AMD Explains Missing RDNA 4 Announcements At CES

[wolf]

The naked leading the blind. JFC. Their cards are good, just don't be like absolute bozos when launching them and they will sell. Far out.

Boy I'd have loved to be in that room. An invite only years of being in the game gets you though.

 

[bug]

Tbh, I'd be ok if they fumble presentations but deliver a good product. But I know nothing of the product either. A 7900XT only more efficient? That sounds very much like Arrow Lake take 2.

 

[ThomasK]

Oh my fcking god. What a mess. 9070XT is already DOA

Yeah, sure, you would know.

 

[bug]

Yeah, sure, you would know.

What we know is it will be a 7900XT level card. And that Nvidia will offer the 5070 for $550. If the 5070 will be a mild upgrade over the 4070, it will match the 9070XT. I don't see many ways how this is a good thing for AMD. Or us.

 

[tfdsaf]

I think they have everything setup actually and after the announcement they will have the cards selling in 2 weeks.

I think we are probably going to see very cheap cards, if the RX 9070XT is say same performance as the 5070 then expect it to be $100 cheaper, so I really think they are going to go for a $100 price reduction with the same feature set as Nvidia, with as good raytracing performance as then, with better video encoding and with more common PSU's.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I wish someone could explain me why RDNA 3 cards won't get FSR 4, or at least some lesser version e.g. FSR 3.9, aided by some AI features.

RDNA 3 does not have dedicated tensor processing/matrix multiplication capabilities, although it finally offered some instruction sets that are relevant to speed this type of workload up. Without this capability, the shader cores would be bogged down by the extra workload and this would not work as well. Current Radeon hardware can be used to train, inference and run models relatively well, but not while concurrently running a game engine. GeForce has had the Tensor cores since Volta (2017) and both Intel Arc Alchemist and Battlemage architectures have had their implementation (XMX cores) since the beginning.

In a sense, the reason why RDNA 3 gets left out is yet another self-inflicted wound because "AI graphics, like RT, is a gimmick and would never get anywhere"

 

[DaemonForce]

Oh my fcking god. What a mess. 9070XT is already DOA

Yeah this is what I was thinking just over a week ago and it turns out that hint was right.
The 9070XT is the flagship for that series and is not an ascension in performance.
If nothing else it appears to be a regression with pixel rate falling way behind.
It sort of keeps up with the 7900XT, keeps up with the 5080 in some FP16/64 ops and that's about it.

Oh...

Maybe there's still something worth our attention here. I'm not interested in AAA and Steam knows most of us aren't either.
I'm more interested in streaming VR and some desktop with the same excellent encode model that keeps nVidia in business.
16GB memory, fine. A pixel/texture rate several times the power of my RX580, fine. I don't need much. It just needs to be enough.

"BuT mUh AI-" Stfu. Literally nobody cares.

If AI/RT/PT were that important, that's all gamers would care about.
People already know full well that this junk causes frames to tank, HARD.
Most of us run cards that either game fine or getting long in the tooth, sub-60FPS.
We don't have a firm grasp on older games yet and I'm not running into RT/PT blind.
It's a fool's errand to believe these newer cards aren't going to continue to struggle.

RDNA 3 does not have dedicated tensor processing/matrix multiplication capabilities

UDNA will have to finally address this with a new core technology dedicated to these ops just like everyone else.
It's an elephant in the room that is slowly snacking and growing. But for now...This might be okay.

 

[bug]

I think they have everything setup actually and after the announcement they will have the cards selling in 2 weeks.

I think we are probably going to see very cheap cards, if the RX 9070XT is say same performance as the 5070 then expect it to be $100 cheaper, so I really think they are going to go for a $100 price reduction with the same feature set as Nvidia, with as good raytracing performance as then, with better video encoding and with more common PSU's.

Based on what? They said "maybe Q1" and admitted even then it may be a paper launch.

 

[ThomasK]

What we know is it will be a 7900XT level card. And that Nvidia will offer the 5070 for $550. If the 5070 will be a mild upgrade over the 4070, it will match the 9070XT. I don't see many ways how this is a good thing for AMD. Or us.

Do you even know pricing yet? Please man, either stow your crystal ball away or shut up.

 

[bug]

Do you even know pricing yet? Please man, either stow your crystal ball away or shut up.

We don't know the pricing. But if it will be much more than $550, it will be a hard sell. And if AMD's top card will sell for $550, that doesn't leave a lot of room for profit.
It's not hard to connect the dots, you know?

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah, sure, you would know.

Yes, I do. Its not hard to conclude this based on the facts so far, and AMD's marketing up to this point. Its a goddamn mess.

Do you even know pricing yet? Please man, either stow your crystal ball away or shut up.

You're at liberty to shut up yourself, if this is all you can bring to a discussion. If you have tangible info that 9070XT is going to be more than a dud, please do enlighten us.

Yeah this is what I was thinking just over a week ago and it turns out that hint was right.
The 9070XT is the flagship for that series and is not an ascension in performance.
If nothing else it appears to be a regression with pixel rate falling way behind.
It sort of keeps up with the 7900XT, keeps up with the 5080 in some FP16/64 ops and that's about it.

Oh...

Maybe there's still something worth our attention here. I'm not interested in AAA and Steam knows most of us aren't either.
I'm more interested in streaming VR and some desktop with the same excellent encode model that keeps nVidia in business.
16GB memory, fine. A pixel/texture rate several times the power of my RX580, fine. I don't need much. It just needs to be enough.

"BuT mUh AI-" Stfu. Literally nobody cares.

If AI/RT/PT were that important, that's all gamers would care about.
People already know full well that this junk causes frames to tank, HARD.
Most of us run cards that either game fine or getting long in the tooth, sub-60FPS.
We don't have a firm grasp on older games yet and I'm not running into RT/PT blind.
It's a fool's errand to believe these newer cards aren't going to continue to struggle.

UDNA will have to finally address this with a new core technology dedicated to these ops just like everyone else.
It's an elephant in the room that is slowly snacking and growing. But for now...This might be okay.

It ain't even properly keeping up with the 7900XT given the power budget and supposed shaders, just not happening, much like how Nvidia will never cross the shader deficit to surpass 4090 with their 5080. The architectures are practically the same. Shaders are shaders. Maybe you can get 15% from clocks, and that's being optimistic, and when you do, you'll be using far more power for it. Its a complete standstill, and both parties are going to be selling featureset.

AMD is doing what Nvidia does on their stack, once again: minimal progress for maximum pricing, as close as possible to the relative price of last gen. Nvidia literally translated shader count to price gaps. 5080, half the shaders, half the price of x90. AMD is following suit. I bet they'll try to get 499,- for this, or more, for what is essentially a refreshed 7800XT.

 

[DaemonForce]

AMD is following suit. I bet they'll try to get 499,- for this, or more, for what is essentially a refreshed 7800XT.

I get that there's not supposed to be major improvement this gen.
But it's been a few. There should at least be some improvement.
If AMD releases a dog ass flagship $500 even within ~100 of that spot then that's GG no RE.
Long past time to sell off Radeon to a company that cares about making GPUs.
We can't have one company in the world putting everyone in mass psychosis with their dog ass prices.
I don't care if Intel and Apple are in the same game, they're the same snake of predatory greedy garbage.

If I can't properly sunset my current hardware, I'm spinning up the rack and doing full time x264 encodes on FX.
This whole mess is so stupid and I know a LOT about stupid. It impressed me this time.

 

[QuietBob]

initially FSR 4 will be available on the RX 9000 series, but the company will assess specific SKUs from previous generations that it thinks are capable of the AI acceleration performance needed

For those who care about upscaling and frame generation, this is good news. FSR4 should eventually find its way to the 7000 series, and possibly top 6000 models.

If I were to guess, Navi 31 is almost certain to receive it, having untapped compute potential. Navi 32 is very likely to get it, as well. Not sure about Navi 21 though, the extra AI processing may be too costly to justify its implementation.

 

[wNotyarD]

For those who care about upscaling and frame generation, this is good news. FSR4 should eventually find its way to the 7000 series, and possibly top 6000 models.

If I were to guess, Navi 31 is almost certain to receive it, having untapped compute potential. Navi 32 is very likely to get it, as well. Not sure about Navi 21 though, the extra AI processing may be too costly to justify its implementation.

Using ROCm support as basis, I believe the 7900's (GRE, XT and XTX) may receive it quite easily. Sure, it may not be anytime soon as we know the Radeon division likes to take its sweet time getting its gears into motion, but it should come.

Wouldn't bet on RDNA2 and lesser RDNA3 getting it, though.

 

[kapone32]

For the Paper launch crowd. Why were there so many AIB models at CES?

 

[remekra]

Interesting info from KitGuru:

So if they are correct the drivers are there but are limited, so 3Dmark scores are lower by around 20%. There was a leak of TimeSpy run with 9070XT, someone can add 20% to it and we may have the real performance of that card. Or maybe its false info, who knows.
Overall really strange behaviour.

 

[Kyan]

True... that's probably the first naming scheme in the PC world that starts with a nine. Is the counting supposed to continue in hexadecimal?

GTX 900 series, intel 9000 series, AMD Ryzen 9000 series.
I don't count moving a number from second to third place as a new naming scheme. It's just a useless change, that really won't change anything and don't follow a big architecture change or any manufacturing evolution.

 

[ThomasK]

Yes, I do. Its not hard to conclude this based on the facts so far, and AMD's marketing up to this point. Its a goddamn mess.


You're at liberty to shut up yourself, if this is all you can bring to a discussion. If you have tangible info that 9070XT is going to be more than a dud, please do enlighten us.

You cry way too much for someone who's giving them money. It's either that, or you're faking it.

And thank you so much, but I'd much rather wait for the official release, than keep wasting my time here, writing huge texts riddled with SPECULATIONS.

 

[Gasaraki]

What a load of crock. If they had big awesome announcements, you really think that they wouldn't fit them in? RDNA 4 must not be ready.

 

[Cheeseball]

What we know is it will be a 7900XT level card. And that Nvidia will offer the 5070 for $550. If the 5070 will be a mild upgrade over the 4070, it will match the 9070XT. I don't see many ways how this is a good thing for AMD. Or us.

The 5070 may actually be “weaker” than the 4070 Super, as it shows on paper. It has fewer cores at 6144 compared to the SUPER’s 7168, but maybe the newer GDDR7 and architectural improvements would push it over a bit.

The 5070 Ti should more or less be better than the 4070 Ti Super with the 256-bit memory bus and slightly more cores, and most likely 128 ROPs.

 

[Visible Noise]

I wish someone could explain me why RDNA 3 cards won't get FSR 4, or at least some lesser version e.g. FSR 3.9, aided by some AI features.

Because AMD lied when the said they added ML to RDNA 3. What they did was added shader instructions that runs ML (matrix math) in the graphics pipeline.

Real ML has specialized and dedicated hardware (tensor cores) to do matrix math.

UDNA will have to finally address this with a new core technology dedicated to these ops just like everyone else.
It's an elephant in the room that is slowly snacking and growing. But for now...This might be okay.

But it’s two years away at a minimum. How do they stay afloat until then?

Do you even know pricing yet? Please man, either stow your crystal ball away or shut up.

We know the die size - 390mm. Roughly 15% larger than 7800 XT.

How low do you think it can be priced?

 

[kapone32]

But it’s two years away at a minimum. How do they stay afloat until then?

Handhelds are going to keep AMD Graphics going. I can see those in All In ones next. Even Asus and MSI are releasing APU based laptops. If you don't think they are going to make sales of $6000 5090 based laptops harder you would be wrong. Then I already commented on the importance of the Steam Deck and specifically Steam OS for users with Radeon PCs. Even if this card is priced right AMD will do fine.

 

[Visible Noise]

Interesting info from KitGuru:

So if they are correct the drivers are there but are limited, so 3Dmark scores are lower by around 20%. There was a leak of TimeSpy run with 9070XT, someone can add 20% to it and we may have the real performance of that card. Or maybe its false info, who knows.
Overall really strange behaviour.

Wow, it‘s like watching a replay of the Vega launch. The exact same things were said then.

And we know how that turned out in the end.

Handhelds are going to keep AMD Graphics going. I can see those in All In ones next. Even Asus and MSI are releasing APU based laptops. If you don't think they are going to make sales of $6000 5090 based laptops harder you would be wrong. Then I already commented on the importance of the Steam Deck and specifically Steam OS for users with Radeon PCs. Even if this card is priced right AMD will do fine.

Have you missed the handhelds that are using Intel SOCs?

Also, I think you are vastly overestimating the size of the market for a handheld PC. That market is literally owned by Nintendo.

 

[kapone32]

Have you missed the handhelds that are using Intel SOCs?

Also, I think you are vastly overestimating the size of the market for a handheld PC. That market is literally owned by Nintendo.

You mean the MSI Claw?

Nintendo owns the handheld PC market?

Can you install Steam on the Switch?

There is a difference between the handheld PC market and Gaming handhelds. The current market I am talking about is the Steam Deck and all of it's clones and contemporaries. Maybe you missed that the new Legion Go comes with Steam OS or the fact that the Steam Deck has been in the top 10 of Global sales on Steam since launch. There was also a huge uptake on the ROG ally where I live when it was $100 off during Black Friday. Coming back to the Legion Go, even though it was the most expensive of the the first Gen Win 11 (ok) handhelds, they obviously sold enough of them to inspire them to make a new one. Then look at Acer and not one but 3 handhelds.

 

[Visible Noise]

You mean the MSI Claw?

Nintendo owns the handheld PC market?

Can you install Steam on the Switch?

There is a difference between the handheld PC market and Gaming handhelds. The current market I am talking about is the Steam Deck and all of its clones and contemporaries. Maybe you missed that the new Legion Go comes with Steam OS or the fact that the Steam Deck has been in the top 10 of Global sales on Steam since launch. There was also a huge uptake on the ROG ally where I live when it was $100 off during Black Friday. Coming back to the Legion Go, even though it was the most expensive of the the first Gen Win 11 (ok) handhelds, they obviously sold enough of them to inspire them to make a new one. Then look at Acer and not one but 3 handhelds.

I haven’t missed a thing. Just because a product exists doesn’t mean it’s successful. Handheld PC gaming is a tiny tiny niche. Ask the average person on the street what a Steamdeck is and they will have no idea. Now ask the average person on the street what a Switch is and either they or their kids will have one.

Prove me wrong, show me some somewhat citable sales numbers.

AMD’s Graphics Division made a profit of $12M last quarter. They have said in their investor call that console revenue is declining quickly, it‘s the end of console cycle. You’re in fantasy land if you think Steamdeck type products are going to make up for the revenue loss from Xbox and PlayStation. Do you think AMD is able to get as much money from small off the shelf mobile SOC as they get for the big custom chips in the colsoles?