According to the first tests published, the Radeon VII is not the fastest card available, but 16GB of ultra-fast HBM2 memory make it an interesting solution for content creation and video editing, VR and more.

The new AMD Radeon VII is now available, for a price of $699, similar to the Nvidia RTX 2080 with which it will compete.  Nvidia went for tensor cores and ray tracing, features that may be used by content creators in the future, but AMD decided to go in another direction: its new card does not introduce ray tracing, but it does have one unique feature it’s the first 7nm GPU, and its other specifications make the Radeon VII an appealing solution for content creators. Yes, gamers will want this card, to run 4K and 1440p games, but content creators will also want it to edit 4K video and create VR and other type of content.

The 16GB of ultra-fast HBM2 are an advantage when compared to Nvidia, and that’s one asset AMD will want to explore now that, with Nvidia’s introduction of FreeSync support in their graphics cards, AMD has lost one advantage: it’s own FreeSync. One also understands better, now, why Nvidia decided to announce, recently, that it would support FreeSync…

Faster than Radeon RX Vega 64

Built on the enhanced second-generation AMD ‘Vega’ architecture, AMD Radeon VII provides 2X the memory, 2.1X the memory bandwidth, up to 29 percent higher gaming performance on average, and up to 36 percent higher performance on average in content creation applications compared to the current top-of-the-line AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card, says AMD. The card will also enable, says AMD, “next-generation photo and visual creation applications on razor sharp, vibrant 8K monitors.

“AMD Radeon VII is the highest-performance gaming graphics card we ever created,” said Scott Herkelman, corporate vice president and general manager, Radeon Technologies Group at AMD. “It is designed for gamers, creators and enthusiasts who demand ultra-high quality visuals, uncompromising performance and immersive gaming experiences.”

27% faster in DaVinci Resolve 15

AMD has beaten Nvidia in the race to thinner waffers, as the Radeon VII graphics card is the world’s first card built upon 7nm process technology. Built to unleash performance and drive the most demanding 3D rendering, video editing and compute applications, the GPU is equipped with 60 compute units/3840 stream processors running at up to 1.8GHz and 16GB of ultra-fast HBM2 memory (second-generation High-Bandwidth Memory). Add to this the ground-breaking 1 TB/s memory bandwidth and a 4,096-bit memory interface that paves the way for ultra-high resolution textures, hyper-realistic settings and life-like characters.

The company may present it as a gaming card, but the Radeon VII is more than that, as it is able to deliver the performance required for demanding 3D rendering and video editing applications, and next-generation compute workloads. It provides up to 27 percent higher performance in the popular open source 3D creation application Blender, up to 27 percent higher performance in the professional video editing, color correction and visual effects application DaVinci Resolve 15, and up to 62 percent higher performance in the OpenCL LuxMark compute benchmark compared to the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card.