AMD says Big Navi, not next-gen consoles, will be its first RDNA 2 product

[midian182]

Highly anticipated: We’ve known for a while that the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will come with AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs, but they won’t be the first products to feature the new architecture. The company has confirmed that an RDNA 2 'Big Navi' graphics card will be arriving before the next-generation consoles.

Speaking at the Bank of America 2020 Securities Global Technology Conference, AMD CFO David Kumar said: "There's a lot of excitement for Navi 2, or what our fans have dubbed as the Big Navi. This will be our first RDNA 2 based product."

With the PS5 and next Xbox set for release this holiday season, the announcement suggests we’ll see a Big Navi flagship graphics card that could take on the aging RTX 2080 Ti sooner than expected. AMD’s revelation lends credence to a recent report claiming Big Navi GPUs would arrive this September.

Kumar said that AMD was "on track to launch our next-generation Zen 3 CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs in late 2020."

"Big Navi is a halo product," the CFO added. "Enthusiasts love to buy the best, and we are certainly working on giving them the best."

In other words, we can expect to pay a high price for this card, probably $1,000+, but that’s to be expected if it’s able to rival the best Nvidia has to offer.

RDNA 2 isn’t just going to be for high-end graphics cards and next-gen consoles, though; it’ll reach through AMD’s entire stack. "It will go from mainstream GPUs all the way up to the enthusiasts and then the architecture also goes into the game console products... as well as our integrated APU products," said Kumar. "This allows us to leverage the larger ecosystem, accelerate the development of exciting features like ray tracing and more."

RDNA 2 GPUs are said to bring a 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement over RDNA 1, along with increased clock speeds and instructions-per-clock. They also feature VRS (Variable Rate Shading) and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. With Nvidia’s Ampere-based consumer cards rumored to arrive around the same time, the second half of the year will be an exciting time for PC gamers.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/85494-amd-rdna-2-based-graphics-cards-arrive-before.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

The 2080Ti will be replaced by the 3000 series soon.

It was released in Fall 2018.

I doubt AMD has an answer for the 3080/Ti

 

[rrwards]

The 2080Ti will be replaced by the 3000 series soon.

It was released in Fall 2018.

I doubt AMD has an answer for the 3080/Ti

You're right. You probably have better insight into company competition than AMD, who's actual success depends on knowing what NVidia is going to do next.

/s if it wasn't obvious

 

[Mister_K]

You're right. You probably have better insight into company competition than AMD, who's actual success depends on knowing what NVidia is going to do next.

/s if it wasn't obvious

Look at the history, it has been like this for years. NVIDIA releases a card, its more powerful than AMD. AMD comes in, might be nearing or topping the NVIDIAs flagship and NVIDIA releases the new iteration. Rinse and repeat.

So OT, yeh AMD might have the answer, but does not mean it will compete with NVIDIAs flagship. Shame, I know...

 

[Privery]

Look at the history, it has been like this for years. NVIDIA releases a card, its more powerful than AMD. AMD comes in, might be nearing or topping the NVIDIAs flagship and NVIDIA releases the new iteration. Rinse and repeat.

So OT, yeh AMD might have the answer, but does not mean it will compete with NVIDIAs flagship. Shame, I know...

But this time AMD has a little advantage with 7nm

 

[Xex360]

The 2080Ti will be replaced by the 3000 series soon.

It was released in Fall 2018.

I doubt AMD has an answer for the 3080/Ti

Actually Navi is better than Turing performance wise, they just didn't make a bigger GPU with more CUs, with 80 CUs they would've come close or beat the 2080ti.
The question is why they didn't do it, in the old days nVidia and ATI, exchanged blows every few months. Have they done it Turing would've been more affordable, and AMD can claim having the fastest GPU for a year, but at 400w though...

 

[BoboOOZ]

Actually Navi is better than Turing performance wise, they just didn't make a bigger GPU with more CUs, with 80 CUs they would've come close or beat the 2080ti.
The question is why they didn't do it, in the old days nVidia and ATI, exchanged blows every few months. Have they done it Turing would've been more affordable, and AMD can claim having the fastest GPU for a year, but at 400w though...

All that matters is competition, and this time they will compete with the flagship. I don't care who wins, frankly, I still prefer AMD to lose, because when they lose, they cut prices. NVidia, when they see they are about to lose, they just throw a bigger die at the problem.

 

[Lionvibez]

You're right. You probably have better insight into company competition than AMD, who's actual success depends on knowing what NVidia is going to do next.

/s if it wasn't obvious

lol you mean AMD doesn't have someone or a team that are smarter and makes more money than anyone posting here, that actually follows the competition in their own market.

Nahhh crazy talk.

 

[Foobario]

I think people are taking Kumar's comments too literally with his "our first RDNA2 product".

Being the first "Radeon" branded RDNA2 product does not mean it will launch before the Sony and Microsoft branded offerings.

Especially with him reiterating that Big Navi is a "late" 2020 release.

Seems logical that Sony and Microsoft will launch in late September and Big Navi will launch in late October or early November.

 

[Lounds]

Why chase the high end for brand recognition of being the "best" when the mid range sells extremely more quantities.

 

[Axil00]

Why chase the high end for brand recognition of being the "best" when the mid range sells extremely more quantities.

Because having a high end card with impressive specs sells more budget cards. The same reason you see car commercials that only feature the highest trim levels but then show you the price of the base model.

 

[Lionvibez]

I think people are taking Kumar's comments too literally with his "our first RDNA2 product".

Being the first "Radeon" branded RDNA2 product does not mean it will launch before the Sony and Microsoft branded offerings.

Especially with him reiterating that Big Navi is a "late" 2020 release.

Seems logical that Sony and Microsoft will launch in late September and Big Navi will launch in late October or early November.

I think both consoles with have a christmas launch, and we will see big navi in the fall.

 

[Evernessince]

Why chase the high end for brand recognition of being the "best" when the mid range sells extremely more quantities.

A lot of midrange and low end sales are determined off the performance of the top card. That's why it's called a halo product.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Actually Navi is better than Turing performance wise, they just didn't make a bigger GPU with more CUs, with 80 CUs they would've come close or beat the 2080ti.
The question is why they didn't do it, in the old days nVidia and ATI, exchanged blows every few months. Have they done it Turing would've been more affordable, and AMD can claim having the fastest GPU for a year, but at 400w though...

Usually, it has to do with power limitations of the architecture. You can't just 'slap more cores on' and give it more power. I am not super versed in the solid state physics of semidconductor processing units, but my understanding is that the voltage across the processor needs to remain constant once its achieved its stead-state operating point (e.g. everything is charged to its 'full' potential). This can result in inconsistent current in places throughout the architecture and potentially result in currents that cause gates to fail either immediately or prematurely (via heating) if the current exceeds what the material is capable of withstanding. This can even result in a cascading failure that progresses geometrically; as one gates fail, current rises across the rest of the net, increasing the rate of failure, increasing the rate of current increases, accelerating towards complete failure of the processor. This is why manufacturers pretty much all immediately void your warranty if you ever change the voltages of your CPU, because changing the voltage changes the current, and this could (probably will) start you on a path towards premature failure even if you immediately return the voltages to normal (how long it takes to get there is another matter).

This is part of the reason why the addition of more cores to CPUs was so 'slow' until Ryzen came onto the scene. I am not super familiar with how AMD did it exactly, but they found a way to essentially just keep 'gluing' more and more cores onto a die, without having to worry about blowing something up.

My guess, my hope, is that AMD has figured out how to apply whatever is behind their "chiplet" technology in their CPU lineup to their GPUs with Big Navi, and we're about to see GPUs with core counts that were previously unheard of. Unlike CPUs, where devs were and are still figuring out how to best take advantage of multiple cores, GPU processes are already ideally suited to use as many cores as you can throw at them.

 

[BoboOOZ]

AMD is a smaller company than either Intel or Nvidia, while having both a GPU and a CPU branch. They have less money, so they don't attack all the market segments at once. Last year they chose to attack the GPU market where it is the most efficient, with small dies (5700XT is only 251sq mm). They made lots of money selling these cheap chips. This fall they will go for the crown, with a 500sq mm die, although it seems that Nvidia wasn't sleeping, either.

 

[ColdDeck]

I think people are taking Kumar's comments too literally with his "our first RDNA2 product".

Being the first "Radeon" branded RDNA2 product does not mean it will launch before the Sony and Microsoft branded offerings.

Especially with him reiterating that Big Navi is a "late" 2020 release.

Seems logical that Sony and Microsoft will launch in late September and Big Navi will launch in late October or early November.

Why does it seem logical that the consoles will launch late Sept? Seems logical to me that they would want to push the launch of those as far back as possible due to the pandemic induced recession, while offering a halo product that covers a potential market that isn't as affected by economic downturns.

 

[grumblguts]

Most people are stupid.
Even if AMD bring out the fastest card and is miles better than Nvidia they still wont buy it because they wrongly think they are getting something better with Nvidia.
When was 16 million colours better than AMD 10 bit 1 Billion.

 

[grumblguts]

I really hope this RDNA 2 is slower than the nvidia 3080ti
who cares about what is faster, you hardly notice anyhow.
Fact is I get a lot of pleasure watching those fools spending so much for their 2080ti cards

 

[treetops]

Idk why whoever wrote this article assumes AMD will charge 1k+ for something that beats a 2080 ti.... The 2070 was what $500, smoked by the 5700 xt at $400. For the FUN of it, lets say big navi is $800 and beats the 2080 ti by 10%+. Yeah would have been nice in june 2019 and following ht 5700 xt pricing structure.

So add in RDNA 2, 7 nm refined, a year and 3-6 months time. - maybe 3 months for corona? The 2080 ti never got a super version like the 2070 and 2080. And we have big navi. The Radeon vii was a compute king, almost matched the 2080 gaming.

And if it so happens to surpass the 2080 ti by a 30% fps margin. That's about the same gain we had from the 1080 ti to the 2080 ti. 980 ti to 1080 ti.

In the spirit of continued FUN. 2080 ti + 30% fps = 3080 ti. Big Navi might surpass a 3080 ti before it's even released. Who know's maybe will see a saturation of pci-e 3.0 that's about a 2080 ti and a half. AMD had to make room for big Navi?

 

[krizby]

AMD is not gonna release Big Navi before Ampere, basically there is no gain going for a price war with Nvidia. Now AMD is just waiting for RTX 3080/3070 to drop, overclock the crap outta the silicon then undercut Nvidia by 50usd.

At best Big Navi might compete with RTX 3080, at the cost of higher thermal and power envelop.

AMD is calling Big Navi a halo product so they can charge a pretty penny for it, cause who really care about price to performance in the high end segment anyways.

 

[Irata]

Most people are stupid.
Even if AMD bring out the fastest card and is miles better than Nvidia they still wont buy it because they wrongly think they are getting something better with Nvidia.
When was 16 million colours better than AMD 10 bit 1 Billion.

There will always be some, perhaps even obscure, feature that AMD doesn't have which will be pointed out as key advantage.

With their limited resources, going for the low end and mid range market first seems like a smart move. No point wasting money on the "halo effect" crowd that would not want to buy your product anyhow.

We also needn't forget that developing new products take a long time, so what we see now may habe been started a few years ago.

 

[Mister_K]

they wrongly think they are getting something better with Nvidia.
When was 16 million colours better than AMD 10 bit 1 Billion.

RTX supports HDR workflow.

 

[meric]

I find this article's headline (about 2080 Ti) odd. Why would AMD aim for 2080Ti performance? 2080 Ti will obviously be dethroned by Ampere's new flagship. If the rumors hold true, both AMD and Nvidia have been working on much better architectures and bigger dies for so long. 2080 Ti is 2 year old tech so it can be a mid-tier performer soon.

 

[krizby]

Most people are stupid.
Even if AMD bring out the fastest card and is miles better than Nvidia they still wont buy it because they wrongly think they are getting something better with Nvidia.
When was 16 million colours better than AMD 10 bit 1 Billion.

Funny my 2080Ti can use both 10bpc and 12bpc, got any more drivel ?

LOL anyways thanks to your drivel that I discover that my LG 34GN850-B monitor can do 160hz @ 8bpc or 144hz @ 10bpc and 12bpc over HDMI. There is some merit to pointless discussions I guess...

 

[Lew Zealand]

Awww my ancient 1080 only does 10 bpc. I'll have to live with the embarrassment of only 1 billion colors to your 68 billion.