/Scientific research would pay for this as a “compute card”

Maybe good for crypto mining though.

 

[windwhirl]

It is a good news. This means AMD is planning to release something bigger based on Navi Maybe I will be changing my V64 after all. Hopefully this year. That would be great

Maybe. For all we know right now, AMD could be planning a different arch for their next high-end consumer GPU.

 

[kapone32]

Good. It was an awkward card TBH. Not very good for gaming, while not many will used it for computing due to lacklaster support for CUDA and Tensorflow. At least nobody in Academia/Scientific research would pay for this as a “compute card”

Maybe good for crypto mining though.

Actually the Vega 64 was and is great for gaming.... Once you tune them. Simply put the were the fastest GPU(s) you could buy from AMD until Navi was released.

Maybe. For all we know right now, AMD could be planning a different arch for their next high-end consumer GPU.

I don't think so if they release a Navi GPU with the same amount of processors as the Vega 64 it would serve as the high end. It would be interesting to see a large die Navi card paired with HMB2.

 

[Kohl Baas]

Maybe. For all we know right now, AMD could be planning a different arch for their next high-end consumer GPU.

What we know is AMD had stuck on GCN because back- and forward compatibility of consoles, while nVidia is free to make whatever it wants.

 

[londiste]

Planning? AMD has already said its RDNA.

 

[ShurikN]

Honestly Vega should have never been made into a gaming card. A pretty bad gaming uArch. A lot of compute power, but underutilized most of the time.

 

[medi01]

Radeon VII MSRP $699, Radeon RX 5700XT MSRP $399. This is not less than half.

It's $50 bucks above a half and his argument still stands, +9% for $300 on top makes no sense.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

The 5700 series was mostly what AMD needed—it’s a much cheaper card to produce for midrange. Vega may have been a losing proposition for the desktop market from the start since it couldn’t command top dollar. Now if only AMD has a big brother to follow the 5700XT...

 

[PerfectWave]

5700 and XT variant are only placeholder

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

This is more about retiring old architecture. R VII is just fodder now.

 

[Manu_PT]

So when nVidia launches a new expensive GPU and months later replaces it, the internet goes wilde "enjoy getting robbed lel" "you got owned by ngeedia lel".

Now AMD completly eliminates a GPU from its line up and 5700XT is within 12% of its performance for half the price and everyone is "good news! Means they will release something better soon!" "no problem! 5700XT is such a great card anyway".

Amazing.

 

[EarthDog]

There some leaps of faith in this thread by some...wow.

 

[Deathy]

What we know is AMD had stuck on GCN because back- and forward compatibility of consoles, while nVidia is free to make whatever it wants.

And that is based on what publicly available information? I would be very surprised if the consoles run bare metal games. Especially since for XBOne at least it is well known that the OS is always running in the background anyway. There is some sort of DX-like API available for both platforms. And since future GPUs (based on RDNA uarch with semi custom optimizations) will be much more powerful, backwards compatibility is ensured at equal or better performance, even if the games are more optimized for GCN.

 

[vega22]

Don't blame them. Expensive and hard to make.

As said, I imagine the OEM market is keeping them busy enough to cover costs. They have no need to try and sell them to normal desktop users when other, cheaper cards satisfy the needs of the majority of that market.

 

[EarthDog]

Don't blame them. Expensive and hard to make.

Who should we blame? Who made them expensive and hard to make in the first place?

 

[Basard]

They need to retire their garbage vapor chambers as well. How can they screw up something that has been around for decades?

 

[ZoneDymo]

So when nVidia launches a new expensive GPU and months later replaces it, the internet goes wilde "enjoy getting robbed lel" "you got owned by ngeedia lel".

Now AMD completly eliminates a GPU from its line up and 5700XT is within 12% of its performance for half the price and everyone is "good news! Means they will release something better soon!" "no problem! 5700XT is such a great card anyway".

Amazing.

If you are going to live in a bubble of delusions then pls stay in that bubble and dont comment where the world can read it.