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.
421 Comments on Top AMD RDNA4 Part Could Offer RX 7900 XTX Performance at Half its Price and Lower Power
Newer games with higher-resulution assets making use of more features are what are driving up VRAM. Even at 4K max settings 10GB used to be enough only a few short years ago. People who bought 3080s probably skipped the 40-series and they've been suffering with 10GB for a good year or more, in so much as "suffering" is still little more than a minor inconvenience of having to compromise on some graphics settings.
I think 16GB is the new sweet spot in that it will be enough for max or high settings for a decent GPU lifespan right now. 20 and 24GB sure do feel like overkill when the consoles are making do with somewhere between 9GB and 12.5GB depending on how much system RAM the game requires. Throw some headroom into that and a 12GB card is probably fine for lower resolutions, 16GB should handle 4K, and by the time games actually need 20 or 24GB, cards like the 7900-series, 3090/4090 will lack the raw compute to actually run at 4K max settings.
We're all speculating, and this is a thread based on speculation anyway, but as someone with friends working in multiple different game studios, there's a strong focus on developing for the majority, which means devs are targeting consoles and midrange GPUs at most. If you have more GPU power on tap, you can get higher framerates and/or resolution but don't expect anything else except in rare edge cases like CP2077 where Nvidia basically dumped millions of dollars of effort and cooperation with CDPR as a marketing stunt more than a practical example of the real-world future that all games will look like.
While in 2004, a 90 nm wafer cost only $2,000 per piece.
2 nm and 3 nm are forbidden for AMD, which means no new graphics cards, and AMD going out of the GPU business.
www.techpowerup.com/301393/tsmc-3-nm-wafer-pricing-to-reach-usd-20-000-next-gen-cpus-gpus-to-be-more-expensive
By your reasoning, Nvidia's latest graphics card was also launched back in 2022, 2 months before the first Radeon 7000-series offering.
I guess Nvidia have an excuse though - they're poor and they can't afford to develop new graphics cards, nor is it economically viable for them to do that with their tiny marketshare.
For games maybe.
I run LLM's on my machine and 24GB of VRAM isn't enough for some of the medium to larger models. So if I could get a card with 32 to 48GB of VRAM on the consumer side that didn't cost a kidney I would do it.
www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/workstations.html
@Chrispy_ FYI:
Quadro RTX 8000 is available at quite low prices. True, this is only the first series of cards supporting DX 12.2 and with not very high performance today, but it does have 48GB of VRAM. In fact, I came across an ad in a bazaar in my homeland, a configuration with such parameters as in the photo for the equivalent of USD $4057.
You still seem to be oblivious to the reason I quoted you in the first place.The latest graphics card is 2024's 7600XT.
Stop citing and complaining about architecture launch dates; Architectures have spanned multiple generations of graphics cards for decades now. It's historical fact that cannot be changed or argued with and it's very common to see old architectures in new generations, sometimes even entire new generations of graphics cards have remained on last-gen architecture.
But this is more of a hobby for me if it was work related my employer would be footing the bill for the hardware :)
In 1440p. Like Alan Wake-2, or Metro Exodus Enhanced. Or Space Simulation game. I have forgotten the complete name. So 16 GB VRAM wouldn't be the sweet spot. It's would be the minimum size in the future now.
But those green devils have one very strange politics. The absolute Flagship does become huge VRAM. But the rest is equipped with peanuts . Like 16 or 12 GB VRAM.
AMD has every time spendet enough VRAM on her GPUs. Like they did just perfectly in RDNA-3. So the next upcoming RDNA-4 would have the same we can assumed.I'm quite have the same interpretation. RayTracing is way to hyped by greedy NVIDIA. Those green devils. The red AMD angels should keep more focused on Raster. But to be, and keep competitive with the green team, they needs to improve their own RT performance. There are no way out.
I'm waiting for the next Highend Radeon before I move off the 7900XTX since I do use the additional vram
Sweetspot (for amount, frequency or whatever in discussion) usually means the point where after it the return is not so great or miniscule or none at all.
I am considering 12GB of VRAM to be the minimum and 16GB the sweetspot. 8GB is dying even at 1080p native and max settings from what I've seen on latest UE5+ games.
And by minimum I mean (and I believe most people do) games don't glitch, stutter or have selected textures downgraded.
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As for RT, personally I like it. Its small things (visually) like this that all add up to a more realistic visuals. I like it when passing by a pothole filled with water everything is mirrored inside instead of a smudged image.
Taking too much computational power? Yes it does. Upscaling (quality) exists.
I am considering "normal" medium RT settings as the sweetspot. Max settings is past that spot. Path tracing even further away...
A graphics card is not an architecture. Confusing these two terms highlights an absolutely, non-debatable gap in your understanding.
And for RayTracing, I agree too. I'm curious to see how they're presenting. I bought one RTX 4080 Super this summer ️. In September. But due to my big lack in mental health (depressive episodes) I haven't played much since that time. Now this year is almost done. And I want to upgrade my second of 3 PCs.
The CPUs I had choosed were the Ryzen 7800x3D or 9800x3D. The bloody thing are the continuing increase of the prices. From 300 bucks this summer. The 7800x3D is now at 549 €. The sucessor 9800x3D, when hit the market, 529 € is now at 719 € on eBay.
All this have to do with simply facts. The shortage of both processors. The old Gen weren't produced any more. And the new Gen isn't saturated the market. Cuz of the huge demand. I'll wait till January or February next year. Till The prices fall again. Currently they're quite to high.
Over 500 € bucks for one CPU isn't candy. It's sour cream. But if the prices still continue at this high levels, I had in mind to invest a little bit more than that's. For 649 € the all mighty 16 core 7950 is available.
Navi 44: 153 mm², 22.98 BTr, 150.2 MTr/mm²
It lies, though, that the die is MCM. It is not.
For a comparison:
Navi 48: 300 mm², 45.06 BTr, 150.2 MTr/mm²
Navi 31: 529 mm², 57.7 BTr
Navi 32: 346 mm², 28.1 BTr
Navi 33: 204 mm², 13.3 BTr, 65.2 MTr/ mm²
Navi 10: 251 mm², 10.3 BTr
Navi 24: 107 mm², 5.4 BTr
Navi 23: 237 mm², 11.06 BTr
Navi 22: 335 mm², 17.2 BTr
Navi 21: 520 mm², 26.8 BTr
Performance estimate: Navi 44 ~ Radeon RX 7700 XT | RTX 4070
Performance estimate: Navi 48 ~ Radeon RX 7900 XT | RTX 4070 Ti S (if everything goes well)
www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/amd-navi-44.g1070
wccftech.com/amd-radeon-rx-8800-xt-rdna-4-gpu-faster-rt-performance-7900-xtx-on-par-rtx-4080-raster/
So will need to wait for a 3rd party review and with a game that doesn't favor radeon to get a real idea of how it will perform.