Radeon VII Gaming Performance
On this page we are going to begin our apples-to-apples gameplay performance testing. In all of these games to follow we have the latest patches installed as of the publication of this review. There were some recent new patches in a few of these games, and those have been installed, we will note the game when we get to them. All of our data is represented below in bar graph form showing the AVERAGE FPS result gained either from the built-in game benchmark run or manual run-through data. In the case of benchmark runs the benchmark has been run three times averaging out the results. All data represents real-world gameplay performance at 4K, 1440p and 1080p using the highest in-game settings as indicated.
Battlefield V
In Battlefield V we chose to run in DX11, DX11 API runs smoother in this game compared to DX12 and performs the highest. We ran the game at the highest possible settings at all three resolutions. We are using the single-player mission “The Last Tiger” to do a manual run-through in.
According to our graph there are no major changes in performance from the launch press driver 19.1.2 to today with Adrenalin 19.5.2 From January to June performance has not changed, it started out as fast as it was going to get from the get-to. We experience high performance at 1080p with over 100FPS on average as well as strong performance at 1440p averaging in the 95FPS. This video card handles those two resolutions well.
At 4K it starts to get iffy, in single-player performance is fine, but in multiplayer the performance does come in averaging under 60FPS. This can mean you may experience minimums that are simply too low to really enjoy a match. With the Radeon VII you may find yourself wanting to drop to 1440p in multiplayer to keep the minimum framerate as close to 60FPS as you can. However, in single-player the performance at 4K is acceptable for single-player gameplay.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided we are running the game in DX12 API which performs well on this video card with smooth performance that is faster than DX11. We are running the game at the highest in-game settings. We are using the built-in in-game benchmark.
With this game we do see some slight performance advantages with the latest driver versus the press driver back in January. We actually find the largest difference is at 1080p, but there is still a very slight improvement at the higher resolutions. At 1080p with the latest driver performance is up 2% versus the press driver and this also continues at 1440p. The AMD Radeon VII doesn’t perform poorly here, it does allow 1080p and 1440p gameplay at acceptable framerates. However, once we get to 4K, performance drops off and the game is unplayable.
Far Cry 5
In Far Cry 5 we are running the game in DX11 with the highest in-game settings enabled plus the downloadable HD Textures. We are using the built-in in-game benchmark.
In this game we are seeing even larger differences than we did in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Once again, these differences seem to be focused at 1080p. At 1080p the latest Adrenalin 19.5.2 driver is 5.3% faster than the January 19.1.2 press driver. Consider lower resolutions are typically more CPU bottlenecked that is nice to see such a bump in performance at a lower resolution with new drivers. At 1440p we are seeing a slightly larger 5.6% performance increase with the latest drivers versus the launch press drivers. It means that 1080p and 1440p performance in this game is incredible, in the 90’s-100FPS range.
Even at 4K we see a performance advantage with the latest driver, but it is smaller at 3.5%. The performance does average below 60FPS, but this game performs well and for the gameplay this is acceptable for the most part. It seems overall that this game’s performance has increased on the Radeon VII since launch.
Hitman 2
We are running the latest version of Hitman 2; it was recently patched this past week. We are running the new 2.30 patch version. This new patch version has made improvements to the DX12 API performance of this game. We are running this game in DX12 at the highest game settings and using the built-in in-game benchmark in the “Miami” run.
We are also seeing some performance improvements in this game using the latest drivers versus the early press drivers. Performance seems to be up near 4% faster at 1440p using the newest drivers versus the performance at launch in January. We are also seeing a near 2% increase at 1080p. At 4K performance is slightly faster as well.
This game is easily playable at 1080p and 1440p, especially with the newest drivers. However, 4K is rather out of the question. This video card suffers greatly at trying to push this game at 4K with the highest in-game settings. Sacrifices to image quality would have to be greatly made to make 4K playable.