The Forgotten Flagship | Radeon VII

[@ProjectPhysX]

I did a big part of my computational physics PhD on the Radeon VII. We bought 10 of them for the price of 1 Tesla V100. Same VRAM, same performance, 1/10 the price. The only affordable card with FP64 capabilities. And it was 2-slot, from a time before Nvidia/AMD made all their decent cards oversized 3.5-slot nonsense, to make it impossible to put them in servers.

[@deepspacecow2644]

The Radeon 7 was literally an mi60 with a gamer cooler on it

[@ProjectPhysX]

@@deepspacecow2644 yes, and for cheap :)

[@interrobangings]

If I can pry a bit, what were you doing with it, specifically?

[@javelin1423]

​@@interrobangingsI'm just guessing here, but since he did a big part in computational physics, it's probably simulations. A very extensive and resource heavy simulation. Don't quote me on this though.

[@interrobangings]

@@javelin1423 .....yes????? that's what I'm asking? what was all this number crunching for? oil well simulation? protein folding? god particles????

[@us249]

probably one of the best looking cards in recent years

[@ag8912]

And utter trash in any other regard

[@Athalant8320]

Driver support might be a problem in comming games

[@lowliar8489]

@@Athalant8320 if modded drivers and morepowertool became a thing this card can shred in games

[@ZackSNetwork]

It’s a silver rectangle with three fans. Don’t forget the HBM2 gimmick.

[@anomonyous]

Are you fn joking? I bet you like modern Nvidia design too. Fn soulless ugly blocks. Get real. That's like saying you prefer shitty IKEA crap to handmade, sturdy, intricately carved high quality wooden furniture. I mean. You're allowed to think that. It's just that that means you have no taste or standards whatsoever.

[@SilentdragonDe]

I've never forgotten the Radeon VII and I've wanted one ever since it was released, simply because I thought (and still think) that it is a really cool piece of tech. Sadly, the mining boom meant that these never went down to a pricepoint where buying one would have been even remotely justifyable during their relevancy. Heck, they still seem to sell regularly for >300€ on Ebay. If money wasn't an object I'd probably get one just to admire, but I already have a Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5700XT with faulty VRAM on the shelf for that purpose (which was not the intent at all), which already hurt my wallet enough.

[@jimtekkit]

This. The rare couple of times I've looked at the market, the VII's are selling used for basically brand new prices. It's insane, hard pass.

[@FalseOracle617]

The reference 5700XT is a bad cooling card, but man its so pretty.

[@kady5991]

I loved my VII, but it just didn't make sense. On release, it was quickly superceded/overshadowed by the 5700XT, so when I got my VII a year or so ago, I tried it and sold it. It just didn't seem better than my 5700XT for what it cost.

[@FirstnameLastname-py3bc]

Yeah it was just a Radeon Vega 64 afaik

[@DESARD12]

@@FirstnameLastname-py3bc It has less shading units, and higher clock speed than the Vega 64, so you could say it's an evolution of the Vega 56. The Instinct MI60 has the same amount of shading units as the Vega 64 and lists base clock as 1200MHz, which is slightly lower than the 64, that runs base at 1247 MHz. I don't doubt that with some vBIOS modding you could change that though. You could think of the Radeon VII as a pre-ampere Nvidia 80 class card, faster than the 80ti of the last gen, but not the fastest of the current gen.

[@l3lue7hunder12]

... at least it was better known, and sold better, then the R9 Nano.

[@tuckerhiggins4336]

​@@FirstnameLastname-py3bcIt was MI 60

[@MaddJakd]

​@FirstnameLastname-py3bc No. It/the MI 50 and 60, are second generation chips. Architecturally similar but with stuff done to it. It is in no way a rebadged Vega 56 nor 64

[@vulcan4d]

HBM memory was so good they are using it in the server space and left us with DDR. If we had HBM, 4k gaming wouldn't be a struggle these days with the more advance cores. 4096bit memory at 1GB/s in 2019 is insane.

[@Unethical.FandubsGames]

"If we had HBM, 4k gaming wouldn't be a struggle" Not really how it works. You won't make good use of all of that memory if you don't have the raster performance to match. HBM's performance improvements actually wouldn't be seen so much in resolution switching but in pure computation.

[@danielheitz7393]

Nice video. You're a refreshing channel with good analysis and phenomenal presentation, I really want to see you up there with LTT and Gamers Nexus.

[@CraigMarsden-c2d]

The sigh of utter disgust whenever you encounter a frame rate of 69 fills my heart with joy ❤

[@teaspoon966]

was very classy though, he used french, oh la la!

[@KomradeMikhail]

That only became a roman numeral "Seven" during late stage marketing, just before launch. It was developed as a "Vega Two"

[@marisakirisame867]

Then le Vega family becomin iGPU

[@fajaradi1223]

Allegedly

[@kantdiego]

They did actually kept this name for Mac Pro GPUs where the full Vega 20 chip with 64CUs was used

[@yahyasajid5113]

I remember these going for £1000+ in the mining peak If i were to ever buy one for whatever reason I'd definitely get one from CeX simply for the warranty

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

yeh hehe, good times. Sadly I sold my 5700xt for under 700€ then (only 600€ today) when others sold up to 1000€ or 850£

[@marisakirisame867]

Hah never goin to buy any gpu when it come to minin peak

[@TheVanillatech]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j I really needed a card back in 2020 but supplys were all over the place. My 980Ti had started hard-resetting my PC every 20 minutes when gaming. One night I was checking eBuyer and saw 5600XT's in stock for £234.99 - there were 41 in stock (none yesterday) but when I refreshed the page it said 37, then refreshing again it said 35! So I didn't think about it, I bought TWO! One for me and one for my daughter. Great cards, but after 9 months Covid had absolutely sent prices insane, and I ended up selling my 5600XT for £600 (couldn't resist) and went back to using my old R9 280X for half a year. The annoying thing is, that night when I bought the cards I had £24k in my bank. I could have just bought ALL 37! And made an absolute killing, almost triple my outlay. But I didn't know prices were gonna be so high!

[@mrt094]

Bought mine in 2019 from a dude on craigslist for $550. Sold it during the mining peak for $1300 I couldn't believe how much it was going for. I knew there was no way the resale was going to stay that high and honestly I kind of was done with the card due to the lack of driver support. Sold it and bought a used 1080ti from a buddy.

[@ccleorina]

i have bought two used Radeon VII these year. for my own collection. tested still working good. i just love the looks of Radeon VII.

[@laszlozsurka8991]

The Radeon VII is perfect as a relic since the Radeon VII is a very rare GPU.

[@floppydisk4500]

The only reason I would see someone considering buying one of these today would be productivity at a budget. Very likely underclocking it or just leaving it stock, there would be a lot of benefits to using something like this in video rendering and other tasks that just love the ram at a very high speeds that hbm memory has. And its productivity is pretty pretty good still from what I've heard from my friends

[@MasterCog999]

I'm not going to go into details because I know no one cares but, I have been having a tough time of things lately and your videos have been a great distraction. Your witty and detailed presentation of things allows me to stay captivated, a nice distraction from the world. So this is all to say thank you so much, and keep up the awesome videos!

[@trippytri]

Don't let those bad times get you down, bad times come and go, good times are just around the corner. Keep your head up🙌

[@alexm7777]

Life sucks equally for everyone.

[@debeb5148]

​@@trippytrithey have been saying that my whole fucking life

[@FalseOracle617]

that's ridiculous@@alexm7777

[@yasinkolgu]

Hope you the best. In both worlds!

[@WXSTANG]

Compute power on the Radeon VII is insane! I remember mining with a 2080 and my Radeon 7. The 2080 could manage about a 62mH/s. The Radeon 7, after tweaking memory latencies hit 110mh/s, almost double the 2080. AMD cards had superior asynchronous compute performance, which nvidia hadn't fixed until the 30 series. For AI workloads, you will want a Radeon 7. As in, your computer talking to you.

[@quaz1moto241]

HBM-based gaming gpus are so cool! Shame that GCN just couldn't compete.

[@lamhkak47]

When you the die optimized the FP64 glory (mostly used in those fancy hardcore compute stuffs), and yes, in terms of FP64 only, Radeon VII theoretical performance is better than that of RTX 4090 or 7900XTX

[@ZackSNetwork]

⁠@@lamhkak47No it isn’t you clown not even half way close lmao. Teraflops are a terrible way to compare three completely different architectures.

[@w04h]

@@lamhkak47 Except that it's useless because fancy compute stuff mostly uses quadros and amds own older radeon instinct series that beats it by like 2x in that regard... even cards from like 2016 (GP100)

[@lamhkak47]

​@@w04h So, Instinct MI50 share the same die as Radeon VII, and those Quadros, such as the GP100 you raised as example, have the die itself optimized for FP64 compute, same goes for Titan V, A100, H100 and so on for those dies that Nvidia uses HBM instead of DRAM. That's why Radeon VII has quite decent FP64 performance cause it's essentially MI50 with 3-fan cooler slapped on.

[@Protector1rk]

Nope. It's real nighmare in part of reliability and maintainability.

[@tqrules01]

The Radeon 7 has a tiny L3 and L2 cache which bottlenecks it at more modern games. Yes it does run slightly higher clocks than the 5700 XT for example but the cache really does impact it's ability to keep up.

[@joeldoxtator9804]

Cities Skylines 2 would be interesting to see on this card. From my testing, pure GPU core performance seems to have little effect on FPS. It seems to be limited by memory call speed, which the Radeon VII should have in spades. I feel that HBM will become more and more of an advantage in the coming years as memory calls become more complex like Cities Skylines 2. It is actually the next feature I will be looking for in an upgrade from any of the major manufacturers.

[@raresmacovei8382]

Good video man. We definitely need some gaming benchmarks under Linux with these AMD GPUs one of these days

[@ScavengerFX]

I love your videos. The production value is out of this world.

[@delancre5858]

I do believe that you can do RT on this card on linux, due to linux mesa driver have RT "software" (will be rendered on gpu, just not via dedicated rt cores) support on older architectures. Will be cool to see such test.

[@Gastell0]

I think GPUs with HBM type ram will better scale into 4K relative other models in comparison (it probably won't provide 60+, but it should not degrade as much as other models), don't expect running max settings of course, but people who still have such GPU won't complain about it in the first place, we'll be happy to have any long term performance relevance especially with stuff like FSR prolonging the life of GPU

[@domingos8214]

You should make a latency test of this GPU, HBM2 Vram is basicly cache, so if it can run it smoothly a game, it is quite likelly to have low latency wich in term would make this GPU quite nice for some gaming

[@RedVRCC]

Getting these used on ebay can be surprisingly cheap if you time it right and find that perfect offer, even cheaper than an equivalent rx 5000 or 6000 series. Possibly a hidden gem for a budget build. I saw one for *well* under $200 on there which is insane for a 16gb card.

[@Unethical.FandubsGames]

The big thing with this card isn't that it's 16gb. There are many more 16gb cards. Its selling point was that it uses HBM memory. HBM being more power efficient, scalable, and actually outperforming GDDR memory when properly scaled up. That said... HBM was expensive and not fully utilized in this GPU.

[@Tbird761]

I bought one of these when they launched. It was actually a very nice card in my experience. I didn't appreciate the price point creep, but that's just a fact of life. GPU prices have been outpacing inflation for two decades now.

[@InvisibleSquids]

I have one, put a very agressive fan curve on it because the heat. It sounds like a car radiator fan, but it does pretty well on _most_ modern games at 3440x1440. When I upgrade to a 7000 series, I'll make a dissassebled shadow box for it, mostly because the drivers are going to be sunset soon.

[@thepcenthusiastchannel2300]

I still keep a system with a custom watercooled Radeon VII because it's the best of GCN. Love playing with this card and when you unlock the power limits... WOW. You won't get any proper overclocking until you do so. Then it can clock above 2GHz. It's just a simple regedit change and a reboot and the power limits are removed. Be prepared, depending on the power limit tweak you use, to consume near 500W of power. Yes... it consumes that much when unlocked. You pretty much need water for that though. After unlocking it, it performs about the same as a 2080 Ti give or take. Of course it consumes far more power though.

[@ZackSNetwork]

Waste of time and energy.

[@26Guenter]

​@@ZackSNetworkLike your comment.

[@interrobangings]

​@@ZackSNetworkthis might surprise you but some people actually like to tweak their hardware

[@thepcenthusiastchannel2300]

@@ZackSNetwork if I was simply a gamer, perhaps. I'm a PC enthusiast though. I prefer playing around with hardware, tweaking it, pushing it, seeing what it can and cannot do than I do actually playing games. To each their own.

[@Schnitzel2080]

I have on of This amd vii and i can run Cyberpunk about 100 fps on very high Setting, oberclocked 2175 mhz with 1265 mv and Suck 275 Watts down . I dont understand why he gain so los framerates in this Games Maybe its Stock

[@bnbnism]

You consistently make good interesting content thats exactly what people are looking for and interested in while being well produced, edited and just overall created. Keep up the good work and hope you continue to grow

[@USArmyVet91]

This very well produced video shows that VRAM isn't everything. I love your work, keep it up! 👍👍

[@rattlehead999]

AMD had the HD2000, HD3000, HD4000, HD5000, HD6000 and HD7000 series, that's 6 generations straight of the same naming.

[@yasinkolgu]

Your opening at 0.26 nad the music that comes after is really nice. I like your artistic style.

[@denikec]

Such a beautiful card.

[@steamedauroraborealis8208]

This card was the "one that got away" for me. I've always been one to overspec, knowing full well how rapidly technology is developing. I was buying 8 core processors when 4 was the normal, and 8gb cards when 4gb was the normal. So when a 16gb card came long, I desperately wanted it. I finally got my hands on it, but sadly, it had horrible performance for the game I was mostly playing at the time (Rust) so I returned it for a 1080 ti.

[@Mico605]

I remember the conference where Lisa Su showed this card. It was a major letdown because AMD was hyping up its 7nm architecture and all we got was Radeon 7. They were also released in limited numbers and thats why its never been very popular. Also AMD wanted to take attention away from Radeon 7 and focus on Ryzen CPUs.

[@Trick-Framed]

This was Raja Koduris parting gift to Lisa Su. For all of her accomplishments. It's an anniversary edition that was never meant to be mass produced and if you own one, lock it away, it'll be worth something one day. It was less powerful than Vega 64 with double the VRAM. I have wanted one of these for a while. I realize it's about a GTX 1080 Ti in general performance but w.e. as it has 16GB vram.

[@tilpesq]

Really nice revisit. Great video. I specially liked the comparison to my OG 1080ti!

[@andydvsn]

The Radeon VII's name isn't just because of the 7nm process, it was also a pun on the Vega II platform on which it's based. Mac users with deep pockets can have a Vega II Duo for their 2019 Mac Pro systems, which are essentially two cards taped together with Infinity Fabric. They were never designed as a gaming cards; they're essentially workstation hardware that didn't quite make the cut, and I think they're great - the best card you can get for the old cheesegrater Mac Pro systems.

[@aunderiskerensky2304]

I miss mine. It went with a box last summer, my nephew came and worked for me all summer so I sent him home with a gaming pc. I had a GOLDEN chip radeon VII, it was soooo good. What a legendary card in my opinion.

[@verzagen7550]

Got the Radeon VII it when it launched, daily drove it for quite some time until i got a 6900 XT, which was a needed upgrade since the Radeon VII doesn't support display stream compression so won't do resolutions like 5120x1440, 4K 60 is fine though. Honestly I was pretty happy with it paired with a 1800X, still am actually. I moved it into an ITX system I use as a console like system now, plus it runs great under Linux, still holds at least a 60FPS average on most games I play, high settings.

[@cosmicusstardust3300]

The Radeon VII was my first GPU for my first desktop build back in early 2019. I aimed for a GPU with performance comparable to the 1080 Ti for my first build and didn't care about ray tracing. Choosing the Radeon VII was a no-brainer for me. I also thought it was funny how so many people kept saying, "Oh, this GPU is dumb and doesn't make sense! You don't need 16 GB VRAM for gaming!" Well, that sure aged like milk.

[@DanStarTheFirst]

Just like people saying "why don't you upgrade to a 2080 or a 3070" from the 1080ti meanwhile most of the games I play use around just over 10gb of vram at 1440p or even before that I had a Titan x Maxwell and got called a crazy mofo buying a "useless 12gb card" and immediately using 11gb of vram running ark, for $1200 cad which is nothing these days where a 4080 goes for $2k. I knew even wayyy back in 2015 that even 8gb was kind of obsolete and the 1080ti runs everything great until remastered ark came out and I only get 50-80 fps

[@hovant6666]

What aged like milk was your Radeon VII, declared EOL within months of launch

[@cosmicusstardust3300]

Jokes on you, I sold mine 2 years ago for $1600 during the GPU shortage. I got more than double the money back I originally paid for it lol (edit: Also, just because it was no-longer in production 5 months after launch doesn't mean it will no-longer get driver support. That's not how that works) @@hovant6666

[@DanStarTheFirst]

@@hovant6666 still a 16gb card in a time where 8gb isn't enough but cards still come with 8

[@theftking]

Radeon VII is freaking super cool but everything I've heard seems to suggest that they're kinda a pain in the ass.

[@m8x425]

They are, and they're even worse if you get one that undervolts poorly. I bought one that didn't undervolt well, and returned it, then got another that did undervolt fairly well. Where AMD messed up with this card is the cooler. It just wasn't enough to keep up with the VII. If the card was left unchecked and was running at stock speeds, the Hot spot temps could run past 110c.

[@AJ-jq3hm]

"why is everyone ignoring this one". Because it's almost impossible to find in most countries

[@SockyNoob]

Great video. These cards flew under the radar pretty quickly.

[@cyklondx]

On waterblock, i had this card run at 2100MHz core (stock hbm clocks). There's plenty of things rad7 has had issues when i was still using it. (for best perf. I was overwriting tessellation to x32, it performed on par or sometimes better than stock 2080Ti. There's really lovely color enhancement settings, and hdr on it looked much better than on any other card. The fluid motion for playing videos I'd say this card is top tier due to color & intrapolation tech, and potentially top tier for upscale, transcode using h265/264 (only cards of 3080 and better start beating it there). In certain games, you can edit files, and make the game load more assets into vram - effectively using more vram, but performance gain in those games from that is 5-25fps boost in lows in some cases (mostly open world titles on unreal engine and and redengine games - like older pre-rt version of witcher). From all games i think doom eternal is best optimized for it.

[@Psychx_]

There's a lot of variation between samples of the Radeon VII when it comes to silicon quality. Some won't OC at all, while others can be pushed above 2GHz with a mild UV on top.

[@Schnitzel2080]

You can easy Push to 2200 MHz stable on water i suck about 275 watts for normal use case :)

[@keshaunhinton2946]

if you want to use vram play warzone with all textures and memory cache settings to high and turn off on demand texture streaming from internet. my 7800xt uses 15 gb after a couple matches.

[@Soverax]

Increasing the core clock significantly on this card was damn near impossible and basically had very little to no effect, so I just ended up dropping the voltage by 25-100mV across different states without touching the clocks. What I had found stable all around for this was running 975mV @ 1150MHz on the HBM and that seemed to yield the biggest performance boost across the board. RVII and the Vega64 I had before it were the two cards that really got me hyped up over AMD.

[@nickwort123]

I’ve always kinda wanted a Radeon VII. I have no use for it, I just think they’re sorta neat?

[@WyvernDotRed]

Thought the same about the Vega 64, which became my main card as an upgrade to my RX570 and has been powering my main PC since. It's a decent card and with the games I play I feel no need to upgrade it yet.

[@Typhon888]

For overclocking on AMD in MSI afterburner you need to tick a box in the settings. I was having this issue with my 7900xtx.

[@Techformative557]

I found one for like $50 in broken condition. Fixed it and now its in my main PC. Absolute beast

[@KevinScandinavia]

Mine has an error code I haven't found on Google. Le sigh.

[@lflyr6287]

Iceberg Tech : there is something wrong with you specifically ! For months I've been playing Alan Wake 2 on my Asus Strix RX VEGA 64 and I have had ZERO texture glitches. I am also going to take out my archived Radeon 7 for this just to try it on Alan Wake 2 and to see whats going on. But since it's a Vega derivate, I expect that it will work completely properly as my Vega 64 does. You selfproclaimed youtube reviewers are smth else man, the level of weirdness that you post in terms of inconsistencies, is, to say the least, "astounding".

[@broadstrokespro]

This baby has been reliable and powerful since 2017. I don't see why I need a new one for at least two more years.

[@rodrigofilho1996]

RX 7600 XT completely made this card obsolete. Price is close, but u get a NEW and MODERN card with longer life/support.

[@maurice5402]

Your editing is so good man. Really makes these videos a joy to watch Edit: The writing is great too

[@Marzsala]

So sad these cards will be almost completely gone in a few years considering these things were abused to hell for mining, while already being quite fragile in terms of graphics cards combined with low numbers.

[@orora667]

9:17 thanks for making the Frenchies laugh ❤️

[@IcebergTech]

de rien 😊

[@ninhvuhungkhang]

Gotta say, I'm quite a proud owner of Radeon VII. The card looks just great and been rocking as my main gaming graphics card for 3-4 years. It's sad that AMD won't be supporting this card in near future, though.

[@ZackSNetwork]

Dude it’s not that deep lol it’s just an old crummy graphics card. Hopefully you upgrade soon to get a better experience and save money on that energy bill.

[@ninhvuhungkhang]

@@ZackSNetwork I know, but the design was great. Undervolting made it a little less power hungry.

[@chomper720]

Did you ever try resizable bar and Nimez driver?

[@NoThisIsntMyChannel]

That is why I always preffer lower end newer gen GPUs over higher end older GPUs, even when the newer is a bit slower at launch. Optimization plays a big part over the years.

[@christopherfoster1531]

I run my radeon vii at 2000mhz with max fan curve and power limit. I replaced the thermal paste with artic mx-6 to reduce temps enough to allow the overclock. It definitely improved the cards performance over stock. Edit: I got mine for $200 usd in mint condition with all the original packaging. The person used it for light gaming in a backup build. I guess I got lucky with mine due to how well it overclocks. I'm able to use 73 to 75% of the video memory playing horizon zero dawn at 4k. I run textures, anisotropic filtering, and environment textures on ultra. Shadows are on high with the clouds and ambient occlusion on medium. No motion blur though since I don't like it. I get in the low to mid 40's on average and would easily average over 60 with FSR.

[@FalseOracle617]

Echoing many comments here, the VII is beautifully designed. AMD hasn't came close since, aesthetically.

[@falloutnewvegasboy]

Finally. I have no idea why this card is losing support when it's obviously still completely viable for gaming.

[@ZackSNetwork]

It’s viable for older games and low powered indie games. A lot of new games require DX12 Ultimate, Mesh shaders, raytracing etc.

[@falloutnewvegasboy]

@@ZackSNetwork literally 1 game REQUIRES mesh shades, no games REQUIRE Ray Tracing, and I can't find any games that require DX12 Ultimate either

[@ryanspencer6778]

Because it's on par performance and feature set wise with a high end card from 6 years ago?

[@falloutnewvegasboy]

@@ryanspencer6778 it's not even 5 years old. There are cards still being supported that run worse than a 1080TI, so your point is moot

[@olnnn]

It's still supported for security and major bugfixes it's just not getting any major feature updates (on windows that is, RADV drivers on Linux drivers are not dropping support for this and other GCN cards).

[@Osaka2407]

I want VII just fop cool-factor. It just looks cool. On a VRAM usage - how long do you test for when checking it? BTW you don't really need to push everything to ultra. Just textures, they consume the most. Every step of resolution (1080p -> 1440p -> 4K) adds about 1 GiB of usage from what I've observed, but FSR pushes it back down if used

[@dragos-alexandrusofronie1482]

Amazing channel I wish him all the best

[@System0Error0Message]

i have the pro though and for use in compute the card is excellent. Also overclocking is good too but hard to do; The 16GB of vram is considered an entry level into compute and AI and you wont find a better deal compared to nvidia teslas as even the kepler GPUs only get more through dual cards. one of the biggest boost to performance with this card that i remember was by undervolting the core but overclocking the vram. I could set mine up with the dual bios for stock and overclock to lend for reviews i imagine the shipping would be pricey.

[@StrixWar]

Finally got a hold of a working one

[@LastExile1989]

I've always wanted one. Since they launched and Paul feom NAF was flaunting his around. I have a 6800xt now and still would buy one. Just looked so awesome.

[@picblick]

I upgraded from an r9 290x 4GB to this card when it was new and I still own both cars. You can say what you want, but both cards aged reasonably well.

[@Pividol]

I love your intros so much

[@Pawcio2115]

I discovered this GPU a few days ago and I love the design of it. Good video 👍🏻

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video. Few people outside of large mining farms owned a Radeon VII. They were the fastest card to mine Eth when they launched. They also had a higher than average failure rate.

[@MaddJakd]

You know, loads of us went after these for their other intended purposes, before after and around the mining thing.....

[@AlpineTheHusky]

@@MaddJakd Well good thing is most people actually didnt get it. I had 2 of those and I really didnt like the fact they actually had 16 gigs of ram since you never got near that.

[@MaddJakd]

@@AlpineTheHusky YOU never got close to 16. Between certain programs and modern games, you'll be using that 16 without trying now.

[@piked86]

Not forgotten by me. I've been wanting one for years. It's stayed expensive though due to it's HBM memory.

[@MaddJakd]

The HMB was the least of its "issues." The low production run was the real kicker here (read: they only rebadged so many MI50/60s, on top of capacity constraints) Plus, that was when AMD went through their major change in leadership.

[@i_zoru]

the main reason why it's expensive is the HBM2 Memory type, it is capable of handling large data i mean crazy large since the memory bus width are 4096 bits (the one before this card are R9 Fury x that has this size of the bus), but at a slower rate which makes this card are better for rendering somehow HBM had a massive stack of die, unlike GDDR5/6 you'll only need one, not to mention the chip would be far bigger that the GDDR5/6 chip, HBM require interposer because you can't stick this thing directly to the PCB since they didn't got enough room for PCB

[@ChusmaChusme]

3:12 Third time seeing this issue online with the Radeon VII. Lol.

[@janwitkowsky8787]

I find it to be a happy coincidence, that earlier today, I found a Radeon Vega Frontier Edition for about £180 2nd hand, and this video releasing. I was wondering how it'd fare against the RX 6600XT. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is a generation older than the VII, but close enough for one to see how it'd handle. I already have Radeon 6650XT on my machine, but the FE is interesting (and looks great, by the by) and I considered having a 2nd build with it. Now watching this video, I can only smile at my purchase this summer for my birthday, that I am sitting on a solid good card. Many thanks for the video. :) I might still consider the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, as a collectors piece.

[@kmo9111]

Red Devil rx 6950 xt still good. 16gb enough for future. 1.96gb. 128gb ddr5 ram to 1 tb.

[@RuanEmanuell]

It's a shame that AMD GPUs from this era don't support DirectX12 Ultimate, I wouldn't consider one of these just because of this alone.

[@titan_fx]

I mean, even RDNA 1 cards don't support DX12 ultimate. So yeah, if you need DX12 Ultimate you had to go with RDNA 2 card at the minimum.

[@DLTX1007]

And did you consider that DX12U requirements that made it Non DX12U capable is ray tracing?

[@yanagida_01]

then any GPU before 2019 should be off your list. hell even RDNA 1 and GTX 16 series don't even have DX12_2😂

[@ZackSNetwork]

⁠@@yanagida_01Only Turing GPU’s and up have DX12.

[@sonychandel1878]

​@@ZackSNetwork16 series is turing

[@dhall4363]

I have it`s counter part, the vega frontier. Not really a gaming card but does a reasonable job. I play Elder scrolls Skyrim AE. Some what modded. Always uses over 12gigs of v ram and some times maxes out. Would like to try this card, but newer gpu`s like the radeon rx6800 with 16 gigs of v ram are better value. It was not only upcoming new tech but also these cards where way more expensive to make that sealed there early retirement.

[@teboho_26]

Due to DX12_2, the minimum gpu for low spec gamers to get is probably going to be the Gtx 1660 series even though Rdna 1 is getting cheaper as well whilst some are even more powerful than 1660, but the lack of features are coming back to haunt that generation.

[@FirstnameLastname-py3bc]

What does that feature level provide over older cards?

[@teboho_26]

@@FirstnameLastname-py3bc things like mesh shaders, there's probably more too. If you check the fps results of something like a rx 5700 vs rx 6600 on Alan Wake, you'll see. I'm just speaking in terms of if you buy an old gpu right now and won't upgrade for maybe 5 yrs and don't have the budget for later generations.

[@huntercz1226]

@@FirstnameLastname-py3bc Notably Mesh shaders (Alan Wake 2 and Nanite in UE5), DXR (not much applicable for RDNA1 cards, but it can work fine on Linux with RADV_PERFTEST=emulate_rt), Variable rate shading (can be software implemented), and Sampler feedback (not a single game uses it currently)

[@rogeramu]

I'd grab a VII on looks alone, but price/preformance still looks iffy. On the other hand, I finally went for the Nimez drivers and my Gigabyte 56 OC (beautiful backplate working hard), now identifies as a Vega 64, runs 7-9'C cooler, coughs up 15-20 fps more in Superposition medium and the coil whine has taken a new tone. And Cyberpunk 2077... is still Cyberpunk 2077, but perfectly playable. With HBCC, I think I have a cut-down VII when I need it.

[@CryptoJordanVR]

A great way to utilize that VRAM would just be to play VRChat in a public lobby with everyone's avatars enabled. lol But seriously though! This would be perfect amount of VRAM, especially with the HBMC function, for big parties in VRChat . Shit gets pretty wild!

[@Naxirian]

I've had a Radeon VII since launch day and I am still using it right now. It's reaching the end of it's life for me however as it simply doesn't work properly with Ark Survival Ascended (any pre-RDNA AMD GPU's don't seem to be able to handle the water in the game) and it's reached the point now that new features like frame generation aren't compatible with it, and it's not getting the latest driver updates anymore. I always buy enthusiast grade cards, and as I am doing a build at the end of 2024 I will likely be forced to go Nvidia this time as AMD are supposedly not launching an 8800 or 8900, and I am not going to buy a 7900XTX just as it's due to become obsolete.

[@LeGoooze]

New Iceberg video on a Monday?? Christmas came earlier this year!

[@joelferguson625]

Excellent video, great detail

[@TheKazragore]

Modded texture packs is where a card like this might shine, not the in-game sliders. Skyrim modded in 4k regularly uses up almost all of my GPU's 24Gb VRAM buffer, for instance.

[@TheVanillatech]

People asking for stupid money on eBay for these for a while now. Still a great card, but not worth £450 / $550 which they are listing for (obviously). I managed to grab one for £200 + £15 postage back in October, when my 5700XT died. I'm waiting to do a full system upgrade sometime in 2024, so there was no point in buying a new 7800XT (which normally I would have) to pay full price yet house it with the Ryzen 2700X makes no sense. Radeon VII has been doing amazingly well, and it's a cool looking card to own.

[@Ramón_b23]

May I ask: did you have SAM on? Im asking just out of curiosity, since the VII has a massive bandwith...

[@adi6293]

I was one of the few people who bought it, water-cooled it and overclocked to 2150Mhz on the core and I think 1100Mhz on the ram, I sold it when Ampere and Cyberpunk 2077 came out to a miner, still regret doing so because they are getting rare 😢

[@Schnitzel2080]

My Card could Push to 2175 MHz on Water :) with 1265 mv

[@adi6293]

@@Schnitzel2080 Nice!!

[@chadbrick67]

It runs very hot. He forgot that bit. Very hot. I've got one in a emulation pc and video editing pc

[@interrobangings]

would you say 16GB of HBM2 helps with editing or not really

[@chadbrick67]

@@interrobangings just run on a ssd its ok but now I use a nvidia card I just got rtx 3070 for 270. Nvidia nvenc is very good you can do HDR and all the trimmings. But DVDFAB is fantastic which I mainly use for 4k HDR disks

[@interrobangings]

@@chadbrick67 neat

[@m8x425]

Trust me, I bought a Radeon VII after it launched and I will never buy another one. The interposer that connects the HBM2 to the GPU die frequently fails and there is nothing that can be done to fix it. I got lucky and got a Radeon VII that has Samsung made HBM and my card still works. Then again the GPU core on my card wasn't that bad and I could underclock it a little bit, knock off 120mv, and the Hot spot temps stayed below 90c. Miners snapped these things up during the last Crypto run and they rked any VII that had Hynix HBM.

[@RuruFIN]

I was totally blown away when I heard first time about RVII, 1TB/s bandwith, damn..

[@ChadKenova]

I have one in my collection actually bought it new🤔 But its a unique card and I’ve always loved the look of it. Its about as fast as a 5700xt, 2080, 1080ti just depends on the game. Its one of those cards that really needs an undervolt to keep sound in check. I probably should’ve sold it when prices were @%^*+#% crazy but I like collecting gpu’s I couldn’t part with it. Im running a 4090 and 7900xtx in my 2 main rigs now and did have it with a 5950x in a build but i got a 6800xt taichi for $320 not long ago and put it with the 5950x. I think I’m gonna do i build with a spare parts and put it with a 3900xt and crosshair vii mb. I did have a 2080 but sold it in a build but i do have a 1080ti and 5700xt two cards that should be around its performance. I would like to test them in 2024 to see how it hold up.

[@Ho-swae]

love looking back on these cards, i have a personal soft spot for the rx590

[@i3l4ckskillzz79]

Imagine a 4090 with this sort of memory Interface

[@lumia_dayZ]

i still have it its abit stuttery inmodern warfare 3 and sometimes it has a bug that any game will stutter every 3 seconds and the screen will freeze for a moment for that i need to restart my computer it used to have black screens in the past but not anymore it runs abit hot in games so i always lower the frequancy and volts a little

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

The point of a lot of VRAM as I understand it isn’t to crank everything to Ultra on a card that can’t handle it but rather put textures on Ultra and everything else at low. It should still look a lot better than another comparable card with lower VRAM that has to play with everything on low including textures. Textures does a lot for the look and it’s basically free as long as you have the VRAM.

[@natejennings5884]

The Radeon VII's damn power consumption though, 295W. Um, no.

[@thezkiller03]

I know this might go against your benchmarking but how would custom Drivers affect testing for these older vega gpus

[@dex2531]

The Error 43 was actually a sudden death. Nothing to do with undervolting or mining, as a person that ran mining during that time period. I had one VII fail in this matter, and it was undervolted and miraculously maintained (new paste and thermal pads). The amount of VIIs exhibiting this error pointed towards a hardware design issue and premature failure via wear and tear. Part of the other issue is that the HBM memory on the core made repair literally impossible aside from swapping GPU Cores.

[@m8x425]

Poor interposer.... especially if the HBM2 was made by Hynix. VII's with the HBM made by Samsung seem to have fared better.... but the Samsung HBM didn't overclock as well.

[@ecchichanf]

>9:24 >111 celsius The card runs really hot in the games. (97+ celsius) Thx for the video :3 I think the Radeon VII is a good card for the vitrine.