Friday, June 10th 2022
AMD RDNA3 Offers Over 50% Perf/Watt Uplift Akin to RDNA2 vs. RDNA; RDNA4 Announced
AMD in its 2022 Financial Analyst Day presentation claimed that it will repeat the over-50% generational performance/Watt uplift feat with the upcoming RDNA3 graphics architecture. This would be a repeat of the unexpected return to the high-end and enthusiast market-segments of AMD Radeon, thanks to the 50% performance/Watt uplift of the RDNA2 graphics architecture over RDNA. The company also broadly detailed the various new specifications of RDNA3 that make this possible.
To begin with, RDNA3 debuts on the TSMC N5 (5 nm) silicon fabrication node, and will debut a chiplet-based approach that's somewhat analogous to what AMD did with its 2nd Gen EPYC "Rome" and 3rd Gen Ryzen "Matisse" processors. Chiplets packed with the GPU's main number-crunching and 3D rendering machinery will make up chiplets, while the I/O components, such as memory controllers, display controllers, media engines, etc., will sit on a separate die. Scaling up the logic dies will result in a higher segment ASIC.AMD also stated that it has re-architected the compute unit with RDNA3 to increase its IPC. The graphics pipeline is bound to get certain major changes, too. The company is doubling down on its Infinity Cache on-die cache memory technology, with RDNA3 featuring the next-generation Infinity Cache (which probably operates at higher bandwidths).
From the looks of it, RDNA3 will be exclusively based on 5 nm, and the company announced, for the very first time, the new RDNA4 graphics architecture. It shared no details about RDNA4, except that it will be based on a more advanced node than 5 nm.
AMD RDNA3 is expected to debut in the second half of 2022, with ramp across 2023. RDNA4 is slated for some time in 2024.
To begin with, RDNA3 debuts on the TSMC N5 (5 nm) silicon fabrication node, and will debut a chiplet-based approach that's somewhat analogous to what AMD did with its 2nd Gen EPYC "Rome" and 3rd Gen Ryzen "Matisse" processors. Chiplets packed with the GPU's main number-crunching and 3D rendering machinery will make up chiplets, while the I/O components, such as memory controllers, display controllers, media engines, etc., will sit on a separate die. Scaling up the logic dies will result in a higher segment ASIC.AMD also stated that it has re-architected the compute unit with RDNA3 to increase its IPC. The graphics pipeline is bound to get certain major changes, too. The company is doubling down on its Infinity Cache on-die cache memory technology, with RDNA3 featuring the next-generation Infinity Cache (which probably operates at higher bandwidths).
From the looks of it, RDNA3 will be exclusively based on 5 nm, and the company announced, for the very first time, the new RDNA4 graphics architecture. It shared no details about RDNA4, except that it will be based on a more advanced node than 5 nm.
AMD RDNA3 is expected to debut in the second half of 2022, with ramp across 2023. RDNA4 is slated for some time in 2024.
121 Comments on AMD RDNA3 Offers Over 50% Perf/Watt Uplift Akin to RDNA2 vs. RDNA; RDNA4 Announced
jk:
videocardz.com/newz/amd-slaps-sapphires-wrist-new-radeon-card-is-called-rx-6700-not-6700
&
videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-6700-non-xt-has-been-tested-in-3dmark-timespy-up-to-10-faster-than-rx-6650xt
That means, that RDNA 3 would be able to perform 50% faster at same power consumption... or would give same performance as RDNA 2 at 50% lower power consumption.
That still leaves room for AMD to increase performance further... so, they COULD conceivably increase the performance to 100% via clocks and/or core counts, or other areas... and the total power consumption COULD increase to 500W, but I don't necessarily think it will - it could be less due to the chiplet nature of higher end RDNA 3 gpu's and it will also depend on whether AMD does voltage optimizations etc.
Same goes for GPUs. We don't know exactly at what power level these measurements are based on. What if these were calculated at a power level of 150Watts-200Watts for instance which gives this 50% performance per watt. Crank up the power and it will run faster but the increase in performance may not be proportional to power increase. That is why I'm skeptic about the performance per watt metric. We don't know what the baseline is here for the power consumption. 6900XT consumes 300Watts (mine does) I wonder if the 7900XT will be 50% faster than mine 6900XT and still consume 300Watts of power.
Same goes for NVidia Ada architecture. So many rumors about these cards and how performance per watt is so much better versus previous gen and yet they still consume almost two times more according to rumors.
I only hope we won't get stiffed again with those processors and graphics cards with price, actual performance and power consumption.
Some example math:
GPU A delivers 1000 performance in Benchmark X, at 200W power consumption = 5 score/W
GPU B delivers 1500 performance in Benchmark X at 200W power consumption = 7,5 score/W - a 50% increase.
GPU C matches the efficiency of GPU B, but is tuned to match the performance of GPU A at 1000: 1000 score/ 7.5 score/W = 133.33333 W, or a 33.3333% power reduction from GPU A.
Of course, voltage/frequency scaling isn't linear (nor does this take shader count, clock speed or VRAM bus width into account), so these calculations are massively oversimplified.
It means 50% faster if it uses the same wattage, or the same performance with 66% the power usage.
Faster per watt is very easy to achieve in the low end parts, since many of those have bottlenecks they can improve upon (semi-related example, an APU with RDNA3 would blast previous APU's away because of DDR5's bandwidth)
Wait, are go-faster stripes a car-oriented precursor to RGB?
Still, the lineage of "things that make your stuff better but really don't" is clearly quite a long one :D
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