Unboxing AMD's Radeon VII, The First 7nm GPU Unleashed

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su took the wraps off the company’s first 7nm GPU based on its Vega architecture at CES 2019 in Las Vegas last month. Dr. Su’s keynote underscored the company’s lead against its rivals with respect to silicon process technology, and AMD’s new Radeon VII is one of multiple new products in its graphics and processors portfolios that’s built on a cutting-edge 7nm manufacturing node. And while AMD’s Radeon VII is essentially a process shrink of the company's Radeon Vega architecture with a few tweaks and fixes, along with that process geometry optimization should come optimizations for power consumption, clock speed, performance and other fine tunings of AMD’s base Radeon Vega GPU microarchitecture.

This product launch should be interesting to watch and see how the cards fall, as this AMD GPU is unique in this regard, though there are still a few days left before its full NDA embargo lift. As such, we’re still kicking the tires and testing AMD’s new Radeon VII, but we did want to give you a glimpse of the product up-close, personal, and unboxed. 

Here’s just a little something to whet your appetite before the full reveal that is coming in the days ahead…

As you can see, Radeon VII, aptly named for its 7nm process tech, has a massive GPU multichip module, though only part of the design – just the GPU itself – is actually 7nm. The 16GB of stacked HBM2 on its four corners is manufactured by Samsung, likely on a 20nm node. The card itself is a well-designed dual slot solution with a brushed aluminum finish, three axial fans, and the trademark red Radeon lighted cube at its top corner.

Another observation to make is that the heat sink on board runs the entire length of the PCB behind the fans, and is vented on the three side edges of the fan shroud. You’ll also note that it takes two 8-pin PCIe power connectors to supply this card with juice. And finally, we see AMD’s IO configuration selection on the Radeon VII’s back plate of thee full sized DisplayPort outputs and one HDMI 2.0 port.

We know you’re all anxiously waiting and want to know how the new AMD Radeon VII performs, but other than what AMD has shared publicly with respect to its performance claims, this is all we can show as of today. Stay tuned to us here at HH, however, as we’re only a few short days away from the full reveal. Until then, stay calm and Radeon…