No Nvidia Killer? Big Navi's best could match the RTX 2080 Ti, fall short of the RTX 3080...

[krizby]

Well at least AMD catching up to a 2 year old GPU is still a good news. The 1080 Ti basically sit there for 3.5 years uncontested (Radeon VII is better left forgotten, for AMD's own good).
My bet is Big Navi will fill in the 600usd price bracket to compete with 700usd RTX 3080

 

[amghwk]

Let's begin the debate AFTER AMD releases the new card and after the multiple site reviews....

Even if it won't be the 3080Ti killer, it's price debut will be an interesting proposition for sound buyers.

 

[wasaki]

Amd fell short again even with new Rdna2 7nm . I was hoping they will claim the throne of Gpu for once . I just hope the price doesn't go higher also the driver should be fixed by now but I saw many angry customers at reedit .

 

[MaxSmarties]

Maybe we are speaking of something in the 3070 range of performance, just like the 5700XT was in the 2070 Super, but at lower price. It could be good for the market but it would means AMD isn’t really capable to compete with NVidia in the (insanely priced) high end segment.

Now if they only could fix their buggy drivers I would consider to upgrade my 5700XT.

 

[HardReset]

It would be useful to have a sense of the number of Quadro and Titan RTXs sold on a monthly basis since launch, as it would provide a way to estimate the percentages better. There again the only difference between a 2080 Ti and a Quadro RTX 6000/8000 is half a TPC (I.e. 4 SMs) and one memory controller, so chips for the former are almost full dies. As a guess, I would think that the GeForce outsells the Quadro/Titan combined by 100:1, based on MindFactory’s 2080 Ti sales. To me this suggests that percentage split is the other way round, 30-40% with SM defects and 10-20% fully functional.

10-20% fully functional would mean yields are bad. Intel's XCC (28 core monolithic CPU die) are reported to have yields 35% fully functioning. Sounds reasonable for 697 mm² die. Better explanation is that Nvidia sells many fully working dies as cut down versions.

Were those 30k just for their 7nm GPUs - Vega 20, Navi 10 and 14? If so, then discounting the Vega (production numbers will be very small), 30K would cover all desktop and mobile RX 5500, 5600, and 5700 products. Sticking just to desktop, Mindfactory sold just under 4200 of them in January and twice that number of Turing products, with 2080 Tis accounting for 5.7% of that volume.

Now we don’t know how wafers Nvidia have booked but let’s say it’s proportional to Mindfactory’s sales figures - an iffy assumption, I know, but it’s just for discussion purposes. 5.6% of 60k is roughly 3400 wafers, which, going by our percentages, would give 80,000 2080 Ti dies. That’s obviously a lot lower than 300,000 but I suspect the reality is somewhere between the two.

Heaven only knows what it’s like for the GA102 ? It’s not surprising that AMD are in no rush to be launching enormous monolithic GPUs.

Taiwanese website reported AMD doubled TSMC 7nm orders to 30K starting H2/2020 since Apple switched to 5nm process. That covers everything made 7nm, virtually anything modern AMD products except IO dies. If that holds true, there is no longer 7nm shortage for AMD. It also means AMD's 7nm production capacity before H2/2020 was only 15K.

There has never been real shortage of 16/12nm capacity when it comes to Turing. After all, quote lot production switched to 7nm when Turing production started. So Nvidia basically had "unlimited" capacity available and so could afford to make huge chip. However Nvidia still had to estimate demand much more carefully because non-standard process. Several thousand wafers is good estimation, just because several could mean almost anything.

It's still not confirmed where GA102 is being manufactured. TSMC process should be better but Samsung could again give Nvidia "unlimited" capacity. Biggest difference is that now AMD does not have to design chips just to save die area. They can make much bigger ones, but they still don't have "unlimited" capacity. So now situation has normalized to what it should have been (AMD uses GF and TSMC). Now that GF part is made by TSMC.

Maybe we are speaking of something in the 3070 range of performance, just like the 5700XT was in the 2070 Super, but at lower price. It could be good for the market but it would means AMD isn’t really capable to compete with NVidia in the (insanely priced) high end segment.

Now if they only could fix their buggy drivers I would consider to upgrade my 5700XT.

Again, 5700XT was limited by die size. AMD had to conserve die space = make smaller chips. This should no longer be problem.

 

[yiannisp]

I only buy AMD so what ever it is I will be happy with.
I dont buy that green garbage with its buggy *** drivers.

If NVIDIA's drivers are buggy I don't know what can be said about AMD's ones with black screens on Navi's months afters release..

 

[Shadowboxer]

60 fps is too slow. I want 144 fps.
The problem is not, how many fps you can perceive.
The more fps you have, the sharper and more fluent moving objects will be displayed.

Yes I want 144fps too, I do own a 144hz monitor. Everybody here already understands that 144fps is better than 60fps mate. But this is brand new tech, there are lots of non ray traced games that can’t run at 144fps so to expect ray traced games to do so is a bit unrealistic.

But you do you, you’re not going to have a very good time if you expect all games to run at 144..

 

[Shadowboxer]

Yeah just like no way AMD could ever catch Intel, right? LOL.

This rumor is stupid anyway, rogame who is a real leaker with well known track record on twitter has just today leaked that big navi top end will be 80 CU's with 12GB GDDR6. So that's 2X 5700 XT CU's. Not even counting higher clocks and efficiency improvements with RDNA 2. Real performance will be 2.5X 5700XT judging by that, which means obviously will utterly destroy a 2080Ti (will be like twice as fast as 2080 Ti) and likely give 3080 TI a heck of a fight at the very least, maybe be faster than anything Nvidia has, but we will see.

The fact Techspot posted this on the same day Rogame leaked what a monster Big Navi is, almost smells like calculated damage control TBH. But techspot sources are "their butt", whereas rogame is bonafide.

Again also as others have pointed out, 2080Ti is like 30% faster than 5700XT, so AMD introducing a 30% faster card after all this isn't even plausible. Hell the Xbox Series X GPU (confirmed 52 CU's, not even clocked near as high as they could be in a discrete GPU, plus RDNA 2>RDNA 1 efficiency improvements) will be as fast or faster than 30%>5700XT. Techspot really thinks AMD's fastest GPU this fall will be in Xbox? LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Hahaha, This comment won’t age well.

 

[MaxSmarties]

The top end cards are only a fraction of the market anyway, as long as performance is on par and the price is right, the fact it isn't faster than a 3080ti doesn't really mean much.

Now, competing on features like ray tracing may be a different story. But, on the other side of things,AMD making much of their tech free, like freesync, does tend to win out over time. Slow and steady wins the race. Nvidia tends to be first to market but AMD has the better long game.

Either way, I'm excited for both series of cards and we, as consumers, should win out in the end when it comes to price.

Exactly when AMD demonstrated to have a better long-term plan in GPUs ?

 

[MaxSmarties]

AMD just didn't bother to make big enough chips because it's quite expensive.

5700XT is only 251 mm² while GTX 1080Ti is almost double 471 mm². Not to mention 2080 Ti that is 775 mm².

If AMD just have bothered to make around 400+mm² RDNA chip "bigger 5700 XT", it would have been miles faster than 2080 Ti. AMD decided it wasn't worth it. So much about "NVIDIA is always a whole generation ahead"

you are incredible...
Your love and faith in AMD is so strong that if they deliver they are the best, and if they don't deliver they don't want to ... lol

 

[MaxSmarties]

That's funny cause I could say the same and I got an 5700xt.
I changed my gtx 1060 with absolutely zero drivers problems all the time I used it (3 years) for a 5700xt and got many drivers problems at the beginning. Everything is fine now but I nearly returned my 5700xt.

So I'm not sure that drivers problems are really different for both company. They are both concerned.

AMD drivers issues are well documented on the web.
The situation has improved lately, but black screens still are a problem.
I have a 5700XT and I will think twice before buying another AMD GPU in the future.
I will read user’s experience on different forums before buying.

 

[yRaz]

Exactly when AMD demonstrated to have a better long-term plan in GPUs ?

We can start with their Linux drivers, but they were focused on CPUs previously, not GPUs. They have a solid architecture, they just need to expand on it. As someone pointed out previously, big Navi is rumored to be around half the size of the 2080ti die.

I'm sure everyone is going to sh*t all over my post because this is a tech forum and gamers are, well, gamers. However, the midranged market is always the biggest seller. If it wasn't then consoles wouldn't exist. Hell, even TV's come with freesync now and AMD has a GPU in both the new Xbox and PlayStation. Nvidia might have a name that gamers recognize, but AMD is still killing them in sales.

While big Navi might not be an "Nvidia killer" it still hits where it counts.

 

[Andrighi]

Quick answer to this: as long as the price is right!

 

[MaxSmarties]

We can start with their Linux drivers, but they were focused on CPUs previously, not GPUs. They have a solid architecture, they just need to expand on it. As someone pointed out previously, big Navi is rumored to be around half the size of the 2080ti die.

I'm sure everyone is going to sh*t all over my post because this is a tech forum and gamers are, well, gamers. However, the midranged market is always the biggest seller. If it wasn't then consoles wouldn't exist. Hell, even TV's come with freesync now and AMD has a GPU in both the new Xbox and PlayStation. Nvidia might have a name that gamers recognize, but AMD is still killing them in sales.

While big Navi might not be an "Nvidia killer" it still hits where it counts.

Every AMD supporter is saying the same things : AMD can.
And then they try a lot of excuses about why they didn’t.
As a customer I don’t care about how big the die is. I do care about how fast it is.
Facts are 5700XT is stretched to the limits and barely being competitive with 2070 Super.
We will see what they are going to do with Big Navi, but if we want to comment this rumor, situation is not going to change.

So we can speak about what they could do if, but it doesn’t count if they don’t actually do.

And I agree about mainstream segment being the most important, but even in this segment 2070 Super and 2060 Super are a better solution, albeit at an higher price, than 5600XT, 5700 and 5700XT. A lower price is not always the most important factor.

 

[HardReset]

you are incredible...
Your love and faith in AMD is so strong that if they deliver they are the best, and if they don't deliver they don't want to ... lol

As I already proven, AMD had tight supply of 7nm wafers so they rather made mid sized chips instead huge ones.

Every AMD supporter is saying the same things : AMD can.
And then they try a lot of excuses about why they didn’t.
As a customer I don’t care about how big the die is. I do care about how fast it is.
Facts are 5700XT is stretched to the limits and barely being competitive with 2070 Super.

You were given reason why 5700XT was not so fast. You don't care is another thing.

2070 Super has 13.6B transistors, 5700XT has only 10.3B. So 5700XT is much more effective vs transistor count. I know, you don't care.

So we can speak about what they could do if, but it doesn’t count if they don’t actually do.

Exactly. Big Navi on 5000-series was never coming just because AMD had not enough 7nm capacity. Now there should be enough capacity so it could happen.

 

[theruck]

So no "nVidia killer" again? Wow, a lot of people got their pants wet waiting since the last "nVidia killer" aka the Radeon 5700 series. You know, the irony will be if Intel`s offer becomes a legit Radeon killer...

it took them 20 years to kill intel so still some years to go with nvidia

 

[theruck]

AMD drivers issues are well documented on the web.
The situation has improved lately, but black screens still are a problem.
I have a 5700XT and I will think twice before buying another AMD GPU in the future.
I will read user’s experience on different forums before buying.

you shall buy the new intel gpu. the rumors are optimistic. lol

 

[Shadowboxer]

Every AMD supporter is saying the same things : AMD can.
And then they try a lot of excuses about why they didn’t.
As a customer I don’t care about how big the die is. I do care about how fast it is.
Facts are 5700XT is stretched to the limits and barely being competitive with 2070 Super.
We will see what they are going to do with Big Navi, but if we want to comment this rumor, situation is not going to change.

So we can speak about what they could do if, but it doesn’t count if they don’t actually do.

And I agree about mainstream segment being the most important, but even in this segment 2070 Super and 2060 Super are a better solution, albeit at an higher price, than 5600XT, 5700 and 5700XT. A lower price is not always the most important factor.

Completely agree with you on the price thing. I’m so fed up of tech sites and reviewers slamming a product for being superior but more expensive because it doesn’t work out as better value. I don’t care! I’m an enthusiast, I want to spend my money! Not only that but prices change. Offers happen, game bundles come along. Half the time I see a chip on offer I go watch a review of it and find the reviewer just slamming it for its price which is frustrating as you just want to know if it’s a decent product or not. A good example is this sites comparison of the 2070s vs 5700XT. In the review they had the 5700XT at $400 and the 2070S at $500. But when I looked the cheapest 5700XT was £430 here and the 2070S was £460. And then I ended up buying an RTX 2080 for £512! Which is better value than both!

 

[yRaz]

Every AMD supporter is saying the same things : AMD can.
And then they try a lot of excuses about why they didn’t.
As a customer I don’t care about how big the die is. I do care about how fast it is.
Facts are 5700XT is stretched to the limits and barely being competitive with 2070 Super.
We will see what they are going to do with Big Navi, but if we want to comment this rumor, situation is not going to change.

So we can speak about what they could do if, but it doesn’t count if they don’t actually do.

And I agree about mainstream segment being the most important, but even in this segment 2070 Super and 2060 Super are a better solution, albeit at an higher price, than 5600XT, 5700 and 5700XT. A lower price is not always the most important factor.

Well certainly the AMD cards are getting pushed to the side at the end of this generation. Nvidia came out with their super series and, frankly, I don't think AMD can't respond with a price drop. But I will stand by what I said, AMD has a good long game. Navi was solid, but built for gamers with a midranged budget. Then we have, "big Navi". Big Navi will compete on what I will call the high-end budget market. And while it is totally my opinion, my opinion is that AMD cards will sell very well. Unless someone is willing to pay excruciating amounts of money for ray tracing, Nvidia really doesn't have much to offer. We haven't been at a point where graphics make great leaps since around 2010. I game at 4k, but I do it on a 1070ti at roughly med-high settings. Unless you have a super expensive display and a budget to drive it, these high-end cards don't matter to you. Right now, we're at a 1440p60 mainstream high-end budget. If AMD can meet those performance requirements in a price that matches what Nvidia has to offer then they're solid.

And, again, it's my opinion that AMD will do a fantastic job in the GPU market not only immediately, but in the long term. There was a nothing wrong with Nvidia's approach to making massive dies, they're Basically going for raw horsepower. What Nvidia is doing is cool as ****. However, I believe that AMD will pull ahead. Even if they don't hold the performance crown, the will hold the sales crown. And as an AMD investor, I put my money where my mouth is.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Well certainly the AMD cards are getting pushed to the side at the end of this generation. Nvidia came out with their super series and, frankly, I don't think AMD can't respond with a price drop. But I will stand by what I said, AMD has a good long game. Navi was solid, but built for gamers with a midranged budget. Then we have, "big Navi". Big Navi will compete on what I will call the high-end budget market. And while it is totally my opinion, my opinion is that AMD cards will sell very well. Unless someone is willing to pay excruciating amounts of money for ray tracing, Nvidia really doesn't have much to offer. We haven't been at a point where graphics make great leaps since around 2010. I game at 4k, but I do it on a 1070ti at roughly med-high settings. Unless you have a super expensive display and a budget to drive it, these high-end cards don't matter to you. Right now, we're at a 1440p60 mainstream high-end budget. If AMD can meet those performance requirements in a price that matches what Nvidia has to offer then they're solid.

And, again, it's my opinion that AMD will do a fantastic job in the GPU market not only immediately, but in the long term. There was a nothing wrong with Nvidia's approach to making massive dies, they're Basically going for raw horsepower. What Nvidia is doing is cool as ****. However, I believe that AMD will pull ahead. Even if they don't hold the performance crown, the will hold the sales crown. And as an AMD investor, I put my money where my mouth is.

DLSS is what Nvidia has to offer. So many games support it and more are coming. It’s a revolutionary step and I believe that games will use technologies like it for years to come. And AMD has no answer, they need to do a bit more than release a sharpening filter to counter it at this point. With DLSS, budget RTX cards will deliver smoother 4K playing experiences than AMDs current flagships. You say you game at 4K on a 1070ti. I believe you will soon have the option to increase that performance level at 4K with Nvidia and DLSS for half the money that AMD will charge for big Navi.

Personally, I can’t see how AMD will compete. Unless they slash prices hard.

 

[MaxSmarties]

As I already proven, AMD had tight supply of 7nm wafers so they rather made mid sized chips instead huge ones.

You proved nothing, AMD never officially said they were somehow limited while designing Navi.

AMD designed the 5700XT as it is because that was the best they could do at the time (and the XT has every indication it was an “overclocked“ product trying to squeeze out all the FPS they could, because Navi wasn’t so competitive with Nvidia solutions, we saw the same thing with Radeon 9800XT at the time).

You were given reason why 5700XT was not so fast. You don't care is another thing.

reasons completely invented by apologists.
5700XT was made that way because it was the best they could design at the time.
That’s a fact.

2070 Super has 13.6B transistors, 5700XT has only 10.3B. So 5700XT is much more effective vs transistor count. I know, you don't care.

Who cares ? Nobody has forbidden them to do better. It was their decision.
More effective ? lol what a distorted fanboy vision you have
navi completely lacks tensor cores... it is a much simpler design that Turing.
And it is slower, no matter what mirror climbing you want do do.

The fact they can reach “comparable” performance using less transistors has exactly ZERO effect on the final user. ZERO.
And the 5700XT has much more issues with temperatures compared to a 2070 Super.

I bought and I’m still using a 5700XT, and I am a quite happy customer (if you don’t consider the buggy drivers, that are improving over the time...). But I also own a 2070 Super and it is a superior product. Definitely.
It costs a little more (130€ in my case) but money are not the only point when you evaluate a product, especially if the difference is not so big.

Exactly. Big Navi on 5000-series was never coming just because AMD had not enough 7nm capacity. Now there should be enough capacity so it could happen.

and we are speaking about a rumors stating that the next generation Big Navi will barely reach the same performance level of a 2 years old product...
So AMD will still be behind the market leader in GPUs.

 

[MaxSmarties]

it took them 20 years to kill intel so still some years to go with nvidia

AMD didn’t kill Intel.
Intel committed a suicide

 

[MaxSmarties]

Completely agree with you on the price thing. I’m so fed up of tech sites and reviewers slamming a product for being superior but more expensive because it doesn’t work out as better value. I don’t care! I’m an enthusiast, I want to spend my money! Not only that but prices change. Offers happen, game bundles come along. Half the time I see a chip on offer I go watch a review of it and find the reviewer just slamming it for its price which is frustrating as you just want to know if it’s a decent product or not. A good example is this sites comparison of the 2070s vs 5700XT. In the review they had the 5700XT at $400 and the 2070S at $500. But when I looked the cheapest 5700XT was £430 here and the 2070S was £460. And then I ended up buying an RTX 2080 for £512! Which is better value than both!

Yep.
Price is always the focal point, for AMD supporters.
But when you are speaking about a little difference (here in Europe is around 130€ between a 2070 Super and a 5700XT) for a tech enthusiast is not the primary concerning factor.

If you are considering CPUs, where AMD solutions are faster and cheaper, it is a different matter.

 

[HardReset]

you proved ?
you must have a very high consideration about yourself...

you proved nothing, AMD never officially said they were somehow limited while designing Navi. Your are just baseless considerations by a serial apologist when AMD is involved.
AMD designed the 5700XT as it is because that was the best they could do at the time (and the XT has every indication it was an “overclocked“ product trying to squeeze out all the FPS they could, because Navi wasn’t so competitive with Nvidia solutions).

AMD said 7nm supply is tight. So making very big Navi would mean there is not enough capacity to make other 7nm products that sell much more than big Navi. Not harder than that.

Like usual, you just don't understand what is difference between something could be done and making something makes no sense. Intel could have made 8 core 10 nm chips long time now. Problem is that if yields are super bad, $500 CPU could cost $1000 to manufacture. Could do? Yes. Makes sense? No.

reasons completely invented by apologists.
5700XT was made that way because it was the best they could design at the time.
That’s a fact.

You say AMD couldn't design any bigger GPU that time? Radeon VII hmm... Please stop trolling.

Who cares ? Nobody has forbidden them to do better. It was their decision.
More effective ? lol what a distorted fanboy vision you have
navi completely lacks tensor cores... it is a much simpler design that Turing.
And it is slower, no matter what mirror climbing you want do do.

The fact they can reach “comparable” performance using less transistors has exactly ZERO effect on the final user. ZERO.
And the 5700XT has much more issues with temperatures compared to a 2070 Super.

Faster vs transistor count. On GPU's more transistors = more speed, simple as that. Tensor cores are still mostly useless, after two years of launch. Better to spend those transistors for raw speed.

More transistors = more expensive to manufacture = higher price for consumer.

and we are speaking about a rumors stating that the next generation Big Navi will barely reach the same performance level of a 2 years old product...
So AMD will still be behind the market leader in GPUs.

This rumor has nothing else info than single number.

I wonder why this kind of crap is even worth news item. No specs, nothing else than single number. I just heard from "reliable sources" that big Navi is 250% faster than GTX 2080 Ti. I don't have any specs or more info so that rumor is just as good as one said on this news item.

 

[HardReset]

DLSS is what Nvidia has to offer. So many games support it and more are coming. It’s a revolutionary step and I believe that games will use technologies like it for years to come. And AMD has no answer, they need to do a bit more than release a sharpening filter to counter it at this point. With DLSS, budget RTX cards will deliver smoother 4K playing experiences than AMDs current flagships. You say you game at 4K on a 1070ti. I believe you will soon have the option to increase that performance level at 4K with Nvidia and DLSS for half the money that AMD will charge for big Navi.

Personally, I can’t see how AMD will compete. Unless they slash prices hard.

Well, Nvidia screwed up something very bad with Ampere and so they try review sites to use DLSS so they can be competitive vs AMD. DLSS is basically only way Nvidia can do to make "claims" they are still on "top".

That is because whole DLSS makes zero sense from Nvidia's perspective. You have 4K display and want games to run smoothly? Instead buying our $1500 card, buy $500 card instead and turn on DLSS. That way we get less money.

Sabotaging own high end card sales makes no sense at all. Unless Nvidia knows they have no chance other way.