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.
517 Comments on Top AMD RDNA4 Part Could Offer RX 7900 XTX Performance at Half its Price and Lower Power
Won't be replying here anymore.
However, it did open my eyes. I just don't have anything to discuss with people who genuinely state "GPU compute isn't important" in the year of our Lord 2025, in a place like TPU.
Besides, I'm sure I could find lots of pages discussing issues with Nvidia drivers as both I and my brother has had some. I just won't because there's no point in it, issues happen, it's called life. I see no perverted joy in bashing anyway.
I also have encountered some terrible frame pacing and artifacts on pubg with my 6900xt, and witnessed it last night troubleshooting a friends rig with a 7900xtx. I have a 7900xtx, but its not gotten to game yet, its been on rocm duty. I bought my 7900xtx because AMD said this is a mid tier card, I don't see it unseating the 7900xtx, and if it does... its not going to be $500. But its got less vram and less vram bandwidth and less cores... on the same node. AMD makes decent hardware but they don't pull off miracles.
Pink bar is 9700 XT, orange bar is 9700, green bar is FE RTX 4080, purple bar is AIB RTX 4080, yellow bar is RTX 4070 Ti S.
I know... mocking can be fun, so no hard feelings
From what I can see here, AMD now has a very golden opportunity to clinch some important market share back. If it is very careful to not overprice the cards, but give hefty discounts, which correspond to the declining market share, and lost popularity and credibility of the Radeon brand.
I think AMD just found the opportunity for better optimization, wider FSR4 support, and its the matter of pricing too.
We can speculate as much as we want. AMD only knows why...