What is Radeon RX 7000 series for you? Please explain why you think so.
I think it is a disappointment.
Maybe the first iteration of the chiplets approach is to blame, but the 20% shaders count uplift from 5120 (Navi 21) to 6144 (Navi 31) is simply not sufficient, and it ruins the whole lineup.
I have used both the XTX and XT 7900s. The thing about those cards are where they are for. If you play at 1440P and had a 6800XT you might be whelmed by the 7900 series but if you have a 4K 144Hz screen prepare to be blown away. The 20 and 24 GB of VRAM is excellent and the driver updates have refined the cards. There is no Game that those cards cannot provide high refresh rates at this point. I have even gotten some of the new Games that everyone complains about and wonder what all the noise is about. The other thing is upscaling means nothing to me and the way the GPUs (like 6000 series) maintain boost clocks in modern Games is great. Even Games that are CPU bound like Grip (1 core) still produce 140+ FPS with the GPU at 99%.
The funniest thing about the 7900XT is that in my country it is $100 more than the 6900XT, $400 cheaper than the 7900XTX and a whopping $1200 less than the 4090. As the 4070TI is within $50 for 8GB less. Obviously the 4060TI 16GB has demonstrated that the GPU must be up to snuff to take advantage of the VRAM buffer but I am happy with my 20GB frame buffer and it is pushed by my CPU as well in modern Games.
The AIB cards are all great at OC. One of the truths is that AMD did allow for AIBs to gain an advantage over the reference models by allowing for higher boost clocks. You can expect owners of Gigabyte, As Rock, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and Sapphire to all have 3 GHZ OCs on their cards. As much as people may think that Chiplets are a pain you can also think that the first 3 months of 2023 were spent integrating those chipsets with the unified GPU driver. As it has been shown that even Mobile GPUs use the same driver (6600,6600M).
To be brutally honest this system I have has me addicted to Gaming and the colours, resolution, refresh rate and pixel fill rate all have something to do with it. I had a 5800X3D and 6800XT with 3600 14-15... RAM and from the day I installed my X670E system I have not looked back. You can search my posts and see that about 2 weeks ago I pulled the MB I had (X570S Ace Max) out of the closet and did an RMA for it to go into my HTPC. Yes if the 7900XT and 7900X3D can make someone like me put arguably the best AM4 board in storage for 6 months.
The narrative does effect AMD though. The common ones are now ridiculous.
1. Drivers are problematic; Truth: AMD drivers are rock solid and out of the last 20 driver releases perhaps 3 have caused issues
2. Software is not as good as Nvidia; Truth: AMD software is the best of all 3 GPU makers and will make you a better PC user if you take the time to use it right. I bought a 3060 based laptop for my 50th and could not believe the software package looked the exact same since the GTS450.
3. Ray Tracing is not as good. Truth: The 7900XTX is just as fast at RT as a 3090 and about $400 cheaper too. Other than the 4090 (which is $2500 on sale) no Nvidia other Nvidia is faster than a 4090 in RT so.
4. Power draw is high. Truth: How many pixels a second does 4K require to be put on screen? It consumes about 1/3 more power than a 6800Xt for a 40-70% improvement at 4K.
5. OC of GPU is dead. Truth; When you see your GPU singing at 3 GHZ with literally 1 click it is great. If you bought a 6500 or 6x50 GPUs you knew that they provided another 12-15% with a higher boost clock than the 6x00 cards so 7000 has some of that sauce too.
I think the cards are fine and probably the software up to the task.
The only disappointment was the price for the package.
The advantage they have is the VRAM and the raw horsepower where it allows you play even the most badly optimized games out there.
And you can keep your card for years.
No one can argue about RT performance, DLSS superiority, CUDA etc.
Because of all that, the price should reflect that.
I don't care that much about power efficiency for the high end cards that I usually look.
Both the 4000 series and 7000 series are a disappointment due to the pricing. Had AMD priced the 7000 series appropriately it would have been great. Instead they are pricing similarly to Nvidia. Meanwhile they are playing catchup software feature wise. This is why people say the premium on Nvidia cards is worth it and why AMD's pricing strategy for the 7000 series makes no sense. They want people to pay a premium price when they've done nothing but copycat Nvidia software feature wise for the last 6 years. AMD has not led software or hardware wise in a long time which is why their pricing is particularly galling to me. They sure don't look like they are hungry for more marketshare, they look like they are complacent with 15% marketshare.
Software is not as good as Nvidia; Truth: AMD software is the best of all 3 GPU makers and will make you a better PC user if you take the time to use it right. I bought a 3060 based laptop for my 50th and could not believe the software package looked the exact same since the GTS450.
AMD's driver control panel is much better than Nvidia's but AMD lacks in regards to very large important features. Encoding, DLSS, CUDA, and AI support for example. There's also a lot of half-assed tech on AMD's side like Radeon Chill (which could be fantastic if it was implemented better) and AMD Anti-lag, which is just worse than Reflex. It's not like Nvidia is without it's half-assed features either (it's driver based frame-limiter is still worse than alternatives latency wise) but AMD has far too many.
I say this to hopefully the benefit to AMD. No one improves by hiding the truth from them.
Both the 4000 series and 7000 series are a disappointment due to the pricing. Had AMD priced the 7000 series appropriately it would have been great. Instead they are pricing similarly to Nvidia. Meanwhile they are playing catchup software feature wise. This is why people say the premium on Nvidia cards is worth it and why AMD's pricing strategy for the 7000 series makes no sense. They want people to pay a premium price when they've done nothing but copycat Nvidia software feature wise for the last 6 years. AMD has not led software or hardware wise in a long time which is why their pricing is particularly galling to me. They sure don't look like they are hungry for more marketshare, they look like they are complacent with 15% marketshare.
AMD's driver control panel is much better than Nvidia's but AMD lacks in regards to very large important features. Encoding, DLSS, CUDA, and AI support for example. There's also a lot of half-assed tech on AMD's side like Radeon Chill (which could be fantastic if it was implemented better) and AMD Anti-lag, which is just worse than Reflex. It's not like Nvidia is without it's half-assed features either (it's driver based frame-limiter is still worse than alternatives latency wise) but AMD has far too many.
I say this to hopefully the benefit to AMD. No one improves by hiding the truth from them.
Of course if you care about DLSS and CUDA which are harrdware and software based get yourself an Nvidia card. If you just want to Game and not touch any of those accoutrements you would get the 7900 series. Indeed of the over 40000+ Games less than 1% support those features. The best feature in the last 5 years for Gamers is Freesync anyway so if you want to pay even more for CUDA be my guest but that is why it is called PC and I promise you that the FV43U will bring a GPU to it's knees if it doesn't support it fully and no a 6750 or 6800XT,3070, and 3080 can't do that nor 4070TI. For that you need at least a 7900XT and at $1200 less than a 4090 it is academic if you are looking for High performance using a 4K panel. Unlike most people I actully have one of these cards and use it daily.
It is a small as in dimensions and I am enjoying the card. I play ghost recon breakpoint daily, stream and browse the internet. This card is perfect for me. I went from a RTX 3080 which I keep as a spare now to this card. The 7900 is quieter than my 3080 as well.
I would pay the asked price but its performance is too low.
I think it needed at least 40% more shaders than Navi 21, ~7168, or better 60-80% more shaders ~8192-9216.
Navi 31 with its small die size of only ~300 mm^2 is actually a direct repeat of the Vega 20 331 mm^2 experience in Radeon VII.
I'm using it I don't Do yearly updates so it's 4080 tier performance in some new games,, all old games and ok performance in some new games seems fine, for the money, especially now.
It's starting to feel like someone figured out MSPAINT
It's 49% faster than a 6900 XT that launched for the same price two years prior. Seems normal.
RTX 4080 and 3080 50% performance for double the price.
GCD and MCD together on one inerposer are about the same size as Navi21, seems like the ideal size.
360 W in games at 2.5Ghz and throttles to 900mV by itself is already pushing it. no headroom for more shaders..
Yes I would have liked 7680 shaders 16GB about the same size total. GCD exact double the Navi32.
Exactly the experiment with these MCDs (which are probably redundant and do not help) is probably the root cause for all the troubles.
They are N6 with 36.6 mm^2, if they made them on N5, the die size would shrink to only 18.3 mm^2.
416 mm^2 if normalised all made on N5 process.
Which makes it only 79ish % of Navi 21's size.
I think AMD has to stop with the experiments and instead of "saving some pennies" here and there, but badly hurting the performance at the same time, they need to return to what nvidia does - always stay with monolithic, classic GPUs.
I was expecting better after the impressive rdna2 showing. I also got caught up in the hype during the announcement with Amd showing way better performance than what we actually got.
Both high end cards are fine now for the money though the 7900XT at 750 ish and the 7900XTX around 900 usd seems about right and makes them pretty appealing
Unfortunately they are still lacking on the software side of things, so now being back to Radeon after spending years with the 1080ti and 3080 its like AMD/Radeon never really changed since the 4800 series and I still feel like I'm getting a better deal for the raw performance.
0. Prices are ridiculously high as mentioned above.
1. Energy efficiency, especially at low loads, is very far behind the one in Ada's GPUs.
2. Impossibly lacklusterish start with failing reference cooling solutions. Don't quite remember what the exact issue was but I'm not making up anything. That was a fiasco.
3. FSR3 was needed RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW but we're currently in almost four Qs after the release and it's nowhere to be seen.
4. Ray tracing is still completely off in these GPUs. They can't compete with anything better than 3080. And, y'know, 3080 is a mid-range GPU by today's standards.
5. We got RX 7900 XTX for $1K and RX 7900 XT (which is very far behind in terms of performance) for $900. Now please tell me this is an oversight and not making us buy an XTX on purpose. I will laugh back no questions asked.
6. We got some "device" named RX 7600 which looks like 6650 XT, behaves like 6650 XT and costs like 6650 XT. What in the world has it to do with the 7000 line-up?
7. We got some leaks implying both the RX 7700 and RX 7800 won't cut it. Nah-ah. They are just a microscope level tiny bit better than their predecessors.
8. These cards can't use DLSS for obvious reasons which is fine per se but makes for a discount which never happened.
9 (with the asterisk). One of the most popular games, the Cyberpunk 2077, has got an FSR implementation problem, yet neither CDPR nor AMD have been addressing this mess. FOR MONTHS. This doesn't make for particularly 7000 series being bad, it's just some kinda "by the way."
To call this line-up a clown fiesta is a murderful insult to clowns. I have never seen nVidia trying so hard to produce questionable GPUs but AMD still managed to outworse them. It's like staying in Bronze leagues. You really have to try staying bad enough. And try harder than the pro gamers in their major tournament games do.
So no, it's not good. It's not so-so. It's not a disappointment. It's the worst GPU generation ever.
I may sound biased as I bought a 7900XT on launched or I have different opinion to everyone but, unless you play ray-tracing games(which is still buggy and every new games all depend on DLSS/fidelity for poorly optimised games these days anyway).
The 7900XT is a better value than the 4080 overall if you managed to pick one up around the £900-950 mark for the reference to a sapphire pulse or Powercolor hellhound.
Looking at how the drivers has improved overtime and it has now caught up to the 4080 or beat it in certain titles at 1440p-4K then you can't fault it, the fact they are slowly dropping in price(£809 for a Sapphire pulse in the UK from Scan UK at the moment Vs £1089 for a pre-ordered Zotac 4080) too makes it a much better option.
Only 35% faster vs Radeon RX 6950 XT which is the true highest Navi 21 SKU.
Exactly the experiment with these MCDs (which are probably redundant and do not help) is probably the root cause for all the troubles.
They are N6 with 36.6 mm^2, if they made them on N5, the die size would shrink to only 18.3 mm^2.
416 mm^2 if normalised all made on N5 process.
Which makes it only 79ish % of Navi 21's size.
I think AMD has to stop with the experiments and instead of "saving some pennies" here and there, but badly hurting the performance at the same time, they need to return to what nvidia does - always stay with monolithic, classic GPUs.
The MCDs wouldn't shrink much with N5; cache scaling from N5 to N6 is a factor of 1.35 and PHYs won't scale at all. I suspect a N5 MCD would be 32.5 to 35 mm^2.
The MCDs wouldn't shrink much with N5; cache scaling from N5 to N6 is a factor of 1.35 and PHYs won't scale at all. I suspect a N5 MCD would be 32.5 to 35 mm^2.
