AMD Radeon VII Compute and Pro Driver Performance Over Time

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Conclusion

Today’s review was a follow-up to our previous review: AMD Radeon VII Then vs. Now Gaming Performance.  While that review was focused on real-world gaming performance between past drivers and now, today’s review was something completely different.  We used synthetic benchmarks in today’s review to specifically test the other side of the AMD Radeon VII’s performance over time.  We wanted to focus on its content creator potential testing compute performance, GPGPU performance, API performance and video encoding performance.  These are all aspects of video card people pay a lot of money for. 

We set out to compare the Radeon VII using the launch press Adrenalin 19.1.2 driver released on January 22nd, 2019 to the now current Adrenalin 19.6.2 driver dated June 24th, 2019.  In this way we could see if any of these compute features have improved over time with the latest Adrenalin drivers.

We then took it one step further and thoroughly tested performance with the AMD Radeon Pro SSG 19.Q2.1 driver dated June 5th, 2019 installed.  No one has done this yet and actually compared Radeon Pro driver performance to the latest Adrenalin driver.  We wanted to see if the Radeon Pro drivers would provide any benefit to compute performance over Adrenalin. 

Remember, the Radeon Pro drivers are not built for gaming (though gaming does work) they are built for stability and security and commercial application performance on the Radeon VII.  They do not have specific workstation optimizations; however, they do have that aforementioned commercial application performance.

Press Driver vs. Latest Adrenalin Driver

First let’s look back at any advantages experienced running the latest Adrenalin drivers over the launch press driver.  This will tell us if Adrenalin (which is built for gaming) has improved performance at all in compute scenarios.

It’s best to divide up the topics we are interested in, first let’s talk about compute performance.  In the benchmark CompuBench we did see some slight improvements using the latest Adrenalin release versus the original press driver.  We aren’t talking huge gains, but notable gains.  We saw some more noteworthy gains in LuxMark, specifically the Microphone scene.  In RatGPU performance was two seconds faster.  There was a clear slight trend of uplift across the ViennaCLBench.  While there were some outliers, there wasn’t an overall case of major performance differences.  The general consensus seems to be a general uplift, but only very minor, nothing that will make or break a purchasing decision.

When we look at video encoding things are a bit different.  In HandBrake there was a clear advantage using the latest Adrenalin release driver versus the press driver.  There was an 11% performance advantage encoding video.  Lastly, if we look at API performance, or semi-gaming performance we find that there was a large performance improvement in Vulkan API performance using the latest Adrenalin release drivers.  We also saw our Time Spy results and Superposition results chime in a bit higher.

Radeon Pro Driver

The real advantage though seems to be with the Radeon Pro driver.  Now, we know there are not workstation optimization support included with this driver on the Radeon VII.  However, there are still some application optimizations, as well as more stability and security.  We actually experienced many situations where the Radeon Pro driver was faster at certain things, but not all things, and not in a major way.

Looking at compute performance this is where the Radeon Pro driver seems to shine.  In all of our compute results in every benchmark the Radeon Pro always had the highest performance, even if it was just a small difference, it exists and happened.  In CompuBench we see notable improvements in Subsurface Scattering, Vertex, Ocean Simulation and Catmull-Clark Subdivision. 

Blender Benchmark did render faster with the Radeon Pro drivers.  Indigo Benchmark had a noteworthy uplift in the Supercar rendering performance.  The LuxMark Microphone scene was faster with Radeon Pro.  Even SPECviewperf 13 had some higher performance with Radeon Pro drivers.  ViennaCLBench probably showed the highest advantage with Radeon Pro drivers across the board. In video encode the Radeon Pro drivers also had the fastest time in HandBrake.        

What the Radeon Pro drivers weren’t the best at is things more closely related to game performance.  It wasn’t the best at API overhead testing or Time Spy or Superposition testing.  Except for the case of OpenGL in Superposition, it did do better in the OpenGL API in that benchmark. 

Final Points & Summary

If you bought the Radeon VII, or thinking of buying it as a gaming video card then absolutely use the latest Adrenalin drivers, no question about that.  If you are using old drivers, upgrade to the latest version for the best performance.  You will see marginal gains, but at least you’ll have the best gaming performance you can.

If you are a content creator, or processing compute workloads solely, then upgrading to the Radeon Pro drivers may give you a slight edge over Adrenalin.  It won’t be huge, it may not even be noticeable, but technically it will give you a slight edge in those demanding workloads over Adrenalin drivers.  If you are churning out work that demands this, or encoding video files all day long, the Radeon Pro drivers will give you stability and a slight uplift in performance.  It will not however magically transform your AMD Radeon VII into a Radeon Pro Enterprise level video card.

Once again, the AMD Radeon VII has proven that it is a video card of its time.  The performance of the video card at launch is just about what you’d expect it to be well after launch.  The performance we had then, is the performance we have now, except for some specific scenarios. 

The Radeon VII is a good dual-wielding video card, able to game and also act serious.  It’s unique because you can also use the Radeon Pro drivers, improving stability and security in mission critical situations and maybe getting a slight bump in compute performance along the way.  Either way, just always make sure you are using the latest drivers and you’ll have the best AMD Radeon VII experience you can have.

BTW, we know you all want to see other areas covered with the AMD Radeon VII as well, such as overclocking game performance, which has been asked. We have more planned for the AMD Radeon VII in the future, there will be more reviews to come.

Discussion

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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