In the weeks leading up to CES, hardware enthusiasts and PC gamers were buzzing with excitement about the AMD keynote at CES 2019. Months earlier, AMD announced that they would be partnering with TSMC to develop 7nm manufacturing techniques, and since then, the hype train has been steadily gathering speed, thanks to the hardware-obsessed gamers and other enthusiasts out there. Expectations were that 7nm would be a great improvement over the current 14nm and 12nm mainstream architecture, yielding serious performance-per-mm2 of die space as well as an expected increase in performance-per-watt. The public has nicknamed this 7nm gaming-focused GPU architecture “Navi.” Certain leaks suggested fantastic price-to-performance figures, and thus, hopes were soaring.
7nm GPUs were released on the 18th of November, but they weren’t aimed at consumers. They were aimed at high-performance data center markets, boasting an impressive 32GB or 16GB of HBM2 RAM for the Instinct MI60 and Instinct MI50 respectively. These Vega 20 GPUs were impressive, but just not made for gaming. The hype train grew further, fueled by a successful release of a 7nm based product. TSMC and AMD had done it: they were able to manufacture 7nm wafers.
December rolled around, and there wasn’t much announced for the GPU market. People who needed to upgrade had to suck it up and go with the aging RX Vega 64 or a NVIDIA RTX-series graphics card. The Vega 64 was still right around the performance of NVIDIA’s GTX 1080—released in early 2016. The only option for those demanding ultimate performance was to go with team green’s RTX series lineup. The issue there was with the prices though. The top-of-the-line 2080 Ti cost about $1200. $1200 for the founders edition card, with prices expected to increase with the aftermarket cooler cards from manufacturers like EVGA, MSI, and Asus. To the consumers, 7nm seemed perfect—affordable, high-performance cards were right around the corner, the rumours said. Just wait, everyone said.
Then CES 2019 rolled around and the Radeon VII was released. There was some confusion. Nobody asked for 16GB of high-bandwidth memory, nor a $699 MSRP. Consumers felt shafted—they wanted a card that would have a fantastic price to performance ratio. 7nm was supposed to bring that, but this card didn’t. Sure, the 7nm Radeon VII was an improvement over the Vega 64, but still. 7nm was supposed to be the god of cards, right? Where’s the crazy performance and value that it was supposed to deliver? A $700+ card that had less features than NVIDIA’s equivalent wasn’t what they asked for.
So, what happened? AMD needed market share and a product to announce so that the tech enthusiasts and consumers looking for more power wouldn't be dissapointed. It's speculated that these Vega chips are simply discarded MI50 Instinct ones that have either been cut down or are binned lower than the accelerator chips are. So, in an effort to get rid of them, they hastily turned them into the Radeon VII. It would help to build up hype for Navi, the supposedly revolutionary 7nm gaming card. AMD unfortunately made the Radeon VII sound like it should have been what Navi was going to be—a high-performance gamer’s dream that would be significantly cheaper than the RTX lineup, and, now, their improved future GTX lineup. The 16GB of HMB2 paired with a Vega chip for $699 really wasn’t that bad of a deal. People wouldn’t have blinked at a card targeted at professionals/content-creators for $699 a few years ago. The gamers had different cards than the creators did.
So, at the end of the day, targeting the Radeon VII at gamers was a big mistake on AMD’s part. It's a great creator card, and software like Blender performs significantly better with high bandwidth memory, and, because there is 16GB of it, it's an extremely useful tool for Blender users. It’s just that we can’t have AMD labelling it as a gamer’s card, because it’s not. $700 with that kind of performance really just doesn’t give people any incentive to use it as a gaming card when NVIDIA’s RTX equivalent card has more features and the same performance in games. If they targeted it more at professionals and content creators, it would have been a no-brainer purchase. This was a flawed launch for a good product.
7nm GPUs were released on the 18th of November, but they weren’t aimed at consumers. They were aimed at high-performance data center markets, boasting an impressive 32GB or 16GB of HBM2 RAM for the Instinct MI60 and Instinct MI50 respectively. These Vega 20 GPUs were impressive, but just not made for gaming. The hype train grew further, fueled by a successful release of a 7nm based product. TSMC and AMD had done it: they were able to manufacture 7nm wafers.
December rolled around, and there wasn’t much announced for the GPU market. People who needed to upgrade had to suck it up and go with the aging RX Vega 64 or a NVIDIA RTX-series graphics card. The Vega 64 was still right around the performance of NVIDIA’s GTX 1080—released in early 2016. The only option for those demanding ultimate performance was to go with team green’s RTX series lineup. The issue there was with the prices though. The top-of-the-line 2080 Ti cost about $1200. $1200 for the founders edition card, with prices expected to increase with the aftermarket cooler cards from manufacturers like EVGA, MSI, and Asus. To the consumers, 7nm seemed perfect—affordable, high-performance cards were right around the corner, the rumours said. Just wait, everyone said.
Then CES 2019 rolled around and the Radeon VII was released. There was some confusion. Nobody asked for 16GB of high-bandwidth memory, nor a $699 MSRP. Consumers felt shafted—they wanted a card that would have a fantastic price to performance ratio. 7nm was supposed to bring that, but this card didn’t. Sure, the 7nm Radeon VII was an improvement over the Vega 64, but still. 7nm was supposed to be the god of cards, right? Where’s the crazy performance and value that it was supposed to deliver? A $700+ card that had less features than NVIDIA’s equivalent wasn’t what they asked for.
So, what happened? AMD needed market share and a product to announce so that the tech enthusiasts and consumers looking for more power wouldn't be dissapointed. It's speculated that these Vega chips are simply discarded MI50 Instinct ones that have either been cut down or are binned lower than the accelerator chips are. So, in an effort to get rid of them, they hastily turned them into the Radeon VII. It would help to build up hype for Navi, the supposedly revolutionary 7nm gaming card. AMD unfortunately made the Radeon VII sound like it should have been what Navi was going to be—a high-performance gamer’s dream that would be significantly cheaper than the RTX lineup, and, now, their improved future GTX lineup. The 16GB of HMB2 paired with a Vega chip for $699 really wasn’t that bad of a deal. People wouldn’t have blinked at a card targeted at professionals/content-creators for $699 a few years ago. The gamers had different cards than the creators did.
So, at the end of the day, targeting the Radeon VII at gamers was a big mistake on AMD’s part. It's a great creator card, and software like Blender performs significantly better with high bandwidth memory, and, because there is 16GB of it, it's an extremely useful tool for Blender users. It’s just that we can’t have AMD labelling it as a gamer’s card, because it’s not. $700 with that kind of performance really just doesn’t give people any incentive to use it as a gaming card when NVIDIA’s RTX equivalent card has more features and the same performance in games. If they targeted it more at professionals and content creators, it would have been a no-brainer purchase. This was a flawed launch for a good product.
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