World News – GB – AMD unveils Big Navi: RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 take the amp

The Radeon RX 6000 series is more than a valuable alternative; AMD plans to go against the best of Nvidia and could win

AMD just dropped the Big Navi bomb, which you can see above detailing the main features of the Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6800… oh, and one more thing: Radeon RX 6900 XT AMD is aiming for the top of the GPU benchmark hierarchy and the best graphics card lists

The names of the graphics cards aren’t surprising, and most specs were at least assumed six months ago – our AMD Big Navi hub has been filled with speculation for quite some time, and we weren’t too far off, mostly But this time we have AMD’s official full specs, pricing and even some comparative benchmarks at 4K and 1440p It looks like AMD isn’t just hoping to move closer to Nvidia’s Ampere GPUs, it has a very good chance of taking the lead in GPU performance and efficiency for the first time in over a decade. Could this be AMD’s ‘Ryzen moment’ for the GPU industry? Let’s cover what AMD revealed and what it means for our next graphics card purchase

We’ll go into all the details below, but early indications are that Big Navi is going to live up to its name.It doesn’t have the raw core count of Nvidia’s Ampere architecture, but TFLOPS. Theories don’t always match real-world performance In fact, AMD previously held an advantage in TFLOPS over Nvidia, but ended up lagging behind in gaming performance. The Infinity cache and other changes can reverse the tables this time around, as a large cache can help eliminate many trips to VRAM for framebuffer access

Let’s start with the main competitor, the Radeon RX 6800 XT This will work against Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080, which is theoretically priced from $ 700, but in practice you can’t buy the RTX 3080. for the time being Well, maybe you can if you’re lucky, but the supply certainly doesn’t meet current demand, and it might not do until 2021.However, maybe AMD could help. , because the RX 6800 XT has impressive specs and initial performance (take with a grain of salt, as with all benchmarks provided by the manufacturer) – oh, and the 6800 XT will. have a starting price of $ 659 Here is a rundown of the main specs:

The most recent rumors were broadly correct, and that makes sense The RX 6800 XT will have 72 CPUs (compute units), each with 64 shader cores The game clock sits at just over 2 GHz , while the boost clock (which if it’s something like Navi 1x is basically a maximum that you’ll rarely see) is 225 GHz Combined, that gives a maximum compute performance of 207 TFLOPS That’s technically a lot less than the RTX 3080 298 TFLOPS, but some of Nvidia’s potential performance ends up going to INT32 calculations

What is unclear at this time is whether AMD has added simultaneous FP32 INT32 data paths to RDNA2 / Navi 2x, or whether there are other optimizations that make up for the apparent computational deficit If so, real world performance will likely end up being quite close to the RTX 3080, or even surpassing it. Even if it does not have a simultaneous INT FP, however Well, let’s move on to perhaps the most interesting aspect of the new architecture, the 128MB Infinity Cache

Simply put, it’s a huge cache AMD didn’t go into all the details, but the basic idea is to reduce the amount of memory traffic and thus increase the effective bandwidth by having a L3 cache (L4?) Large enough to hold all the frame buffer – and maybe a little more Reducing all that extra memory traffic can also dramatically improve overall efficiency, which AMD says RDNA2 does With the same 256-bit GDDR6 interface, apparently still running at «  only  » 14 Gbps, AMD claims that the new Infinity Cache cuts power consumption by 10% while increasing effective bandwidth by 117%. true, that means the RX 6800 XT has the equivalent of around 972 Gb / s of bandwidth, much more than the RTX 3080

It is important to highlight the other two data: the total GDDR6 memory of 16 GB and the TBP of 300 W (total power of the card) It is 60% more memory for textures and other data compared to to the RTX 3080 We wondered if 10GB is enough for Nvidia’s RTX 3080, and the answer is that it’s probably Yet having more memory won’t hurt performance – it can only help you. TBP 300W, AMD, and Nvidia don’t always measure power the same, but AMD says 300W should be the total amount of power consumed by the cards, meaning it will actually be 20W less than the RTX. 3080 Except that, in our own power tests, the RTX 3080 tended to come close to 330W

Anyway, let’s get to the preliminary benchmarks Usual warnings applied, grains of salt, etc. How does AMD say the RX 6800 XT works? Take a look at these 4K and 1440p ultra RX 6800 XT vs RTX 3080 benchmarks:

According to AMD figures, the RX 6800 XT is not only competitive with the RTX 3080; it’ll be slightly faster Of course, AMD probably picks games that favor its GPU a bit, and it’s worth noting that none of these benchmarks have ray tracing enabled. Still, if AMD can match the performance of the RTX 3080 on average, with more memory, less power, and a lower price tag? Seems like a victory to us, pending independent testing, of course

There will of course also be custom AIB RX 6800 XT cards, and many of these will come with factory overclockings and higher prices depending on how performance changes, on a larger scale. selection of games, the RX 6800 XT has a lot of potential

The RX 6800 XT competes with the RTX 3080, at a slightly lower price, but AMD doesn’t stop there Big Navi, or Navi 21, is the GPU at the heart of the 6800 XT, and it will also be featured in a slightly smaller variant that drops the XT The Radeon RX 6800 is to Navi 21 what the RX 5700 was to Navi 10: fewer cores, lower clocks, but still a lot of performance Oh, and it’ll cost less – $ 70 less, to be precise The starting price of the RX 6800 is $ 579

Most of the main features are similar, but instead of 72 CUs and 4608 shader cores, the RX 6800 will have 60 CUs and 3840 shader cores It also advertised lower clock speeds of around 150-200 MHz, leading to a theoretical compute performance of 162 TFLOPS.However, it still contains the full 128MB and 16GB Infinity cache of GDDR6, and the reducing clocks and the number of cores gives it a TBP of 250W In short, the RX 6800 goes after the GeForce RTX 3070 It’s going to be an interesting game

Considering how the RTX 3070 stacks up against the RTX 3080 (it’s about 25% slower at 4K), AMD seems to be in a very good position for the more modest high-end GPU market. The 6800 XT has about 30% less compute than the RTX 3080, but the RX 6800 only has about 20% less compute than the RTX 3070 It also has twice the memory and potentially much more efficient memory bandwidth thanks to to the Infinity cache

Again, caveats and disclaimers apply, and AMD didn’t have the RTX 3070 for testing.But it did have the RTX 2080 Ti, which our own testing shows is a few percent faster than the RTX 3070 Here are AMD’s results:

As expected, the RX 6800 looks very promising compared to the RTX 3070 Out of the ten games tested – and note that this is the same set of games used on the RX 6800 XT comparison – the RX 6800, at worst , basically ties the RTX 2080 Ti (eg, in The Division 2 at 4K ultra or Wolfenstein Youngblood at 4K Mein Leben!), while in most other games it appears to be 10-20% faster

We were pretty impressed with the GeForce RTX 3070 when we reviewed it very recently, but we suggested we wait and see what AMD brings to the party. Now we’re a lot less sure how The RTX 3070 Will Stack Granted, it’ll go on sale three weeks before AMD’s planned launch, but with what AMD showed today? We really want to do some independent testing to see how this compares to a different selection of games.

The price story is an interesting wrinkle, of course If we were looking for price parity between the RX 6800 and the RTX 3070, AMD gets a clear victory Twice the memory, more efficient bandwidth and performance apparently superior? That’s exactly what we love to see.But Big Navi is a big chip, and TSMC’s N7 process costs more than Samsung’s 8N process, so AMD isn’t looking to blow up barn doors with the premium of $ 80 Yet twice the VRAM probably puts this one in favor of AMD

AMD likes to end their presentations with a bit of a surprise In this case, it wasn’t too much of a surprise since the rumors and talk about the RX 6900 XT have been circulating for quite a while. Rumored to be Big Navi, or Navi 21, had twice as many CPUs as Navi 10, at least in its maximum configuration The RX 6800 XT deactivates 8 CPUs to improve efficiency or the number of chips that will meet requirements The RX 6800 deactivates a quarter of the RX 6900 XT CPUs, however? This is the real Big Navi – Biggest Navi I guess

The specifications of the Radeon RX 6900 XT are almost identical to those of the Radeon RX 6800 XT; only this time there are 80 CPUs This puts the theoretical compute performance at 23 TFLOPS (spike) AMD did not show any difference in GDDR6 clocks, and the TBP remains 300W, so basically these are the best chips in every wafer that end up flawless Probably only 5-10% of all Navi 21 chips will meet 6900 XT requirements, 30-50% should work as RX 6800 XT, and most of the remaining chips can work as RX 6800

Here’s the big question, though: If the RX 6800 XT is competitive with the RTX 3080, wouldn’t 11% more CUs and shader cores essentially place it against RTX 3090? The answer: yes

There are other caveats this time Where the RX 6800 XT apparently ran in standard mode, and AMD ran the RX 6800 with AMD Smart Access memory enabled, testing the RX 6900 XT was performed with Rage mode (overclocking) and Smart Access memory both enabled This is potentially 6-13% more performance, and even then it doesn’t look like AMD will win in multiple games. But it’s definitely close

How much will the Radeon RX 6900 XT cost? AMD isn’t going all Nvidia on us and asking $ 1500, but it also doesn’t give out the cards The RX 6900 XT’s MSRP is $ 999 Also at launch it looks like the RX 6900 XT will be a lot more limited in supply than other cards, and there are rumors that AMD will be the only one selling the cards directly to consumers – at least for a little while It’s like the launch of Nvidia’s 20 series, perhaps, with higher prices and direct profits to AMD for the first month or two after launch.

There is a big bonus for the remaining 10% of performance Nvidia’s RTX 3090 bonus is much higher (more than double the 3080), although it at least doubles the amount of VRAM But with 16 GB, AMD doesn’t really need to add more memory None of the halo GPUs will sell a ton of units, however

We’ll have to see how things develop in the coming months with the RX 6900 XT In a similar vein to what AMD has done with other launches (Ryzen 9 3950X and the upcoming Ryzen 9 5950X), the RX 6900 XT will only be available about three weeks after the RX 6800/6800 XT cards launch

It’s great that we finally have hard data to continue on – more smoke and mirrors, rumors and guesses, or any other shenanigans On paper, AMD seems to offer less compute, less tape high bandwidth, but higher efficient bandwidth and lower power requirements, at higher (or at least competitive, if you look at the RX 6800) prices Combined this apparently translates to performance that should be quite competitive with Nvidia’s Ampere RTX 30 series GPUs

There are still a few unknowns, however One is ray tracing performance AMD said it has a ray accelerator per CPU, similar to what Nvidia did with Turing and Ampere But even though Ampere’s GPUs from Nvidia have an RT core by SM, Nvidia also claims that Ampere RT cores are up to twice as fast during ray / triangle intersection calculations Meanwhile, AMD claims its ray tracing hardware is about ten times faster than RT via software shaders, which would at least put AMD on par with Turing

The fact that AMD doesn’t show any performance figures with ray tracing enabled is a bit of a concern Then again, even after more than two years, there aren’t many games that support ray tracing. spokes, and image quality gains in some games are relatively limited The PS5 and Xbox Series X will have GPUs based on RDNA2, but the PS5 has at least 36 CUs, while the Xbox Series X has 52 – both slower than even the RX 6800, in others. Frankly terms, the Xbox Series S with just 20 CUs looks pretty anemic right now – we’d steer clear of this one if you wanted something better than a current-gen Xbox One X experience.Whatever it was, we’ll definitely see. a lot of new generation console games start using ray tracing for certain effects, but it also seems that many games offer the choice between higher picture quality and lower performance, or higher performance without ray tracing This is essentially the same kind of compromise PC users with RTX cards have been making for the past two years

The other question is whether AMD will have an alternative to DLSS The answer: it’s working on what it calls super resolution, but it’s not ready yet Super Resolution will be part of the independent FidelityFX suite of the hardware, just like the current CAS (Contrast Aware Sharpening) We have seen quite a few games using FidelityFX with CAS, and adoption is basically at about the same rate as games using ray tracing and / or DLSS

How many games will support FidelityFX and Super Res specifically, especially compared to DLSS? AMD says there are currently 35 games with FidelityFX support in the works, of which around 25 have already been delivered (the current roster includes Borderlands 3, Death Stranding, Gears 5, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Hitman 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World Iceborne, Rage 2, Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, Serious Sam 4, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, World War Z and Zombie Army 4) Could it end up as G-Sync vs FreeSync, where Nvidia’s solution came in first and maybe technically superior, but AMD’s alternative works almost as well, costs less, works with both companies’ GPUs, and results in more support? Time will tell, but basically don’t count AMD

Still more to discuss AMD claims Zen 3 processors will be the fastest gaming chips on the market in November, and there will be other benefits of using an RX 6000 graphics card with an X570 motherboard and a Ryzen 5000 processor AMD calls this memory Smart Access, which removes some limitations in how GPUs and processors can access each other’s memory.We have a full breakdown of Smart Memory Access elsewhere, but that’s basically the case. advantage AMD obtains by being the manufacturer of CPUs, chipsets and GPUs

AMD also says there’s a decent amount of overclocking headroom available with Big Navi, and that it has a new one-click Rage Mode overclocking solution as part of its drivers Enable Both. features and performance are generally around 6% faster overall compared to stock These were both enabled on the results of the RX 6900 XT, which would certainly seem to present AMD’s performance in the best possible light.

Of course, consumers must be able to buy the cards as well, which we must again wait to see what the stock looks like AMD already has a lot going on with the launch of the Zen 3 processor, as well as Xbox consoles. Series X / S and PlayStation 5 All use TSMC’s N7 manufacturing node, which is already in high demand Nvidia reportedly went for Samsung’s ‘inferior’ 8N simply because it could get the quantities of chips and wafers it wanted , but maybe part of it was that AMD was already reserving a large chunk of TSMC’s volume

AMD’s RX 6800 XT is almost sure to sell, just like the PS5 and Xbox consoles and just like the RTX 30 series But maybe the RX 6000 only sells for a few weeks instead of months , and maybe the offer ends up better than Nvidia did. Unfortunately, no one (apart from the Danish store ProShop) is actively discussing exact figures regarding the supplies and shipments of the new GPUs AMD says it is working with its partners to ensure the best possible launch experience, but Nvidia has said something similar

Conclusion: If you want a new GPU this holiday season, whatever is actually in stock will be the better option than a card that is out of stock in the nebulous future If AMD can provide sufficient amounts of Big Navi, and if Nvidia’s supply of Ampere GPUs continues to be limited, AMD should move a little more GPUs than previous launches We will know more about the RDNA2 architecture and have a full review when the cards launch on the 18th. November

The full presentation of AMD’s slides is below, including disclaimers, for anyone interested in viewing it

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