AMD Radeon VII Then vs. Now Gaming Performance

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Gaming Performance Special

On the next couple of gaming pages are where we show gaming performance with special features the game may support on specific video cards.  For the most part today, that means we are going to show performance with HDR (High Dynamic Range) Display Option enabled in games.  We are using an HDR capable display, and so we can enable the HDR feature in these games and test performance.

For Metro Exodus it means we will show the game with HairWorks and Advanced PhysX enabled.  With the Radeon VII there aren’t any specialized features beyond HDR that these games specially support on this video card.

Battlefield V

In Battlefield V we are running the game in DX11 as it performs the best, and we have now enabled the HDR feature in the game. We are using the single-player mission “The Last Tiger” to do a manual run-through in.  

You can see here that it seems HDR performance has been slightly improved with the latest Adrenalin 19.5.2 driver versus the press launch driver 19.1.2 in January.  The largest difference is at 1080p with a 1.8% uplift.  Otherwise, 1440p and 4K exhibit similar performance.  With HDR enabled 1080p and 1440p are playable.  At 4K it’s a similar situation to without HDR, single-playable is very playable but in multiplayer you will find yourself lowering image quality to make it playable.

Far Cry 5

In Far Cry 5 we are running in DX11 with the highest in-game settings and HD Textures.  For this game we are testing the “HDR scRGB” mode.  This game does have an HDR10 mode, but we found in our testing that HDR10 has absolutely no performance impact compared to performance without HDR, so we didn’t learn anything new.  Moving over to the scRGB HDR mode performance did drop compared to no HDR, so we had something to compare. We are using the built-in game benchmark.

You can see that scRGB HDR mode Far Cry 5 performance has been improved with the latest drivers versus the press driver at launch.  At 1080p performance is up 5.3% and at 1440p performance is up 5.7%.  We even get a 3.7% performance uplift at 4K.  This shows that in this game the Radeon VII is faster than it was at launch time with HDR enabled. 

Hitman 2

In Hitman 2 we have DX12 enabled and now HDR enabled as well. We are using the built-in game benchmark in the “Miami” run.

There is a definite improvement in performance from the launch of this video card to the newest driver today.  At 1080p there is a 4.7% performance increase and at 1440p a 4.4% performance improvement.  Even at 4K performance is up by 5%.  It’s nice to see HDR performance improved like this over time, it’s not huge by any means, but it’s an acceptable optimization in performance over time. 

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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