AMD Radeon VII: What Real Users Actually Think

I really like the look of the Radeon VII. I wish recent cards looked like that.

Yeah a fully metallic shroud is a sight to behold!

I got the Radeon VII 50th edition still and it runs like a champ to this day for my purposes

I have one, and it does a great job paired with a 3950x and 32GB of GSkill DDR4 3200 cl14 overclocked to 3600 cl16, firing a 4K60 television for media center use. Never a problem with it.

Never dies? It's one of the worst flagship cards of all time in terms of longevity. It lives on as a meme for how bad it was.

Damn it actually still is! RTX5090 has about half the FP64 compute of Radeon VII. Vega really was a pro/datacenter architecture that got lost and somehow found its way to consumers.

Radeon VII is an AMD Instinct MI50 datacenter GPU in disguise :) Still the best cheap GPU for FP64 compute (beating even the RTX 5090 by 2x), and more VRAM bandwidth than AMD's latest 7900 XTX and 9070 XT. And it's 2-slot, ideal for multi-GPU.

100W power consumption? You mean 200W?

This and the r9 295x2 are the coolest GPUs ever released. Obviously not for gaming but they are just so cool.

There is exactly one usecase for a Radeon VII, and that's FP64 compute. This is currently THE fastest consumer card for FP64, so unless you do that I'd advice going for either a used 5700XT, or a new 6600.

Is it? The card is a beast on Linux. Has 16 GB VRAM and DP4a, so even FSR4 INT8 works on it.

Had one, looked gorgeous truly. When I saw how much I paid for it the other day (580€ new) it seemed unreal compared to how much GPUs cost today. I ended up selling it 2 years later for pretty much the price I bought it to a guy who wanted to upgrade his Mac. I believe this is where most of them went.

They also had really high failure rate if you left them with the stock cooler. Seemed to have been a heat issue since people water cooling them and using them to mine crypto did not have the same issues, as those that did it with the stock cooler. So they were literally dying!

Google DXNAVI, enable it in Registry. It will boost performance for averages/lows and improve frame consistency in any DX11 and DX10 titles. Always use FSR2 where available in games.

Got mine for $379 new from newegg's ebay store, sold it for $1700 on hardwareswap when it was one of the better crypto mining options. I didn't have it listed for that much, someone offered me that unsolicited. Wild.

If we're talking longevity, it has aged very well into its niche. It was a beast for crypto mining at its peak, and still is a beast for LLMs today, because it's basically a MI50 that can also game. The street price is 200 USD today and it is the best 16GB card in that price range.

I was lucky enough to get one at 499 brand new right before the mining craze bought them all up. Great GPU.

It was simultaneously the worst and best GPU I've ever owned. Worst because it sounded like a fucking cargo plane taking off the instant it was under load.

Something I'm curious about... why do they ship it the way they do when all it takes is an undervolt to make it seem better? Looks like AMD's just shooting themselves in the foot doing it how they do it.

Avoiding modern "AAA" games, my Vega 56 does well enough on a secondary system. The Radeon 7 was never really a gaming card.

I had one in between a 1080ti and a 2080. I wanted to like it, I had it under an EK vector water block in a custom loop and everything. It just did not play nice with games I played at the time and I ended up selling it to get a 2080.

Radeon VII is a fantastic card in practically every way. It has lower idle and dynamic power usage than a 6700XT, is really fun to tweak, and has enterprise level FP64 support and 1TB/s of bandwidth. It isn't a super amazing card for games, but it's still absolutely good for gaming, similar to a 6700XT.

I have my rvii 50th anniversary sitting above my pc. It has been my favorite card looks wise and was an absolute work horse until it was replaced by a 7900xtx.

Its a great card. The 16gb of hbm2 is great. Can run everything at 4k high/ultra with fsr on. I still use mine for high end gaming at 4k 60fps. Examples include Witcher 3 enhanced edition, Cyberpunk, and Doom Eternal.

I have a radeon vii and it's a great card. That said it's not a good value. Get a 5700xt instead.

I would pass. Better cards to be had for the same coin and it probably was mined on for ages. VII has a habit of dying for no reason anyway.

Radeon VII is a bit old now, I can't game on some of the latest games. Gonna keep it since it's turned into a collectors item.

At this age you're going to want some fresh thermal paste. The coolers were a weak part of these, so I'd consider a re-paste + undervolt essential. After that, I'd OC the memory and max the power draw slider if you have the temps under control.

Mine died about 7 months into ownership. Only card I've ever had that just straight up shit the bed. Cool piece of history though.

Radeon VII still has a shocking number of legitimately practical use-cases in late 2022... And exactly ZERO of them involve gaming. Avoid like the plague if that's your primary intention. It's a number cruncher, not a pixel pusher.

I had one years ago in a gaming rig. They're hot, loud, use too much energy, and the drivers were shite. It was fun when they were released to have the first 7nm GPU with 16 gigs of HBM, but these days 6600 XT is so much more efficient, and better at gaming.

There might be a reason to buy a Radeon VII if you're going to use it as a compute engine rather than to display graphics. It's a beast in that application, and the massive 16 GB of HBM2 is useful. But if you're buying to game, buy a 5700 XT and keep the extra money in your pocket.

Graphics card aesthetics might have peaked at Radeon VII in my humble opinion.

I loved my Radeon VII but sadly the HBM memory took a dump and it was out of warranty so I was SOL but looks good sitting on a shelf lmao.

Thing was a beast in every way. There was a ton of propaganda calling it a bad GPU or worse than Nvidia. But if you knew how to use it and cater to its strengths, it was actually the most powerful GPU of its era.

I'd only do it if you can get the card for dirt cheap (<$200)

I honestly don't think wattman is working on my computer. No matter what I put the voltage or the speed at for the GPU, it still seems to ramp up to about 1830 and sits at about 77C / 110C for the two thermal monitors respectively. Fan speed ramps up to about 2900 regardless of where I set the fans.

I bought an MSI Radeon VII in 2019 from Frye's Electronics. It was beautiful! However, it had some serious issues: League of Legends would restart the pc at the start of a match every time, heat throttling, extremely loud, random lockups or restarts during most Steam games.

FP64 performance was the shit for this card (probably still is especially for the price second hand), too bad this card was marketed as a gaming card when this definitely was not a gaming card.

Worst GPU I ever purchased.

Aside from the cost, the VII is great. I have two in two different systems (one for VR and one as my main system). Highly recommend undervolting or dropping the power to -20% to really drive up the efficiency. I haven't had any problems in games.

I've got the Radeon VII. A lot of the issues have been fixed with the last few drivers however be aware that it's still not perfect. I still see occasional blue screens. Like others have mentioned, a Radeon 5700XT is a much better option price wise. The Radeon VII is more of a show piece now unless you use it for professional work.

Radeon VII user here and the GPU rocks. Of course I use it for other things than gaming but if you know how to UV/OC it then it is a beast plus if water cooled then a super beast.