AMD today unveiled their next gaming GPU, one the company hopes will directly take on NVIDIA’s RTX 2080. Dubbed the AMD Radeon VII, it’s touted as the world’s first 7nm gaming GPU.

The AMD Radeon VII is slated to launch on February 7th, 2019 and will be priced at $700. AMD’s add-in-board (AIB) partners are expected to offer the Radeon VII GPU as well.

The company says its second-gen Vega architecture will provide 25 percent more performance at the same power consumption as previous Vega cards.

Image courtesy AMD

No specific mention was made surrounding VR capability, although AMD did a short on-screen demo of the soon-to-released Devil May Cry 5 at maxed-out settings, running 4K resolution, and framerates AMD president and CEO Dr. Lisa Su called “way above 60fps.”

Su also showed off a comparison chart, showing framerate of Battlefield V, Farcry 5 and Strange Brigade stacked up against the RTX 2080 when played in 4K.

Image courtesy AMD

Hard specs are still thin on the ground at this point, with the company saying only that it has a 7nm technology, 3840 stream processors, 16 GB memory, and 1 TB/s memory bandwidth.

It’s still unclear if AMD has included the new VirtualLink USB Type-C connector in its latest flagship graphics card. The company, along with NVIDIA and many others, are a part of consortium that created the VR connector standard, so it would be an odd move to not at least offer it in their reference card to be at an I/O parity with NVIDIA’s Founders Edition RTX 2000 series cards, which all include VirtualLink.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for any mention of VirtualLink as press get furthr chance to see the card in action here at CES 2019.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • JesuSaveSouls

    You gamers can afford this kind of hardware ? I use a 970 just fine.

    • Idiocracy Now

      I got a massive tax cut from Donald Trump and the Republican party, i can afford it easily.

      Trump 2020!

      • Jacob Singer

        Your user name makes perfect sense!

        • gothicvillas

          Trump 2020!! VR for Trump

          • Robbie Zeigler

            TRUMP!

    • Niklas Fritzell

      …

    • Harris

      970 still rocks for 1080p gaming!

    • Niklas Fritzell

      Just pray to the lawd and his holiness shall grant a rain of gpus on thy blessed porch

    • Proof XR Lab

      depends on your spending priorities? some people like to drink, smoke, eat out, etc.

      i prefer a nice graphics card for my PC VR. RTX2080Ti owner, and very happy with my purchase.

  • James Clerk Maxwell

    I would not hold my breath for this to be a 2080 killer. AMD and Nvidia share a duopoly. They have everything to lose in an head-on competition..

    • Andres Velasco

      it can probably beat the 2080, but not the 2080ti.

      • Adderstone VR

        Considering a 1080ti runs happily side by side with a 2080…this seems rather poor

    • grabma

      I really doubt they are conspiring to raise prices together. Their past history shows they have been throwing punches at each other. AMD and Intel have a duopoly and still AMD regardless is trying to kick Intel while they are down. A duopoly is far FAR healthier than a monopoly. Competition is a catalyst for improvement.

      • James Clerk Maxwell

        Maybe you are right. Maybe I am :-) A duopoly would be better than a monopoly if there was healthy competition going on, pushing down the prices. But would those 2 companies stupidly compete away billions of profits ? It is very straightforward for only two companies to fix price, while **appear** tp trade blows, to avoid customers and authorities backlash.

      • dave lasky

        They are related you know that right? The two CEO’s of Nvidia and AMD. Funny how the pricing is the same for 2080 and VII. Maybe a family favor was called in since Nvidia’s stock has tumbled 50%?

  • Harris

    radial fans + same power consumption + foolish pricing = Nvidia remains on top. Better luck with the low-mid range, AMD.

    • dave lasky

      Agreed, all AMD had to do is come in $60 cheaper than the 2080 and they would be viewed as the caring company. Why would you offer less for the same money? Someone screwed up at AMD.

  • Tom Szaw

    I bought 2080 RTX for 680 EUR in Germany. The card is in my PC since 1 month. Raytracing, DLSS, overclocking and similar price. At least there is some competition. Maybe 2080 RTX cards price will drop now even better.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    very disappointing news.. no news on navi, and if this is all they can deliver (without raytracing capabilities) for the same (or even higher) price as the RTX2080, why would you buy this card?

    • Son of man

      ouch

    • Zerofool

      Sorry for responding so late.
      I agree, the event wasn’t what it was expected to be. Navi apparently isn’t yet ready and will be shown closer to Computex (June) with possible launch at E3 (July). Again, it will be slower than VII, but the price is what matters. I’m unhappy that we don’t know much more about it than we did before the event. Let’s see if they manage to deliver.
      Radeon VII is actually just a statement – it says “we also have a high-end card”, and is targeted at their die-hard supporters. Reportedly, only a few thousand cards are produced (some say 5k, others say 20K with potentially 40K more coming if there’s demand), and on top of that, they’ll be sold at a loss. However, that’s still the better option for AMD – these are mostly chips that didn’t qualify for Radeon Instinct MI60/MI50 and would otherwise be scrapped. With Radeon VII they are able to salvage the less capable/defective chips. That’s what this card is and why it isn’t interesting to us.
      The CPU demo however was a great indication for what’s to come in the Ryzen 3000 series. The ES they showed was allegedly their mid-range model, the 65W TDP 8C/16T SKU. And it was on par with 9900k’s MT performance. Just imagine what the higher TDP versions will achieve, not to mention the 12C/24T and 16C/32T beasts. I just can’t wait to see gaming tests. According to some reports, the main hold-up is the production of the X570 chipset, with mass availability scheduled for the end of June (around Computex). I won’t be surprised if we see the 8C/16T Ryzen 3000 models launching earlier, with the 12C and 16C models coming later with the X570 mobos, which are designed for the higher TDP required by these CPUs, along with PCIe Gen 4 support out of the box (some X470 mobos may receive BIOS update to enable it, if they qualify).
      But even if they manage to beat intel at single-core perf, it will be a short-lived victory. However, they still might maintain core count advantage in the mainstream for quite some time. Again, interesting things ahead… and a reminder why competition is important.

  • oompah

    No ray tracing

    • dave lasky

      Foe what games, plural? Ray tracing is a joke. You have to put puddles of water everywhere in your game to see the ray tracing and that sucks up a lot of useful power for fps. I actually find ray tracing distracting, it’s like turning your car into the sun and having to put down your visor to keep it from annoying you.

  • Niklas Fritzell

    High price or not, this is good news because now there is going to be top range competition between the two cards in due time .

  • *Little* unbelievable that AMD doesn’t understand how useful VR is for pushing card sales, now and in the future.

  • Yes, but it has not a VirtualLink port…