Gaming Discussions

[nec_v20]

I am getting a very sinking feeling about the upcoming Navi and what it bodes for AMD and the Radeon Group in particular.

There are perhaps a handful of games that the Vega VII can beat an Nvidia 1080 Ti in; however the Vega VII is selling for between £650-£700 whereas you can get a used 1080 Ti (with a far superior cooler such as the EVGA 1080 Ti SC2) for around £480.

Back when the original Vega was about to be launched I was in the market for a higher end graphics card.

Until that point I had bought cards from Matrox, ATI and then AMD. The reason why I wanted a higher end graphics card than the RX 480 (GigaByte Gaming G1 RX 480 8GB) was because I wanted to play Fallout 4 at 2160p with everything at the highest settings at 60 FPS.

So I patiently waited to see what AMD would be bringing out with their much hyped Vega 64 and, when it did come out as the Vega FE (which when it launched I dubbed the "Eff-You"), I turned around and bought a new EVGA 1080 Ti SC2 for £670 - because of the mining craze I managed to sell my RX480 (after EBAY got their cut and shipping) for £90 more than I originally paid for it.

Now, with Navi I am getting the feeling of Déjà Moo (When you know you have experienced this BS before) where AMD will be trying to sell a card which is mid-tier (at its best it will be kicking around the 2070 level) for a price which will make people say, "HELL NO!" once again.

To this day whenever I see the term "Vega 64" it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

You only get one chance to make a first impression and AMD blew it with Vega, I really hope that the reports of the price that the new Navi cards are supposed to come at are false, otherwise AMD will be sitting on a whole bunch of GPUs nobody wants to buy; only this time there won't be a mining craze to fudge the numbers.

[jorgemd]

Whatever, the prices are meticulously approved considering the worldwide market, company sales to keep on selling the past models and to be attractive to the new one (sometimes this last doesn't happen), and they consider the other models and brands and of course, the budget and company profit. Finally the result is a higher price sometimes with the perception of expensive or cheap, where the users experience and budget starts the long discussions.

[nec_v20]

I am a mod on a tech Discord Sever which has about 2,500 members and as such I have a bit of a finger on the pulse of what real people want and need with regard to a graphics card.

For quite a few months now those people (with the help of my advice) have held off buying Nvidia because of the release of Navi. There really isn't much of an alternative to Nvidia on the part of AMD.

The Vega 64 has a gaming performance about equal to a 2060 and both of them are just not worth the money for the performance they deliver, although the 2060 is cheaper. So if they were going to buy a card, at the moment it would be Nvidia hands down.

There are two reasons I could give them to hold off on buying a graphics card over the past few months and both of them have to do with Navi:

1) Navi could come out at a good price/performance value. The fact that AMD is dumping HBM2 in favour of GDDR6 and also the yield of the 7nm chips would suggest that AMD could put out well performing cards at a far lower price than Nvidia.

2) Navi would have to underbid Nvidia in price, and because of that Nvidia will react by lowering their prices (as they have done in the past) and the people I have been talking to will get a far better deal on an Nvidia card after the release of Navi than before - without AMD gaining any benefit.

People are not "Red Team" or "Green Team" they are "Wallet Team" and the wallets they are fans of are their own.

Lisa Su talked about "Loving gamers" and I hope that love is not of the kind that a python has for a mouse.

When Navi is properly announced with the pricing, the people of my Discord Server will be turning to me to advise them with regard to what they should buy, and although I am partial to AMD and not really a great admirer of Nvidia, if AMD pull another "Vega" with regard to their pricing then I will have no other option but to recommend they go with Nvidia, who, if AMD brings their GPU out just under the price of Nvidia, will get kicked out of the market when Nvidia inevitably underbids AMD in price.

Nvidia's earnings so far this year have been mediocre at best, and that implies that the sentiment on the Discord Server where I am a mod is indicative for the market for graphics cards in general. AMD has a great opportunity to make a killing in that market if they don't get stupidly greedy - but hell, it's the Radeon Group we are talking about, so I personally am not holding my breath.

And if AMD does get greedy and lets the marketdroids and salescritters dictate the company policy then I fear that Nvidia will get a boost in sales and AMD will get the cold shoulder - once again.

[amdbooger]

Agree mostly with what you have here.....except that "people are not red team or green team".  There is definitely a sizeable demographic of fanboys who will and do buy based on brand, and brand alone.  This is with any consumer item, cars, food...you name it.  People are constantly buying based on brand and brand alone, regardless of industry.  While you are also correct that there is another sizeable demographic, who do not care at all about brand name, and shop only with their wallet.  Case and point:  All you  have to do is take the side of Nvidia or AMD in the comments section of any tech article regarding GPU's....and watch the sparks fly.    

[nec_v20]

As I replied below, AMD, in the Steam Survey, has less GPU representation with all of their products added together than the 1050 Ti.

So much for "Red Team" fanaticism.

The "Green Team" is winning every contest with the "Red Team" walking away.

If AMD wants to create a paradigm shift, it can ONLY do so on the basis of price - because the overwhelming prejudice is directed Nvidia's way.

[amdbooger]

"As I replied below, AMD, in the Steam Survey, has less GPU representation with all of their products added together than the 1050 Ti."

I was not comparing the size of each camps fan base, merely acknowledging that they do, in fact, exist.  This was in response to your "There is is no red team/green team" statement.  There is definitely a red and green team. Like i said, just google any tech article/ watch ANY  YouTube video regarding Radeon or RTX and read the comments section.  Passions are definitely on display there, it is not a civil discussion like we have here...it quickly devolves into a profanity laced, shade flinging contest akin to toddlers arguing over a lollipop.  I don't think anybody would argue (I wasn't) that Nvidia is, by far, the more popular choice.

"So much for "Red Team" fanaticism."

While it is definitely true that AMD is nowhere near as popular as Nvidia, those people who are partial to it do tend to be a bit fanatical.  Just go to rigs...or the Red Team forum.  AMD definitely has a cult following.  Emphasis on cult, not mainstream or large.  

"If AMD wants to create a paradigm shift, it can ONLY do so on the basis of price - because the overwhelming prejudice is directed Nvidia's way"

Pretty much besides Vega, this is what AMD has done almost every generation.  Produce a product that offers a good experience with less performance for, usually, less money.  That has been AMD's S.O.P since i can remember.  Intel/Nvidia have almost always been the fastest...but for more $$$$

As a stock holder, do i hope AMD takes over the world?  Sure.  However, as a consumer, am i satisfied and happy with the alternative AMD offers to the "big guys"?  Yes, I am.  As i said before, we have had many gaming PC's in this house, 2 have RTX cards with 9900k, being a 2080 and 2080ti.  My personal rigs are using a Vega 64 and a Radeon VII, both with a 2700X.  At the end of the day, after reading tons of links to benchmarks performed by other people....I sit back and look at the different experiences going on right in front of my eyes...and I just don't see the big deal for Nvidia/Intel.  For the price, AMD is the better choice IMO.  Does my son get marginally better FPS in some titles?  Yea.  BUT, i also paid over 100 bucks more for the 2080 and about $500 more for that frakin 2080ti. I also paid over $200 more for his Intel processor.  The FPS per dollar ratio is definitely a winner for AMD, and for my wallet.  Now, my son on the other hand, all he cares about is that his FPS is a bit higher than mine...he likes to rub that in.  Yes, lol, i live in a home surrounded by Nvidia fanboys.....=/

LOL "60% of the time, my Athlon is faster EVERY time"  best line of the song.

*Full disclosure:  I am probably the biggest AMD fan you will ever encounter.

l  

[colesdav]

Great song.
These Elric Phares videos persuaded me to purchase my Sapphire HD7970 OC 6GB.
Sapphire Toxic 7970 6GB GHz 7680x1440p Triple Monitor Crysis II Benchmark - YouTube 
Sapphire Toxic 7970 6GB GHz 7680x1440 Alien Vs Predator Triple Monitor Benchmark - YouTube 
Sapphire Toxic 7970 6GB 7680x1440p Metro 2033 Triple Monitor Benchmark - YouTube 
I ran a Triple 1080p Monitor Eyefinity setup for a few years. Problem was, as usual with AMD GPU's,  I couldn't buy another Sapphire HD7970 OC 6GB card to Crossfire, they were all sold out shortly after I bought my one. Also it's is a 2.5 slot high GPU because of the high power consumption it has a large cooler.
But Elric to the rescue: Can You Crossfire an AMD R9 280X with a HD 7970 GHz? - YouTube 
I was unable to get a 2 slot high MSI R9 280x 6GB but I purchased a 2 slot high Sapphire R9 280x 3GB in a sale just to try out Crossfire and it worked well, despite effective 3GB memory in DX11 Crossfire.

[ajlueke]

"60% of the time, my Athlon is faster EVERY time" 

Direct rip off of Paul Rudd's line in the original Anchorman. 

[amdbooger]

"60% of the time, my Athlon is faster EVERY time" 

Direct rip off of Paul Rudd's line in the original Anchorman. ...........

^^^^^^^LOL,  This guy serious?????

.......OMG, this is BREAKING NEWS, IF TRUE!  You mean the 50 year old man, in a wig, wearing a helmet half falling off his head and playing a sword like a guitar and using AMD FX boxes as a drum-set.....wasn't going for originality????  He STOLE material?!  

Well, consider my mind BLOWN!

 

[ajlueke]

Well, it doesn't really inspire me to watch his video, when the to quote "best line of the video", is a line that is taken from a par to sub par movie.  By definition everything else in the video is worse than that, so why would I watch it?

[amdbooger]

[ajlueke]

Ah yes, name calling, the most compelling evidence that a position is truly valid and backed by sound reasoning.

[ajlueke]

This meme is actually even more humorous than the "Gatoraid" meme.  First, it is exceedingly interesting that you would post it as a response to knowing the difference between "aid" and "ade".  But furthermore, the meme utilizes the "ad hominem" logically fallacy in attack a persons character versus their argument.

Personally attacks, and emotional responses are the hallmarks of narcissists.  Ironic then, that the meme utilizes a narcissistic argument style to decry the opposing party as a narcissist.  Again, could probably use a few updates.      

[ajlueke]

Also, the Gatorade meme is fails in attempted satire as well .  If it was intended to help alligators, it would be spelled Gatoraid.  Gatorade seems to imply it is thirst quenching beverage made from alligators in some way, as lemonade is made from lemons.  Perhaps the meme could benefit from an update. 

[colesdav]

Hi,

RE: Navi could come out at a good price/performance value. The fact that AMD is dumping HBM2 in favour of GDDR6 and also the yield of the 7nm chips would suggest that AMD could put out well performing cards at a far lower price than Nvidia.

Nvidia could move "Turing cards" to 7nm by end of this year. They should get a performance boost from that, potentially leaving AMD behind.

The Radeon VII is expensive becaiuse it uses 4 stacks of 4GB  HBM2 to give 16GB VRAM
I think 16GB is too much VRAM for gamers, and everyone talking about Radeon VII seems to forget HBCC on RX Vega that allows you to use some of your DRAM as cache if you really need that much VRAM memory. 
As far as I understand it the 4 stacks of HBM2 on Radeon VII are needed to provide the higher memory bandwidth and that is what partly helps Radeon VII performance versus RX Vega 64, along with 7nm process. It is not the additional 8GB of VRAM memory capacity that helps in mostr games that will not even use that much even today.
There is a new updated spec fpr HBM2 which allows for 2GB modules instead of 4GB.
So one potential option for Radeon VII for gamers could be 4 of 2GB HBM2 to give an 8GB card for gamers.
You would still have a wide memory bus, just not as "deep".  
The 2GB HBM2 should be able to run at even faster speed than the 4GB HBM2 modules.
So that may be a way for AMD to reduce cost of a Radeon VII and make one really targeted for gamers later on.
It depends how much effort they want to put into the Radeon VII.

If it is just a way to sell binned out "failed" Instinct cards then perhaps looking at lower capacity HBM2 will not happen.
Maybe a higher end Navi with HBM2 would make more sense at this stage. Time will tell.

[colesdav]

Here is some information on Navi. 

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU … 400 Million game on Radeon. Vega Radeon VII & GCN for High Performance Compute. Navi GPU for gaming on PC Console & Cloud. In Sony PlayStation. Navi new RDNA architecture. New CU high IPC +25%. +50% Perf/Watt. 10% > RTX2070. Launches in July.

Fingers crossed it will be a great Performance / Price.

[nec_v20]

If you look at the Steam Survey for GPUs you will find that the Nvidia 1050 Ti has TWO TIMES the amount of users THAN ALL OTHER USERS OF AMD GPUs PUT TOGETHER!

But wait, it gets worse, if you look at the the prevalence of the 1060 users then you will see that it is more than THREE TIMES the amount of users THAN ALL OTHER USERS OF AMD GPUs PUT TOGETHER!

I don't know where Lisa Su pulled the BS numbers she spouted her "400 Million" from - unless of course she was including Console Peasants, in which case she was being very dishonest - but if AMD wants to make a dent in Nvidia's hegemony then the price had better be right.

Another thing to consider is that the "+10% compared to the 2070" is completely bogus considering that the game they compared the new Navi to is heavily biased towards AMD GPUs in general.

The Vega 64 already outperforms the 2070 in the title "Strange Brigades" by about 10% - so that really isn't much of a recommendation for the new Navi flagship.

[colesdav]

I was just posting a "Tweet Summary" of what was said in the AMD presentation.

Everything will have to be verified by independent reviewer benchmarks.

The 400 Million gamers numbers includes Console users. 
I would not call Console users "Peasants".
A Console machine with a customised Ryzen Processor and a Navi GPU sounds good to me.
If you just want to game, a console is usually much less hassle than maintaining a high end gaming PC and more affordable for most.

I am well aware of the Sream Survey numbers, according to those AMD GPU market share situation is bad.

I have Strange Brigade and I will take a look at how it does on RX Vega 64 Liquid versus RTX2080.

Last time I looked the Nvidia RTX2080 is significantly outperforming RX Vega 64 Liquid on both DX12 and Vulkan in 3DMark tests.

Thanks.

[amdbooger]

I too felt a little disappointed initially, but AMD did make it abundantly clear that the NAVI release slated for 7/7, was their "mid range" Navi products, specifically made to target and kick around with the 2070.  AMD never said that these Navi cards (Navi 10) were meant to compete in the high end, that is for Navi 20 in 2020, and the Radeon VII now. 

As far as Vega is concerned, Vega did exactly what AMD claimed it would do.  It WAS a "high end" card.  The only card (consistently) faster than it was the 1080ti.  I had the regular 1080 (Asus ROG Strix) in my sons PC, and the Vega 64 in mine...they were pretty much identical in performance.  So, there was literally ONE consumer grade/gaming GPU that was faster than Vega 64.  I would call that pretty high end.  Everybody (speaking in general, not directly about you) acts as though IF there is SOMETHING out there faster than AMD's flagship GPU, it suddenly cannot be considered "high end".  I think this is a bit absurd.  I myself am guilty of this...I must admit that i wish AMD could have the bragging rights of having the FASTEST card out there sometimes.

But, what AMD does do...is deliver a "high end experience", for a fraction of the price.  As far as Vega pricing,  It has been confirmed that it was retailers, NOT AMD, who gouged the prices on the Vega line, as demand was through the roof because of miners.  As you can see today, AMD vowed that would not happen again with the Radeon VII launch, and it didn't...they were good on their word.  I got mine, new, for LESS than the advertised MSRP of $699, i paid $679 on NewEgg.  Furthermore, it comes with $119 in add-on value. 

As for Radeon VII performance, it has really matured.  As of this writing, in any benchmark i run, it is either is barely behind, equal to or beating a EVGA SC RTX 2080.  This is a reference Radeon VII VS a overclocked 2080, and it still manages to win and achieve parity with a card that cost over $100 more on NewEgg.  Driver maturity has really leveled the playing field, and in many cases, tilted it to the Radeon VII.  I cannot argue that value wise, a used 1080ti is the best way to go right now.  However i feel the Radeon VII with its MASSIVE 16gb of HBM2, is pretty much future proof for at least the next 5 years. 

THIS is what AMD is good at.  THIS is why, through the years, AMD has won me over from team green and Intel.  The fact that they make it possible for me to have a high end experience, for less money (generally) out of my pocket...makes it worth it to me.  Sounds corny, but i feel like AMD is the "working man's" tech company.  While Nvidia and Intel are pretty much for the elitist, who think anything other than a 9900k and a 2080ti is "garbage".....(lol, this was me 2004-2010).  

For me, i care about "feeling good" about the companies i give my money to.  Nvidia and Intel both lost me because i felt they were a bit too shady and deceptive with their practices.  Like Apple, i find them to be anti-consumer.  While every company obviously must make a profit, i find Intel and Nvidia to take it to the point of predatory and deceptive business practices.  Until that changes, i'm sticking with team red, even if it means i have to endure gaming with marginally less FPS.  

Side story:  I still have a socket AM3+ system running a FX-8350 and crossfire 6970's that i can game comfortably on.  Thinking of giving it to my nephew.     

[colesdav]

Pretty sure a GTX1080 is about 5% faster at 2K and about 8% faster at 4K than an AIB RX Vega 64 such as ROG Strix Vega 64 . I do not think Vega did what AMD claimed it would do. Far too much power draw and some new architecture features did not turn up. It was about 1 year late. No real IPC gains. Run Vega 64 at same GPU clock and Memory speed as a FuryX and the Vega is slightly slower. Also Fury X HBM overclock using Sapphire Trixx or MSI Afterburner was locked in AMD drivers just  before Vega launched, and it is still locked today. RX Vega 64 Liquid  beats a GTX1080 reference, at a cost of  350 Watts power draw in Turbo Mode versus 180W on the GTX1080.

Since Nvidia RTX launch the RX Vega 64 is more of a mid range GPU, sitting in between the RTX2060 and RTX2070.

The Radeon VII does not beat an RTX2080 based on benchmarks I see.

GPU prices have dropped and there are deals on both Nvidia and AMD GPU's including free games with both because of the Mining crash. I believe that is because there is too much supply chain inventory - cards that would have gone to miners now wait for gamers to buy, but new GPUs arrive soon.

Nvidia RTX2070 is slightly more expensive than a Sapphire RX Vega 64 Nitro  where I am at the moment, both give free games.
The RTX2070 is faster.
In my experience the Nvidia drivers are much more stable on Windows 10 and Nvidia have better drivers on Linux, including a GUI. 
The AIB RTX2070 can be purchased in 2 slot high form factor. 
That justifies additional cost to me.  

I am sure an AIB manufacturer could improve Radeon VII with a fully populated VRM, a dual BIOS so some bios mods could  burn more power and an AIO cooler like the RX Vega 64 Liquid or Fury X but with the option to add a proper AMD high speed pull fan or a bigger dual fan radiator or both. I wait to see if such a Radeon VII turns up. I do not think it will though. 

I really hope Navi does well.
Sapphire is rumoured to be producing an AIO  liquid cooled version of it. 

[amdbooger]

Disclaimer here, i game at 1080p, so i do my benches at 1080p.  My target is 144fps/144hz 

"The Radeon VII does not beat an RTX2080 based on benchmarks I see."

Radeon Vii vs RTX 2080, AMD is the better buy now?!? - YouTube 

It wins in plenty of RECENT benchmarks, i have my own benchmarks i can include as well (they are 1080 though).  At launch, i would agree with you, not so much now that drivers have matured a bit.  Its more of a "trading blows" scenario.

Sure, NOW Vega is more of a mid range card...but at the time of its release and until the RTX line was launched, only the 1080ti really "beat" it.  The Vega 64 and the standard 1080 were pretty much neck and neck on most games i played.  My point was that, at the time of its release, it definitely was a high end card.  the 2nd or 3rd fastest video card available to gamers until RTX was released.

As for the price of a Vega 64, it can be had for 399 new, the Sapphire Nitro edition on NewEgg right now.  The cheapest 2070 that isn't a refurb is 80 bucks more.  While it does not beat the 2070, it comes close enough to be considered a competitor, and 80 dollars cheaper.

I have to disagree about Nvidia drivers being better on Windows 10.  Having 2 machines with AMD and 2 with Nvidia...i find no discernible or significant difference between the two.  That is just anecdotal evidence i know, but it has been my personal experience.

I think Navi 10 will do just fine, provided people understand that its not going to de-throne the 2080ti.  Every time AMD announces a new GPU launch, people hype it up and only care about one thing:  "Will it beat a 1080TI" (Vega 64)  and now: "Will it beat a 2080TI" (Radeon VII and now Navi 10)

Mind you, AMD never claimed that either of these products were meant to beat Nvidia's flagship GPU's.  People just WANT them to, and are disappointed when they don't meet that unrealistic expectation. 

AMD is all about the value of FPS per Dollar spent, and in most comparisons i see, they win in that category more often than not.

There is no denying that if you must have the FASTEST gaming computer and do not care about money/value or you have a lot of money to spend, Intel, Nvidia is the way to go.  However, i think these are things that most people should, and do, consider when making a purchasing decision.   

[colesdav]

RE: https://community.amd.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F5eMl4j_lkTg 

I like the reviewer. Nice to see he tested the Avermedia PCIe 4K60 capture card. I was considering buying one, despite a negative experience with the Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme - a 1080p60FPS external USB Capture Card that is useless as it constantly stops recording.

He discusses the Radeon VII winning in 3Dmark Firestrike - but Firestrike is a DX11 1080p benchmark and is usually dominated by the CPU performance. I do not think that test is appropriate for this class of GPU. The Nvidia card might be winning the Graphics Scores. Nvidia have a better multithreaded DX11 driver which places more load on each CPU core. It might be loosing the physics score in that test. The physics score runs on all cores maxed out, and if all cores start off "hot" after running Graphics Test 1&2 on all cores then the Physics Test may well suffer and also the Combined test following that may take a performance hit. He may find if he tweaks CPU voltages for his Nvidia run that the FireStrike numbers for the two cards will be closer. Overall the way the numbers are calculated and weighted may result in a loss versus the Radeon VII.

As far as I know, nothing has been done in the Radeon VII to improve DX11 performance versus the RX Vega 64.
I still think the Nvidia cards handle DX11 command scheduling better than AMD GPUs.
Since most games are still DX11 by far, I hope Navi improves in DX11.

If you look at the benchmark results he presents, it is a tie on Average FPS. Note his statement about running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at Ultra the RTX2080 wins versus Radeon VII winning at High. The Radon VII "win" on  Shadow of the Tomb Raider at High is only by 1 FPS.

Then look at the 1% and 0.1% low numbers on the benchmarks. - the Nvidia GPU looks more consistent to me.
I see 7 wins for the Nvidia Cards when measuring the 1% lows for example versus 3 for the Radeon VII.

Finally he is comparing two manually overclocked GPU's. The amount of overclock you get depends on your own skill and the GPU sample you get. If AMD can tune the Radeon VII to perform better for all GPUs and work  then make that the default setting in the drivers. Perhaps the reviewer should have tried auto-overclocking on both cards. Is that feature available and working on the Radeon VII?

Most reviewers will only review the GPU out of the default settings because that is the performance that is guaranteed.

The Fan noise on the Radeon VII is higher.

In terms of cost, the Radeon VII has a higher recommended PSU than the RTX2080 - so you need to factor that in for a new build.

Finally FreeSync - that advantage is over as far as I see it. My Nvidia RTX2080OC works well on the FreeSync Monitors I have tried.

The Radeon VII is a new GPU and it should have launched better and provided a consistent and significant lead over the RTX2080 in normal "non-RTX" games for the same cost.
Also it is on TSMC "7nm" versus still Nvidia on "12nm". 

I think the Radeon VII was worse than the RX Vega 64 launch. The drivers were bad and many reviewers I watched had difficulty even running benchmarks. The UEFI BIOS was missing. There was very litle warning it was going to launch - I  bought a new RX Vega 64 Liquid and an Nvidia RTX2080 just before Radeon VII launched.  I tried to purchase a Radeon VII immediately at launch and they were sold out before  my order went through.

First impressions last and reviewers will do most of their testing at launch.
First impressions were bad, unfortunately.
I hope the same mistakes made with RX Vega 64 and Radeon VII launch are not repeated.

Here is a more recent review of Radeon VII versus RTX2080:
Has AMD's Radeon VII Comeback at the RTX 2080? Updated 38 Game Benchmark 3 Months Later - YouTube

[ajlueke]

The Radeon VII does have some pretty great advantages though.  If you are a pro user especially in the sciences, you cannot beat the level of double precision performance it provides at that price point.  That fact that it also plays games is just more icing on the cake.

[colesdav]

Yes FP64  performance is good but that is not much use for gamers and Radeon VII is marketed as a gaming card.
Discussed here: FP64 Perf and Separating Radeon VII from MI50 - The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The... 
I think last time an AMD Desktop Gaming GPU had such high FP64/FP32 ratio was HD7970 and R9280X cards. I think the RX580 is 1/16.
There is an old comparison table here:AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce FP32/FP64 GFLOPS Table | Geeks3D 
More explanation here:https://arrayfire.com/explaining-fp64-performance-on-gpus/ for anyone interested.

[astralstorm]

And to add, if you're looking for ANN performance, well, RTX is a win there once you get it running, despite even Vega having better fp64 performance. But even there Vega and VII have nothing on the Pro cards which do twice as good.

Still, RTX Titan and RTX compute GPU is better for AI specifically where cost is no object.

We'll see what Navi brings there, hopefully something good.

As for linux drivers specifically, no, AMD ones are vastly superior. What with being included in the kernel and amdgpu-pro being trivial to install, plus they don't do weird proprietary stuff with multiple monitors. Windows drivers are terrible though...

[colesdav]

RE: As for linux drivers specifically, no, AMD ones are vastly superior. What with being included in the kernel and amdgpu-pro being trivial to install, plus they don't do weird proprietary stuff with multiple monitors. Windows drivers are terrible though...

That's not my experience at all.
The amdgpu-pro driver is not trivial to install - I had problems on Ubuntu and Centos. Even installation instructions had errors which I reported to AMD.
Just getting ROCm installation up and running properly was a project in itself.
There is not even a Radeon Settings GUI in Linux for AMD cards to control simple things like fan speed and GPU clocks.
Hacking installation files, which is what you had to do with AMDGPU drivers, is not an acceptable solution to control GPU fan speed in 2019 in Linux.

Installation of Nvidia Drivers on Ubuntu is very easy, it's an installation choice, and offers a GUI with a similar experience to Windows. 

I run Ubuntu, Fedora, and RoboLinux on a PC with triple 1080p monitors from an Nvidia GTX780Ti primary GPU and I have no problems with it.
I can change monitor connections with the PC powered down and I can boot into the PC no problem. I use the Nvidia GUI to rearrange panels and it works.

The only problem I have is getting anything to use a secondary R9 Nano in Linux  as a display card.
Mixing Nvidia and AMD GPU in Linux is a problem. If I try to install the AMDGPU or AMDGPU-PRO drivers for the R9 Nano for example, I get a blackscreened OS and/or a login loop.

On another PC I run dual 1080p monitors in Ubuntu using AMDGPU-PRO driver from primary R9 FuryX. If I do anything to change monitor connections, then  the PC will not boot into anything other than a black screen. I have to reset monitor connections back to the way they were during driver install. The AMD Drivers have no special GUI to help arrange desktop displays. I am stuck using the built in Ubuntu Display Manager and it has very strange and unpredictable behavior. It's a mess.

[ajlueke]

For me personally, in the data sciences, the Radeon VII is about as good as it gets.  Sure, the pro cards have double the FP64 rate, but the cost is prohibitive for a home workstation.  We recently started collaborating with a European company, than analyzes a host of NMR data.  The software they use for data analysis is written in R and is written virtually entirely for double precision. 

Remoting in, and doing any kind of analysis after an acquisition was pretty slow with any other GPU.  With the Radeon VII, I can actually get quite a bit of this done, and maybe also get my Thorn quest done in Destiny 2. 

[cyberstorm64dd]

Wow, Thanks for writing this, I would love to hear more about the Vega cards, and other things too, like: can you crossfire a server gpu, and a gaming gpu together?

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[billthecat]

 I have to agree with you on this one. I use a 580 vid. card and have been super pissed off on the price's of video cards for a long time now. It seems that AMD is using current Nvidia prices to start selling these new video cards at which has been hyper inflated..  So we are seeing a mid-level graphics card selling for 499.00 where it should be around 399.00 at best. It's like we are still in the grips of the bit coin nightmare that we just can't wake up from.. It looks like I'm going to be keeping my 580 a lot longer than I thought I would.  Thanks for showing a bit of Nvidia AMD.... 

  Oh yeah, AMD, if you think I'm the only one who feels this way check out Nvidia's stocks, no one likes where this crap is heading..