Mysterious AMD GPU benchmark could be the first Navi spotting

[DPennington]

In context: Leaked benchmarks suggest the existence of a new architecture from AMD, with the mysterious "66AF:F1" GPU showing up on GFX Bench. Details are slim, but there is speculation that this could be the first spotting of an upcoming Navi GPU.

AMD has kept details of their upcoming Navi GPU under close guard, with very little information regarding performance and specifications becoming available. Recently, however, benchmarks for a mysterious AMD GPU named "66AF:F1" appeared, demonstrating significantly better gaming performance than the RX 580 and performance on par with the Vega 56.

In terms of compute performance, the alleged Navi GPU is comparable to the RX 580 and falls significantly behind the Vega 56 and 64, suggesting that this card may be a mid-range offering for gamers.

This isn't the first time rumors of Navi have been unveiled. Back in December, we gave our take on the Navi rumors, suggesting that the performance-per-dollar proposition that was being speculated on was too good to be true. Those rumors suggested that a $250 Navi GPU, the purported RX 3080, would deliver RTX 2070-like performance. The more recent rumors suggest a much more modestly performing card, if this is in fact Navi.

Back in January, MacOS contained hints regarding the release of Navi GPUs, which suggests AMD is getting ready for a release of some sort in the near future.

Interestingly, evidence suggests that this leak may actually be a new Vega GPU and not Navi at all. The "66AF" moniker is registered under Linux AMD GPU drivers as the "Vega 20." The mystery GPU also shares benchmarks that are suspiciously close to the Radeon VII, suggesting this may be another member of the Vega 20 family.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79150-mysterious-amd-gpu-benchmark-could-first-navi-spotting.html

 

[Vulcanproject]

Compute is cut down. Graphics performance is a little shy of a Vega 64. If you make a lot of assumptions (dangerous) that is IS Navi and conclude it's an early engineering sample, early drivers, lower clocks etc and hope that this part ends up as fast as a Vega 64 it's still rather underwhelming.

Price is everything, so just shy of Vega 64 performance for $250 in say July or later would only be ok, a distinct yet mild improvement on what we have now. GTX1660Ti isn't exactly far away from that already is it? Give or take 10 percent and 20 bucks.

However I am more thinking about if this part ends up in consoles. It would probably not be clocked as highly as a desktop card, and that means it wouldn't be twice as fast as Xbox One X. Again, It's not exactly blowing my mind here.

New consoles come at a time when AMD's graphics division couldn't be weaker compared to Nvidia, and the consoles will be all AMD. Real shame.

 

[cldmstrsn]

If Radeon VII had launched at 500 it would be perfect but they went and made it 700 dollars for worse performance than the 2080. I miss the days when AMD made high end GPU's.

 

[redhat]

AMD need vega 56x(GDDR6) or vega 56 ti(HM).
Rtx 2060 is only 7% faster which means if AMD could produce vega56x with 10% more performance and 25% lower power consumption would make a good competition until NAVI arrive (hope not disappointing as usual)

 

[Evernessince]

If Radeon VII had launched at 500 it would be perfect but they went and made it 700 dollars for worse performance than the 2080. I miss the days when AMD made high end GPU's.

Given that the 16 GB of HBM cost them around $320 alone, selling at $500 would have seen them taking a loss and companies don't sell at a loss.

Vega VII has slightly worse gaming performance but it crushes the 2080 in compute. In fact it's comparable to a $3,000 professional level card in that regard. AMD's pricing is more then fine if you take that into consideration. Gamers forget they aren't the only one's who buy video cards.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

If Radeon VII had launched at 500 it would be perfect but they went and made it 700 dollars for worse performance than the 2080. I miss the days when AMD made high end GPU's.

Given that the 16 GB of HBM cost them around $320 alone, selling at $500 would have seen them taking a loss and companies don't sell at a loss.

Vega VII has slightly worse gaming performance but it crushes the 2080 in compute. In fact it's comparable to a $3,000 professional level card in that regard. AMD's pricing is more then fine if you take that into consideration. Gamers forget they aren't the only one's who buy video cards.

Exactly. Funny how gamers the think the world revolves themselves. The AMD card is more than competitive in gaming and for those of us that do other things as well would be my choice any day. My only reason I wouldn’t buy it, power consumption. If you live in Australia with the worlds most expensive electricity these considerations matter a lot.

 

[Versutus]

If Radeon VII had launched at 500 it would be perfect but they went and made it 700 dollars for worse performance than the 2080. I miss the days when AMD made high end GPU's.

Given that the 16 GB of HBM cost them around $320 alone, selling at $500 would have seen them taking a loss and companies don't sell at a loss.

Vega VII has slightly worse gaming performance but it crushes the 2080 in compute. In fact it's comparable to a $3,000 professional level card in that regard. AMD's pricing is more then fine if you take that into consideration. Gamers forget they aren't the only one's who buy video cards.

Radeon VII is an "Extreme Gaming" GPU (based on AMD's own website). Therefore if you are a gamer, and you can get better perfomance for the same price from Nvidia, you are rightly disappointed. If you are an "Extreme Gamer", you will not care about professional usability and compute perfomance.

Don't forget how they market this product. They market it's like a gamer GPU. And it is disappoint under that term.

 

[Chaotic Neutral]

AMD need vega 56x(GDDR6) or vega 56 ti(HM).
Rtx 2060 is only 7% faster which means if AMD could produce vega56x with 10% more performance and 25% lower power consumption would make a good competition until NAVI arrive (hope not disappointing as usual)

You should read this https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3032-vega-56-cost-of-hbm2-and-necessity-to-use-it

 

[dogofwars]

If Radeon VII had launched at 500 it would be perfect but they went and made it 700 dollars for worse performance than the 2080. I miss the days when AMD made high end GPU's.

Given that the 16 GB of HBM cost them around $320 alone, selling at $500 would have seen them taking a loss and companies don't sell at a loss.

Vega VII has slightly worse gaming performance but it crushes the 2080 in compute. In fact it's comparable to a $3,000 professional level card in that regard. AMD's pricing is more then fine if you take that into consideration. Gamers forget they aren't the only one's who buy video cards.

Might age better though.

 

[dogofwars]

I bought a EVGA RTX 2070. I had two 290X which were great for the time and in crossfire I mostly had more than enough but now the game are not supporting crossfire or SLI much.

So I wanted a single card solution and was waiting for Navi but got pushed back and it will probably not be as powerful as a 2070 so I said why wait and just save 100$ difference.

I will probably have the card for 4-5 years anyway so the difference in cost would be more like 25$ a year.
Even though it piss me off to support a company that piss on their AIB partner and their clients it is not worth the wait and the best they could do is match the 2070!?

 

[Evernessince]

Radeon VII is an "Extreme Gaming" GPU (based on AMD's own website). Therefore if you are a gamer, and you can get better perfomance for the same price from Nvidia, you are rightly disappointed. If you are an "Extreme Gamer", you will not care about professional usability and compute perfomance.

Don't forget how they market this product. They market it's like a gamer GPU. And it is disappoint under that term.

Well first, no one is going to notice the difference between the Vega VII and 2080 with their eyes. The 2080 gets higher frames while the Vega VII gets higher minimums. Otherwise those cards are too close performance wise to be noticeable in a majority of games. I don't really see what one could be disappointed in here.

And it's probably not wise to bring up marketing blunders here, given Nvidia spent a good chunk of 2018 seemingly coming up with ideas to mislead customers. DLSS, RTX performance, GPP, 1030's with different memory, misleading MSRPs, binned RTX cards, and more.

If AMD offering equal gaming performance at the same price with the upside of massive compute performance and double the RAM is your definition of misleading, I think you may have to go back to the drawing board.

Vega VII is especially competitive in 4K performance but that is to be expected. The card offers massive bandwidth and a ton of memory. It clearly has room for devs to utilize more. Given the penchant for devs adding compute based effects and shaders, it's not hard to imagine that Vega VII will age much better then the 2080. The 2080 has half the memory and less then half the memory bandwidth. While consistent frame delivery isn't shown in averages often used by reviewers, it is shown in a frame time plot. I'd bet the Vega VII will have much more consistent frame delivery 4 years from now as the VRAM used by games increases.

I bought a EVGA RTX 2070. I had two 290X which were great for the time and in crossfire I mostly had more than enough but now the game are not supporting crossfire or SLI much.

So I wanted a single card solution and was waiting for Navi but got pushed back and it will probably not be as powerful as a 2070 so I said why wait and just save 100$ difference.

I will probably have the card for 4-5 years anyway so the difference in cost would be more like 25$ a year.
Even though it piss me off to support a company that piss on their AIB partner and their clients it is not worth the wait and the best they could do is match the 2070!?

It's kind of hard for Navi not to be as powerful as a 2070. Just like Vega VII, they are going to get a 30% uplift from the node shrink alone, not accounting for architecture tweaks and improvements, Faster RAM, ect.

 

[Chaotic Neutral]

It's kind of hard for Navi not to be as powerful as a 2070. Just like Vega VII, they are going to get a 30% uplift from the node shrink alone, not accounting for architecture tweaks and improvements, Faster RAM, ect.[/QUOTE]

Navi are supposedly exist to replace Polaris position as mid-range card, so with a 30% uplift from the node shrink as with Vega 64 to Radeon 7, Navi will most likely on par with vega 56 or 1070 Ti performance, or perhaps RTX 2060. And AMD themselves said that Navi will be very aggresive on pricing, so if they make Navi on par with 2070 performance level at sub $300, it will make Radeon 7 a stupid card to buy with a price tag of $700.

 

[Evernessince]

Navi are supposedly exist to replace Polaris position as mid-range card, so with a 30% uplift from the node shrink as with Vega 64 to Radeon 7, Navi will most likely on par with vega 56 or 1070 Ti performance, or perhaps RTX 2060. And AMD themselves said that Navi will be very aggresive on pricing, so if they make Navi on par with 2070 performance level at sub $300, it will make Radeon 7 a stupid card to buy with a price tag of $700.

Incorrect as Radeon VII also has very good compute performance. $3,000 level of compute performance. Maybe the 2080 will be a bad buy all around but I see no reason AMD would have to lower the price of the Radeon VII. And like I pointed out, that's from the node shrink only. AMD have been working on Navi for awhile now and it will come with architecture improvements. They will also be given more die space to work with thanks to the node shrink. 30% is the literal worst case scenario, in which they do nothing with the architecture, nothing with the extra die space, and nothing with the memory. Given that AMD has been working on Navi before they started working on the original Vega, I would not expect the worst case to come to pass. AMD had two teams, one worked on Vega and the other has been working on Navi this whole time. In fact AMD even redirected resources from original Vega to boost Navi, which is the rumored reason that Raja Kudori left AMD. The team that made Polaris is the same team that is making Navi, which is good news given that polaris was a nice bump in rasterization performance and clearly targeted gamers.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Nope. AMD product leaks and hype trains are a waste of time. History says so. I'll wait for the official word from AMD and then reviews like I've done since Bulldozer.
#lessonslearned #whenamdisquietyoushouldworry

 

[AlbertoDG]

This sample was clocked at 555 MHz: it has ample margin of improvement.
Obviously, those early drivers are Vega-derived, thus some codes may prove disorienting.
Navi can really be a devastating blow to the mainstream market, and this would also explain Nvidia's release frenzy (did you see they will release a GTX 1650 Ti AND a revamped GTX 1060?).

 

[Chaotic Neutral]

Incorrect as Radeon VII also has very good compute performance. $3,000 level of compute performance. Maybe the 2080 will be a bad buy all around but I see no reason AMD would have to lower the price of the Radeon VII. And like I pointed out, that's from the node shrink only. AMD have been working on Navi for awhile now and it will come with architecture improvements. They will also be given more die space to work with thanks to the node shrink. 30% is the literal worst case scenario, in which they do nothing with the architecture, nothing with the extra die space, and nothing with the memory. Given that AMD has been working on Navi before they started working on the original Vega, I would not expect the worst case to come to pass. AMD had two teams, one worked on Vega and the other has been working on Navi this whole time. In fact AMD even redirected resources from original Vega to boost Navi, which is the rumored reason that Raja Kudori left AMD. The team that made Polaris is the same team that is making Navi, which is good news given that polaris was a nice bump in rasterization performance and clearly targeted gamers.

Actually they announced Radeon VII just to make sure that they have something to offer to compete with RTX series, and yes its a $3000 compute performance level gpu at $700 price, but that is where AMD need to change, they always make a compute level gpu and call it a gaming gpu which ended up become a power hungry card that lacks of power efficiency. Just imagine, 7nm vs 12nm and still Radeon VII are much more power hungry than 2080 at the similar level of gaming performance. Perhaps if this so called Navi leaks are true then this is the card that AMD should create years ago, a proper gaming gpu that excel at what it was marketed for.

 

[dogofwars]

Well first, no one is going to notice the difference between the Vega VII and 2080 with their eyes. The 2080 gets higher frames while the Vega VII gets higher minimums. Otherwise those cards are too close performance wise to be noticeable in a majority of games. I don't really see what one could be disappointed in here.

And it's probably not wise to bring up marketing blunders here, given Nvidia spent a good chunk of 2018 seemingly coming up with ideas to mislead customers. DLSS, RTX performance, GPP, 1030's with different memory, misleading MSRPs, binned RTX cards, and more.

If AMD offering equal gaming performance at the same price with the upside of massive compute performance and double the RAM is your definition of misleading, I think you may have to go back to the drawing board.

Vega VII is especially competitive in 4K performance but that is to be expected. The card offers massive bandwidth and a ton of memory. It clearly has room for devs to utilize more. Given the penchant for devs adding compute based effects and shaders, it's not hard to imagine that Vega VII will age much better then the 2080. The 2080 has half the memory and less then half the memory bandwidth. While consistent frame delivery isn't shown in averages often used by reviewers, it is shown in a frame time plot. I'd bet the Vega VII will have much more consistent frame delivery 4 years from now as the VRAM used by games increases.



It's kind of hard for Navi not to be as powerful as a 2070. Just like Vega VII, they are going to get a 30% uplift from the node shrink alone, not accounting for architecture tweaks and improvements, Faster RAM, ect.

I hope Navi does.

 

[Evernessince]

I hope Navi does.

AMD really can't afford for it to not. They haven't had a good architecture bump since the 200 series.

 

[dogofwars]

AMD really can't afford for it to not. They haven't had a good architecture bump since the 200 series.

Yes and it started to be long in the tooth.