Wednesday, October 28th 2020
AMD Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" RDNA2 Graphics Card Launch Liveblog
After thoroughly appetizing us with its "Where Gaming Begins: Episode 1" event announcing the Ryzen 5000 series "Zen 3" processors that offer up to 19% IPC gains, in the second Episode, we see the company announcing its next-generation Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" graphics cards based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture that introduce full DirectX 12 Ultimate readiness, including real-time raytracing hardware. In the run up to the RX 6000, NVIDIA is already reportedly preparing product-stack updates. In this liveblog, we uncover what has NVIDIA riled up, and whether AMD can pull off better pricing and availbility than the RTX 30-series.
Update 15:59 UTC: It is time! Welcome to the Radeon RX 6000 Series live blog.
Update 16:01 UTC: AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su takes centerstage, fresh off a good quarterly results announcement, and that big Xilinx acquisition announcement.
Update 16:03 UTC: FarCry 6 seems like an AMD optimized title.
Update 16:03 UTC: Possibly the flagship product.
Update 16:04 UTC: AMD is where gaming begins because next-gen consoles trust it. - Dr Su
Update 16:05 UTC: 50% generational improvement in perf/W.
Update 16:06 UTC: 26.7 billion transistors, almost as big as GA102
Update 16:07 UTC: RDNA2 has a breakthrough high-speed design.
Update 16:08 UTC: AMD RDNA2 compute unit 30% more energy efficient.
Update 16:09 UTC: InfinityCache works to significantly improve memory bandwidth, based on the Zen L3 cache. More than 2.17x bandwidth gain despite 256-bit.
Update 16:10 UTC: 30% higher frequencies on the same 7 nm node.
Update 16:10 UTC: DirectX 12 Ultimate and DirectStorage support.
Update 16:11 UTC: Over 2X performance gain over RX 5700 XT.
Update 16:11 UTC: The RX 6800 XT!
Update 16:12 UTC: 4K Gaming from AMD is here! Matches RTX 3080!!!
Update 16:13 UTC: Hello competition!
Update 16:14 UTC: Welcome back ATI Rage, as the AMD Rage Mode.
Update 16:15 UTC: When paired with Ryzen, you get a gaming performance boost, 13% perf increase.
Update 16:15 UTC: AMD introduces its take on the NVIDIA Reflex, announcing latest Radeon Lag and Radeon Boost. No special API needed.
Update 16:16 UTC: Full DX12 Ultimate support, including ray-tracing. Woirking on a DLSS-rival.
Update 16:18 UTC: AMD is leveraging studios working on Xbox Series X / PS5 devs to integrate its Radeon features on the PC.
Update 16:18 UTC: FarCry 6, DiRT 5, WoW Shadowlands (which gets raytracing), RiftBreaker, are AMD-optimized.
Update 16:21 UTC: Available Nov 18, starts, $649
Update 16:21 UTC: Also announcing RX 6800 : faster than RTX 2080 Ti, 4K + raytracing ready
Update 16:22 UTC: $579, November 18 availability for the RX 6800.
Update 16:22 UTC: Lisa gets ready for a "one more thing"
Update 16:23 UTC: Radeon RX 6900 XT: 80 CUs, 65% perf/Watt over 5700 XT.
Update 16:25 UTC: RTX 3090 BEATEN!!!!
Update 16:26 UTC: December 8 for the RX 6900 XT, priced $999.
Update 16:26 UTC: OOF, we cannot wait to test these cards out!
Update 17:08 UTC: The press-release can be found here.
Update 17:19 UTC: The complete AMD slide deck follows.
Update 16:03 UTC: Possibly the flagship product.
Update 16:05 UTC: 50% generational improvement in perf/W.
Update 16:15 UTC: AMD introduces its take on the NVIDIA Reflex, announcing latest Radeon Lag and Radeon Boost. No special API needed.
Update 16:18 UTC: FarCry 6, DiRT 5, WoW Shadowlands (which gets raytracing), RiftBreaker, are AMD-optimized.
Update 16:21 UTC: Available Nov 18, starts, $649
Update 16:21 UTC: Also announcing RX 6800 : faster than RTX 2080 Ti, 4K + raytracing ready
Update 16:22 UTC: Lisa gets ready for a "one more thing"
Update 16:23 UTC: Radeon RX 6900 XT: 80 CUs, 65% perf/Watt over 5700 XT.
Update 17:08 UTC: The press-release can be found here.
Update 17:19 UTC: The complete AMD slide deck follows.
351 Comments on AMD Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" RDNA2 Graphics Card Launch Liveblog
I remember a long time ago. I forget who did it, but they took work station computer ECC with no over clock and work station GPU's with ECC and compared Consumer cards and consumer cpus image quality against it as the work station was the base for the image with no errors. They has to compare each and ever last frame with each other over the time the bench. I for get what software they used but it took months to do. in the end i usually hovered around 95% of the same image quality. It ranged from 100% up at worse you only got 92% of the same quality image.
ryzen 3 3300x for 3 months! Really? Come on!
wccftech.com/amd-radeon-rx-6000-rdna-2-big-navi-graphics-cards-ray-tracing-performance-detailed/
1-Contracts/Agreements between TSMC and AMD: Basically, whether the RDNA1 production is kinda required to meet the terms of their deals or not. Also, and somewhat related to that, whether AMD can simply say "screw it" and switch out RDNA1 production for RDNA2 overnight.
2-Contracts/Agreements between AMD and OEMs/AIBs/etc.: Whether AMD has to provide RDNA1 products to others due to legal obligations, regardless of the shiny new RDNA2.
@TheLostSwede you seem more knowledgeable on the fabs topic, so I refer to you :D I won't ask about legal agreements and what not because those papers are probably not public anyway, but is it possible for AMD to switch out RDNA1 for RDNA2 in TSMC fabs relatively quickly (say, a couple weeks at most) or is it a long, slow process?
RT is memory bandwidth extensive on geometry search engine workload which usually has small data storage consumption with high memory bandwidth, hence the very high-speed 128 MB Infinity Cache.
RDNA 2 based game consoles seem to be missing very high-speed 128 MB Infinity Cache.
but i will say this, its nice to see AMD doing so well... the competition this is generating on CPU and GPU front is going to change everything.