Sunday, September 29th 2019
AMD "Navi 14" and "Navi 12" GPUs Detailed Some More
The third known implementation of AMD's "Navi" generation of GPUs with RDNA architecture is codenamed "Navi 14." This 7 nm chip is expected to be a cut-down, mainstream chip designed to compete with a spectrum of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 16-series SKUs, according to a 3DCenter.org report. The same report sheds more light on the larger "Navi 12" GPU that could power faster SKUs competing with the likes of the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Super. The two follow the July launch of the architecture debut with "Navi 10." There doesn't appear to be any guiding logic behind the numerical portion of the GPU codename. When launched, the pecking order of the three Navi GPUs will be "Navi 12," followed by "Navi 10," and "Navi 14."
"Navi 14" is expected to be the smallest of the three, with an estimated 170 mm² die-area, about 24 RDNA compute units (1,536 stream processors), and expected to feature a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface. It will be interesting to see how AMD carves out an SKU that can compete with the GTX 1660 Ti, which has 6 GB of 192-bit GDDR6 memory. The company would have to wait for 16 Gbit (2 GB) GDDR6 memory chips, or piggy-back eight 8 Gbit chips to achieve 8 GB, or risk falling short of recommended system requirements of several games at 1080p, if it packs just 4 GB of memory.
The 350-400 mm² "Navi 12" is a whole different beast, with an estimated 64 compute units (4,096 stream processors). The big news in the 3DCenter.org report concerns its memory interface. AMD will stick to 256-bit GDDR6 memory with the "Navi 12," and probably dial up memory clocks compared to the 14 Gbps speed the "Navi 10" uses. This design choice is influenced by NVIDIA's decision to stick to 256-bit bus width with its "TU104" silicon. AMD appears to have had enough of expensive memory solutions such as HBM2, at least in this market segment.
Source:
3DCenter.org
"Navi 14" is expected to be the smallest of the three, with an estimated 170 mm² die-area, about 24 RDNA compute units (1,536 stream processors), and expected to feature a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface. It will be interesting to see how AMD carves out an SKU that can compete with the GTX 1660 Ti, which has 6 GB of 192-bit GDDR6 memory. The company would have to wait for 16 Gbit (2 GB) GDDR6 memory chips, or piggy-back eight 8 Gbit chips to achieve 8 GB, or risk falling short of recommended system requirements of several games at 1080p, if it packs just 4 GB of memory.
38 Comments on AMD "Navi 14" and "Navi 12" GPUs Detailed Some More
Or sometimes AMD, Intel or Nvidia make experimental products that don't end up as a commercial product, just saying…
EDIT: And Discord just hung on me. But this is a known issue with the current 19.9.2 driver.
Hardware is really good, but the drivers need some more work.
Finally once HBM2 supply issues were ironed out, the cyrptocurrency market collapsed and AMD were already shifting vega production to TSMC 7nm for the VII and their server compute range.
I held on to Vega56 at home because of a freesync monitor but Nvidia caved and adopted the VESA VRR standard so even that reason was taken away for picking up a Vega card. I'm currently testing a 5700XT and with undervolting I'm seriously impressed by it. That's saying a lot having just removed a Quadro RTX 6000 and Titan RTX from the machine. I may actually sell my own RTX 2060 and keep this 5700XT. HBM2 would only serve to jack up the prices of Navi and it's doing just fine with the GDDR6 at the moment.