AMD Product Lead Expects “Big Navi” to “Disrupt 4K,” as Ryzen Did with CPU Processors

[Tsing]

image: AMD



AMD’s success with Ryzen has been unprecedented, but can the company replicate that magic in the GPU sector? That’s a firm “yes,” according to Mithun Chandrasekhar, who serves as product lead for the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG).



Speaking at a recent RX 5600 XT briefing, Chandrasekhar suggested that AMD had something big in the works for Radeon devotees who are salivating at the prospect of a GPU that can take on NVIDIA’s reigning GeForce cards, such as the RTX 2080 Ti. While he declined to give specifics, Chandrasekhar did imply that his team was making headway on products that could tackle 4K gaming.



“Similar to Ryzen,” he says, “all of us need a thriving Radeon GPU ecosystem. So, are we going after 4K, and going to similarly disrupt 4K? Absolutely, you can count on that. But that’s all I can...

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[JosiahBradley]

Just for some back of the napkin math: 2x 5700XT would be 5120 cores. Given the long time to market it might be safe to guess 7nm+ and rdna2. Process alone would give you power savings to hit that magic 250w tdp but most likely at reduced clocks given that many cores. And maybe 10% generously for uarch changes. This would make it about 25% faster than a 2080ti at roughly a 370mm² die or about 1/4th the size of a 2080ti. With the right price this would dominate. However Nvidia will probably have 7nm Turing by this time and that would give it a lot of room to add even more cores to the high end or simply die shrink and cut cost. Sadly it's not looking good for AMD right now. Kicking *** with CPUs but they are fighting on two fronts with a tiny team.

 

[nEo717]

It feels as though there's a selective choice of words (from AMD) on big Navi... At a time when we are seeing many new monitors (including IPS) at 240Hz and even higher - so what about 240Hz (and better) gaming at 1080P and 1440P? Is AMD really stating they are focused on a Gaming card centered around 4k gaming (which can be a different product than a card capable of pushing 150+ frames at 1440p (or even 1080p) - Let's see where nVidia takes us with Ampre... disrupting the 2080 Ti may not prove to be such a big thing come Ampre Titan RTX and 3080 Ti - Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping like all other AMD fans, but, its pretty hard to have much faith in that happening...

 

[Brian_B]

At a time when we are seeing many new monitors (including IPS) at 240Hz and even higher - so what about 240Hz (and better) gaming at 1080P and 1440P?

Maybe I’m confused, I thought raster performance was all about pushing pixels....

So a monitor that does ok at 4K frame rates would knock it out of the park in lower resolutions?

I would have thought that marketing 1080 240Hz would be a no-no since 1080 is not a sexy or cutting edge resolution and you don’t want to give the impression that your top tier high end is “only” targeting 1080, and it’s redundant because if you can push 4K then you can certainly push 1080.

 

[nEo717]

AMD marketing talk (here) makes it sounds as they are shooting for min. target (playable 4k, often noted as 60fps) doesn't equal anything near exciting for 1440p (or 1080p for that matter) with Monitor markets releasing 1440p 240Hz monitors (and higher refresh rates) let alone 1080p getting refreshed too with 240Hz (and higher) IPS Panels. It takes a lot of power to keep a high refresh rate monitor full (Ti or Titan with excellent system) already today.

So if AMD releases a 5800XT that is what, 10% faster than the 2080ti, with some form of RT and maybe 20% cheaper than the 3080ti...

...nVidia releases 3080 Ti that is 35% faster than the 2080 Ti, with vastly improved RT sporting refined RTX and DLSS.

Meanwhile AMD is focused on having a card that does a good job with 4k - To me, its seems they are shooting for sub-par target (its those careful selective words, perhaps over hyping the next big Navi or ???).

 

[Grimlakin]

Don't forget guys the first generation Ryzen CPU's were not 'faster' than intel. Only in more recent iterations has IPC cought up and in some cases exceeded Intel. (Security flaws aside snark)

So I would expect this card to perform well and be a real contender across the board. But I don't expect it to smash Nvidia. Nvidia has a habit of smashing it's own performance and I'm good with that. I want AMD to be competitive so you can buy one and not have a lesser card. Maybe the top of the line Big Navi can beat the 3080 but not the 3080ti but costs less than the 3080. That's a great spot to be and would get my buying dollar.

 

[David_Schroth]

I think the disruption that they'd have, even if not beating NVIDIA's offerings, would be something competitive to the 2080Ti priced in the $600-$700 range. That would seriously disrupt NVIDIA's pricing structure as they'd have to move everything down the price point ladder to properly compete (i.e. the 2080 Super would be forced to drop to ~500, 2070 Super under 400, etc).

 

[Riccochet]

That's something, IMO, that needs to happen.

 

[Brian_B]

I think the disruption that they'd have, even if not beating NVIDIA's offerings, would be something competitive to the 2080Ti priced in the $600-$700 range. That would seriously disrupt NVIDIA's pricing structure as they'd have to move everything down the price point ladder to properly compete (i.e. the 2080 Super would be forced to drop to ~500, 2070 Super under 400, etc).

This is what I've been saying for a long time - AMD doesn't need to have the fastest card, they just need to be fast enough to force nVidia to react. You worded it a lot better than I have been able to though.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Don't forget guys the first generation Ryzen CPU's were not 'faster' than intel. Only in more recent iterations has IPC cought up and in some cases exceeded Intel. (Security flaws aside snark)

So I would expect this card to perform well and be a real contender across the board. But I don't expect it to smash Nvidia. Nvidia has a habit of smashing it's own performance and I'm good with that. I want AMD to be competitive so you can buy one and not have a lesser card. Maybe the top of the line Big Navi can beat the 3080 but not the 3080ti but costs less than the 3080. That's a great spot to be and would get my buying dollar.

This is exactly what I was thinking about when I first saw the article. The quote is how AMD expects it to disrupt like what happened with Ryzen and Intel. The first iteration didn't win in clock speed or IPC but came close enough in many cases with the extra cores and the cheaper prices to shake things up. Zen+ came around and increased IPC and clock speed and stayed in the same price range hammering at Intel even more. After that came Zen2 with even better IPC and clock speeds as well as an increase in cores while keeping prices reasonable for the lower core parts but extending prices upwards (but still not stratospheric) for the new high core parts.

The first Navi was essentially the warning for nVidia and a test bed. I think it's obvious now that the first iteration of the architecture on the current manufacturing process wasn't going to cut it for anything bigger than the 5700XT and that's why we haven't seen anything higher. There's a good chance that Big Navi may very well be RDNA2 and 7nm+ from TSMC with notable improvements across the board. RDNA may very well be the Zen iteration with RDNA2 and Big Navi as Zen+ or possibly Zen2 or more likely somewhere in between. It's probably not going to be the fastest (or not for long even if it is) but it will be "good enough" with the proper pricing to mess up nVidia's high price trend.

AMD would likely be looking to increase mindshare and marketshare which should keep prices from going into nVidia territory for the time being. At least this would be my strategy for now especially if I knew that another iteration of RDNA was still in the wings, better than RDNA2 and ready to come out before too long. The current Navi lineup could be seen as a stopgap for RDNA2 but that may very well be a stopgap until the next version comes out. AMD has been hitting hard and fast on the CPU side this way and it's possible the same has been setup for the GPU side.

 

[Uvilla]

I think the big changes are adding nvidias image quality trickery... Plus rdna2 plus power efficiency .. those that say wrll Nvidia will just release 3080 well yes they will.. but this one might be meant to go against 3080 anyway, not 2080.
Also we don't know how its scales... It might be better scaling too.
Then again might be ****, but about time to release big card, not half cut measures.