AMD "Navi" Graphics Card PCB Pictured, uses GDDR6

[btarunr]

Pictures of an upcoming AMD Radeon "Navi" graphics card bare PCB made it to the web over the weekend. The picture reveals a fairly long (over 25 cm) board with AMD markings, and a layout that doesn't match with any reference-design PCB AMD launched so far. At the heart of the PCB is a large ASIC pad that appears to be within 5 percent of the size of a "Polaris10" chip. The ASIC is surrounded by eight GDDR6 memory pads. We could guess they're GDDR6 looking at the rectangularity of their pin-layout compared to GDDR5.

The PCB has provision for up to two 8-pin PCIe power inputs, and an 8+1 phase VRM that uses premium components such as rectangular tantalum capacitors, DrMOS, and a high-end VRM controller chip. There's also provision for dual-BIOS. The display I/O completely does away with DVI provisioning, and only includes the likes of DisplayPort, HDMI, and even USB-C based outputs such as VirtualLink. The fan header looks complex, probably offering individual fan-speed control for the card's multi-fan cooling solution that could resemble that of the Radeon VII. Looking purely at the feature-set on offer, and the fact that "Navi" will be more advanced than "Vega 2.0," we expect this card to be fairly powerful, going after the likes of NVIDIA's RTX 2070 and RTX 2060. AMD is expected to unveil this card at the 2019 Computex, this June.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[ZoneDymo]

guess they are saving HBM for a 2080Ti competitor or something.

it really does not matter that much but I was kinda hoping it would be near all HBM for AMD at this point, like a RX680 carrying the HBM 1.0 that was used in the Fury X and probably has gone down in price etc by now.

 

[M2B]

Two 8 pins are too much for a mid-range card.
AMD is probably pushing the clocks too much, or it could be that the shader count is fairly big or a combination of both.

 

[zo0lykas]

I believe hbm they left for workstation gpus and for gaming thy use ddr6

guess they are saving HBM for a 2080Ti competitor or something.

it really does not matter that much but I was kinda hoping it would be near all HBM for AMD at this point, like a RX680 carrying the HBM 1.0 that was used in the Fury X and probably has gone down in price etc by now.

 

[Camm]

Wouldn't be surprised if the memory controller is setup for HBM and GDDR6 - the memory price issue has been a PITA for AMD for a while now, but I can also see semi-custom partners really wanting the simplified layout of a HBM stack for cooling and chassis design.

 

[londiste]

it really does not matter that much but I was kinda hoping it would be near all HBM for AMD at this point, like a RX680 carrying the HBM 1.0 that was used in the Fury X and probably has gone down in price etc by now.

HBM chips themselves have gone down in price. Rest of the cost like interposer is still the same. Plus, you'd want HBM2 anyway, probably in larger stacks. Don't get me wrong, HBM is awesome, but it is also expensive and the benefit over now-improved GDDR (GDDR5X/GDDR6) is not significant enough for graphics workloads.

Two 8 pins are too much for a mid-range card.
AMD is probably pushing the clocks too much, or it could be that the shader count is fairly big or a combination of both.

This is likely an evaluation board rather than reference or production one. These tend to have more possible power inputs than reference PCBs. 256-bit GDDR6 will put this invariably into same class with RTX2070 and RTX2080. Considering that AMD's compression has been lagging behind, I would not hold my breath for a proper RTX2080 competitor - they could easily give the GPU same compute power but then it would be very memory-starved. A marketing reason for the same is that it would make very recent Radeon 7 obsolete. Compare this situation to Fury X or Vegas and I would suspect we will get a card that is roughly on par but 5% ahead of RTX2070 but does not get close to RTX2080, leaving Radeon 7 at the top of the stack for a while.

 

[kastriot]

Well they will be more cheaper and competitive with GDDR6 simple eh.

 

[Ferrum Master]

This is likely an evaluation board rather than reference or production one.

it is, look at the DIP switches on the back side, it is a dev board. We can ignore any assumptions.

 

[M2B]

5% ahead of RTX2070

5 percent ahead of the 2070 means roughly 10% above a 64. I doubt it.
Navi is the polaris replacement,
It needs to be 75% faster than polaris to beat the 2070.
RX 480 was 40~% faster than the 380X and I expect the same here, 40 percent improvement over the fastest polaris based offering.

 

[Vayra86]

HBM chips themselves have gone down in price. Rest of the cost like interposer is still the same. Plus, you'd want HBM2 anyway, probably in larger stacks. Don't get me wrong, HBM is awesome, but it is also expensive and the benefit over now-improved GDDR (GDDR5X/GDDR6) is not significant enough for graphics workloads.
This is likely an evaluation board rather than reference or production one. These tend to have more possible power inputs than reference PCBs. 256-bit GDDR6 will put this invariably into same class with RTX2070 and RTX2080. Considering that AMD's compression has been lagging behind, I would not hold my breath for a proper RTX2080 competitor - they could easily give the GPU same compute power but then it would be very memory-starved. A marketing reason for the same is that it would make very recent Radeon 7 obsolete. Compare this situation to Fury X or Vegas and I would suspect we will get a card that is roughly on par but 5% ahead of RTX2070 but does not get close to RTX2080, leaving Radeon 7 at the top of the stack for a while.

They want Radeon 7 obsolete. Its too costly for that performance segment for gaming. That and Vega are 'can do' products meant to keep AMD in the race. Not the high margin products they should be given their place in the stack. Note that 'obsolete' is also placing a nearly equal performer just below it at a good price. That is how Nvidia used to swing its cut down Gx104's too.

Navi is just another fancy name for Polaris at this point, I have this feeling it won't be much different from it: a cost effective mid range/lower high end chip. Maybe some RT-related tweaks. Some minor architectural improvements, and mostly just riding on 7nm to keep it in the game. Your bandwidth/VRAM analysis I think is spot on.

 

[londiste]

They want Radeon 7 obsolete. Its too costly for that performance segment for gaming. That and Vega are 'can do' products meant to keep AMD in the race. Not the high margin products they should be given their place in the stack.

I don't think they want to give a huge "screw you!" this soon to whoever was an early adopter of their new and awesome card. Radeon 7 is almost 3 months old now. In July it will be 5 months old, that would be too soon. Whatever they come out with next, will be below it. How much, we will have to see but I really-really want to see at least RTX2070 level of performance.

Navi is just another fancy name for Polaris at this point, I have this feeling it won't be much different from it: a cost effective mid range/lower high end chip. Maybe some RT-related tweaks. Some minor architectural improvements, and mostly just riding on 7nm to keep it in the game. Your bandwidth/VRAM analysis I think is spot on.

They need Vega level featureset or better in Navi. Turing brought Nvidia GPUs up to Vega and a bit ahead in terms of features. RPM/FP16 is a big one. Variable Rate Shading seems to be a big one (Nvidia supports it, Intel will support it, AMD has talked about it). There should be couple others as well that I don't recall right now.

 

[M2B]

Navi is just another fancy name for Polaris at this point, I have this feeling it won't be much different from it: a cost effective mid range/lower high end chip. Maybe some RT-related tweaks. Some minor architectural improvements, and mostly just riding on 7nm to keep it in the game.

Exactly.

 

[medi01]

Nothing was ever rumored to replace VII this year, bigger Navi (x90 series of sorts, 590 is a fluke) coming only 2020, but I see the green FUD force in full swing already.

It's likely an engineering example with all those dip switches.

Doesn't power consumption of about 200W warrant 2 connectors?

 

[the54thvoid]

Nothing was ever rumored to replace VII this year, bigger Navi (x90 series of sorts, 590 is a fluke) coming only 2020, but I see the green FUD force in full swing already.

It's likely an engineering example with all those dip switches.

Doesn't power consumption of about 200W warrant 2 connectors?

The Green FUD force doesn't really need to raise its head here. There's so much to speculate on that doubt is pretty much guaranteed.

 

[Ferrum Master]

It would make sense that this thing is actually for PS5 devkit.

 

[EarthDog]

guess they are saving HBM for a 2080Ti competitor or something.

it really does not matter that much but I was kinda hoping it would be near all HBM for AMD at this point, like a RX680 carrying the HBM 1.0 that was used in the Fury X and probably has gone down in price etc by now.

HBM, to me, feels more like a hindrance than anything. Weve seen where gddr6 does fine at 4k (we didnt see VII catch up at higher res iirc), so until we are memory bandwidth limited, I dont see the point in hbm. It was supposed to be cheaper, but it isnt.. perform better, and it doesnt currently compared to gddr6.

I'm glad to see gddr6 used on midrange down from AMD. Save hbm for the high end.

 

[jabbadap]

It would make sense that this thing is actually for PS5 devkit.

Look's graphics card to me and it's missing the word Sony to be related to any playstation. PS4 devkit looks like this.

 

[Assimilator]

Get hype for disappointing power/heat/noise vs performance!

 

[Ferrum Master]

Look's graphics card to me and it's missing the word Sony to be related to any playstation. PS4 devkit looks like this.

Yeah, prolly, but you never know these days. There is a rumor that PS5 will have a dedicated GPU not an APU. Game devs should have an early HW for PS5 for sure already. Also someone has to write the engine ASM code too tailored for that GPU. It could be a mixed bag of everything that it is really targeted to some early devs.

 

[eidairaman1]

Where's the works cited at?

@buildzoid was speculating on it

 

[kings]

I don’t know why some people keep dreaming on RTX 2080 performance, when AMD already said the Radeon VII will be the company’s high-end for the future ahead.

Navi this year, with luck will probably target RTX 2060, I don’t expect nothing more.

 

[Metroid]

Nothing new here, gddr6 to keep up with the competition.

If navi rx 680 is at least 60% faster than the rx 580 then i'm happy.

 

[londiste]

If navi rx 680 is at least 60% faster than the rx 580 then i'm happy.

This would be right around, if a little below, Vega64, GTX1080 and RTX2060.

 

[HD64G]

Nothing new here, gddr6 to keep up with the competition.

If navi rx 680 is at least 60% faster than the rx 580 then i'm happy.

Agreed, especially if the prices were competitive enough and that performace was the stock model's with the custom oced ones having 10-15% more performance.

 

[notb]

This would be right around, if a little below, Vega64, GTX1080 and RTX2060.

But what about the PS5 targets? 4K@60fps? PC-like IQ?
They need almost Radeon VII performance at half of its power consumption.

It's rumored that PS5 will launch next year, so the GPU should be almost ready by now...