The widely anticipated (albeit currently not widely available) prosumer AMD Radeon VII is finally available. It features a next generation Vega 20 GPU which is based on a 7nm manufacturing process, compared to 14nm in the first generation flagship: the RX Vega 64. The Radeon VII has a massive 16GB of expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) which offers a decent degree of future proofing and also makes it a good choice for memory hungry applications, however most current games do not require more than the 8GB that comes with both NVIDIA's RTX 2080 and AMD’s RX Vega 64. The Radeon VII has fewer cores than the RX Vega 64 (3840 vs 4096) but clock speeds have been boosted up to 1800 MHz compared to 1546 MHz in the RX Vega 64, the net result is 13.8 TFLOPS single precision computations (versus 13.4 TFLOPS for the RX Vega 64). On the negative side, the Radeon VII is designed with three cooling fans which can get noisy and early software drivers are reported to be buggy. Whilst there is a modest 16% performance advantage over the RX Vega 64, initial benchmarks indicate that the Radeon VII has an effective speed which is 6% short of the similarly priced RTX 2080. [Feb '19GPUPro]
Nvidia’s 3080 GPU offers once in a decade price/performance improvements: a 3080 offers 50% more effective speed than a 2080 at the same MSRP. Given the widespread issues AMD users are facing with 5000 series GPUs (blue/black screens etc.), it is unlikely that AMD would have posed a rational threat to Nvidia’s market share this year. Nvidia’s price cuts are likely related to upcoming console updates. The seven year old hardware in both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 is due an update later this year. Whatever the motivation behind Nvidia’s price cuts, Christmas has come early for PC gamers who can look forward to an unparalleled gaming experience in class leading titles such as Cyberpunk 2077. At ultra settings, with ray tracing enabled, Cyberpunk 2077 redefines the boundaries of immersive gaming. It makes GTA5 look like Tetris in comparison. The combination of RTX+DLSS delivers stunning graphics that are several tiers higher than both AMD's best discrete GPUs and the upcoming consoles. In terms of real world performance, Nvidia’s 3000 series has more or less put AMD’s Radeon group in checkmate. Nonetheless, AMD’s marketers are capable of delivering elaborate BS albeit whilst struggling to keep a straight face. Their marketing infrastructure outsold Intel in the CPU market despite a 15% performance deficit. Without an appropriate social media marketing strategy, Nvidia will probably lose considerable market share, for all the wrong reasons. [Sep '20GPUPro]
We calculate effective 3D speed which estimates gaming performance for the top 12 games. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield value for money. Our figures are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top GPUs. [GPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.