Monday, January 29th 2024
Top AMD RDNA4 Part Could Offer RX 7900 XTX Performance at Half its Price and Lower Power
We've known since way back in August 2023, that AMD is rumored to be retreating from the enthusiast graphics segment with its next-generation RDNA 4 graphics architecture, which means that we likely won't see successors to the RX 7900 series squaring off against the upper end of NVIDIA's fastest GeForce RTX "Blackwell" series. What we'll get instead is a product stack closely resembling that of the RX 5000 series RDNA, with its top part providing a highly competitive price-performance mix around the $400-mark. A more recent report by Moore's Law is Dead sheds more light on this part.
Apparently, the top Radeon RX SKU based on the next-gen RDNA4 graphics architecture will offer performance comparable to that of the current RX 7900 XTX, but at less than half its price (around the $400 mark). It is also expected to achieve this performance target using a smaller, simpler silicon, with significantly lower board cost, leading up to its price. What's more, there could be energy efficiency gains made from the switch to a newer 4 nm-class foundry node and the RDNA4 architecture itself; which could achieve its performance target using fewer numbers of compute units than the RX 7900 XTX with its 96.
When it came out, the RX 5700 XT offered an interesting performance proposition, beating the RTX 2070, and forcing NVIDIA to refresh its product stack with the RTX 20-series SUPER, and the resulting RTX 2070 SUPER. Things could go down slightly differently with RDNA4. Back in 2019, ray tracing was a novelty, and AMD could surprise NVIDIA in the performance segment even without it. There is no such advantage now, ray tracing is relevant; and so AMD could count on timing its launch before the Q4-2024 debut of the RTX 50-series "Blackwell."
Sources:
Moore's Law is Dead (YouTube), Tweaktown
Apparently, the top Radeon RX SKU based on the next-gen RDNA4 graphics architecture will offer performance comparable to that of the current RX 7900 XTX, but at less than half its price (around the $400 mark). It is also expected to achieve this performance target using a smaller, simpler silicon, with significantly lower board cost, leading up to its price. What's more, there could be energy efficiency gains made from the switch to a newer 4 nm-class foundry node and the RDNA4 architecture itself; which could achieve its performance target using fewer numbers of compute units than the RX 7900 XTX with its 96.
396 Comments on Top AMD RDNA4 Part Could Offer RX 7900 XTX Performance at Half its Price and Lower Power
Bitte auf Englisch posten.
As for being the fastest, it is true, but at what cost? It's not just ultra expensive, ultra power hungry, but as soon as the 5090 is out, it'll drop its value like a rock. It is only for people who's got lots of spare cash to blow and don't care about value at all. For "normal folks" like me (that is, casual, or home gamers), a 4080 Super or 7900 XTX is a much better buy.
I don't think a card needs to be within any percent to the GRE. I think it needs to be as close to the top as possible, as long as it meets the performance level one needs. For example, a 6600 is a great buy, good value card, but only if its performance is enough for the targeted resolution, detail level and frame rate.
It might also be useful to recall that a 4090 should not lose much performance when tuned down to 300W, and is still much cheaper than an RTX 6000 Ada, for those who need it - and of course, with the money to buy that. Though if one's talking about feature-completeness on the AD102 silicon, it probably should be the RTX 6000 Ada, compared to which the 4090 is cut down the same way a 4080 non-Super was. The 4080 Super is supposedly a more-or-less complete AD103, with just a few video decoders and encoders fused out of use.
Back on the topic, if AMD really does pulls a rabbit out of the figurative hat, I guess they'd keep NVIDIA more honest, and make things better for customers of both companies.
Personally, I'm refusing to buy an Nvidia card as long as they're all priced out of earth's atmosphere (that is, they're all £50-100 more expensive than the competing AMD product), and since I recently sold my 7800 XT, I'll almost definitely be looking at big Navi 4.
Right now AMD offerings are not really competitive when GPU compute is involved. I'd easily go over to anyone offering a more cost-effective product.
Eh, guess that came out wrong. My apologies about that. :oops:
An NVIDIA example of this was the 4080. The sales weren't where NVIDIA wanted them to be so the 4080S was released with a $200 discount. Funny thing is, the 4080S is selling above that because people want them.
Since you mentioned it, even the 7900 XTX is way above the limit of what I consider a sensible price for a GPU. That's why I'm not affected by AMD's decision of not making a halo RDNA 4 GPU. If they can pull off a decent midrange card, I'm game.