AMD Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" RDNA2 Graphics Card Launch Liveblog

[Vayra86]

Maybe not in yours, but It is in most consumers' eyes. AMD offered the better performance against 3070 for more giving Nvidia opportunity to launch 3070TI and the same performance as 3080 for 50 bucks less without possibility of AI upscaling and poorer ray tracing capabilities. All that is working for AMD is more vram. AMD is acting like it owns 80% not 20% of the DIY GPU market. It's just silly if they can't see that. I'm starting to believe they're content with dominating consoles and staying marginal player in gaming PC GPU market.

Doubtful. We've already seen how tables can turn when it comes to these things. Intel's mindshare is quickly waning for example. It took Ryzen a few generations, you can expect similar with RDNA2. That's why I'm saying, you're probably going to be right, but don't mistake that for a lack of change in perspective. People need to ease into these things, and AMD has a lot of wiggle room here in terms of price that Nvidia really doesn't have. They will definitely be eating further into their margin than AMD this time around.

But the bigger issue is the mid-term to long-term market for Nvidia. Ampere was supposed to be their big overhaul right, I mean, this is FINALLY the Volta we always drooled over, really, all RT capable and everything with top 4K perf. So what's next for NV? How do you scale up a 320W board that is already out of balance in multiple ways? I mean its great they have GDDR6X. But they can't get a wider bus for it really without cutting on core power budget. What's their step up now?

AMD however is now in a position where Nvidia was during Pascal. Memory efficiency that is out of reach for its competitor. Boost that leaves a major gap with competitor. Feature parity with current day hardware and software. AMD can leverage technology that Nvidia simply doesn't have, nor can access easily. They've got a design win here and its ten times more impressive than Nvidia repurposing their cores for RT.

We find ourselves now, immediately after this presentation... considering what magic rabbit Huang has left in the hat. Because he needs one badly.

A hidden motivator though might the realization for customers that AMD Is also in the consoles for a while now. That is why the feature parity bit matters so much. If the GPUs can do the same things, show the same picture, why would you not switch? There is familiarity with both brands after all.

Fingers crossed now for no driver oopsies.

 

[wolar]

It was weird that 6800 released with 16gb ram and that high price tbh. Around 40$ less would be more appropriate and for that performance i would rather have 8gb and 100$ less.
Regardless of how much price reduction it would be, i think an 8gb 6800 makes more sense, and i would like to see a 10gb 6800xt matching the 3080 as well.

 

[okbuddy]

ps5 36cu 2200mhz is exactly half 6800xt
$399
vs
$649

 

[randompeep]

AMD's focus today is not on CPU or GPUs, it's on console SoCs. Want to buy a Ryzen 4000 mobile CPU from AMD today? If you're not Lenovo, HP, Dell or Asus, good luck, no stock as their allocation at TSMC is now being used up to make enough chips for Sony and Microsoft.

+1
Time will tell if they'll make enough console chips tho!! Taking in consideration the post-COVID growth on the gaming market and the continous rising on the computers' prices, I except some numbers on the gamepad side of things.

 

[matar]

AMD , Hats Off...

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Keep it 4:1, keep it real. Do you think they're caring about people bragging on AMD 'fantastic' prices ? If Ryzen 3000 sells like pancakes currently at +10-20% over MSRP, how the GPU higher-tier marketing strategy would fail ?
We're talking about the next-gen, perf/$ can't be judged just yet. After AIB's get in stores, we could roll it up and down some more time. Till then both nvidia and AMD plan their position for these cheeky high-end and the supposed second hand market killer lineup @250-450$

Ryzen 3000 is much better value than intel, especially if you take the need for expensive Z490 MB and decent AMD cooler into account. How is paying $579 for xx70 GPU OK with ppl? I bought most of AMD mid to high GPUs simply because they were better value even when they were room heaters. I can't see value in $579 GPU anymore. It saddens me but I admit that if NVidia launches 3070TI with 12 or 16 gigs of ram for $599 I'll go with green option. Yes, "just" because it has DLSS and better ray tracing, worth paying 30 bucks more imho. I expected much more better value from AMD

 

[TheLostSwede]

plus only 3 video ports, 3080 got five

Looks like four to me.

 

[Vayra86]

Looks like four to me.

wtf they put RGB on the memory now?

 

[Rahnak]

Yes, "just" because it has DLSS and better ray tracing, worth paying 30 bucks more imho. I expected much more better value from AMD

AMD has their own competitor to DLSS. It's part of FidelityFX (therefore open) and it's called Super Resolution. It's also available to the consoles so the potential for wide usage is there. The better ray tracing is true, but nvidia is on their 2nd gen now, so I don't think anyone was expecting AMD to match that.

 

[Cheeseball]

Ryzen 3000 is much better value than intel, especially if you take the need for expensive Z490 MB and decent AMD cooler into account. How is paying $579 for xx70 GPU OK with ppl? I bought most of AMD mid to high GPUs simply because they were better value even when they were room heaters. I can't see value in $579 GPU anymore. It saddens me but I admit that if NVidia launches 3070TI with 12 or 16 gigs of ram for $599 I'll go with green option. Yes, "just" because it has DLSS and better ray tracing, worth paying 30 bucks more imho. I expected much more better value from AMD

They are not going to release a RTX 3070 Ti at $599. That would be a stupid business decision when the 3070 is at $499 and the 3080 is at $699. Thats only a $100 difference between each tier and is still at the bottom high-performance segment which is not exactly where most of the money comes in.

RTX 2060 Super = $399
RTX 2070 Super = $599

RTX 2070 non-Super came out the year prior for the same $599 price (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this), so this wouldn't count

 

[Chomiq]

72/80=0.9

999-649 >>>>> 0.9

10% bump you need $350


plus only 3 video ports, 3080 got five

Some 30 series cards have 5 outputs, except you can still only connect 4 displays.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Doubtful. We've already seen how tables can turn when it comes to these things. Intel's mindshare is quickly waning for example. It took Ryzen a few generations, you can expect similar with RDNA2. That's why I'm saying, you're probably going to be right, but don't mistake that for a lack of change in perspective. People need to ease into these things, and AMD has a lot of wiggle room here in terms of price that Nvidia really doesn't have. They will definitely be eating further into their margin than AMD this time around.

But the bigger issue is the mid-term to long-term market for Nvidia. Ampere was supposed to be their big overhaul right, I mean, this is FINALLY the Volta we always drooled over, really, all RT capable and everything with top 4K perf. So what's next for NV? How do you scale up a 320W board that is already out of balance in multiple ways? I mean its great they have GDDR6X. But they can't get a wider bus for it really without cutting on core power budget. What's their step up now?

AMD however is now in a position where Nvidia was during Pascal. Memory efficiency that is out of reach for its competitor. Boost that leaves a major gap with competitor. Feature parity with current day hardware and software. AMD can leverage technology that Nvidia simply doesn't have, nor can access easily. They've got a design win here and its ten times more impressive than Nvidia repurposing their cores for RT.

We find ourselves now, immediately after this presentation... considering what magic rabbit Huang has left in the hat. Because he needs one badly.

A hidden motivator though might the realization for customers that AMD Is also in the consoles for a while now. That is why the feature parity bit matters so much. If the GPUs can do the same things, show the same picture, why would you not switch? There is familiarity with both brands after all.

Fingers crossed now for no driver oopsies.

All Nvidia has to do is to transfer Ampere to TSMC 7nm euv process because going with Samsung 8nm (aka 10nm) was a shitshow. They'll probably do that in the next 18 months imo.

 

[Vya Domus]

AMD really expect to sell those GPU at those prices ?

Does Nvidia expect to sell GPUs at even higher prices ? Let me guess, yes, because they were first by 2 months or some other made up nonsense. You know, AMD should pay people to buy their products probably, right ?

What a joke of a comment.

 

[randompeep]

Ryzen 3000 is much better value than intel, especially if you take the need for expensive Z490 MB and decent AMD cooler into account. How is paying $579 for xx70 GPU OK with ppl? I bought most of AMD mid to high GPUs simply because they were better value even when they were room heaters. I can't see value in $579 GPU anymore. It saddens me but I admit that if NVidia launches 3070TI with 12 or 16 gigs of ram for $599 I'll go with green option. Yes, "just" because it has DLSS and better ray tracing worth paying 30 bucks more

Honestly I don't see the need of DLSS just yet. I wanna game at 1080p - I got an 75 Hz IPS and the GPU power I need. I wanna play sth on TV @4k - i usually keep 9 ft between my eyes and the screen, so 1440p looks crisp asf in most of the titles. So I recommend and buy whatever gives the most performance per watt x perf per dollar at the time (inclining right or left, depending on the specific needs).
Trust me, AMD does indeed have a better value paired with a budget mobo (90%+ of the cases), but only if you're talking MSRPs. I'd say Intel got equal or better value for the 1080p gaming scenario with their no iGPU CPUs. Well, I'm pointing one more time at the older games or e-sports titles where O don't see as much of a difference between going ddr4 @2666 CL15-16 vs 3200/3600 CL16-18

 

[ratirt]

All Nvidia has to do is to transfer Ampere to TSMC 7nm euv process because going with Samsung 8nm (aka 10nm) was a shitshow. They'll probably do that in the next 18 months imo.

NV did it to cut price so if you want 7nm EUV prepare to pay more for any card NV has presented so far transfered to 7nm EUV.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

The clocks on the 6900 XT are suspiciously low, which suggests that we might be able to get a 6950 XT in the future as the production matures. This means that they can sell the new SKU at $999 and reduce the 6900 XT price to match the 3080 Ti ...

Production is already mature though. AMD skipped 5nm and all the ensuing supply war and stayed with mature (as of now) 7nm. I think opposite will happen. AMD keeps the best of the best Navi 21 dies for RX 6900 XT while relegating slow/not-so-best dies to RX 6900 to fight off RTX 3080 Ti.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

They are not going to release a RTX 3070 Ti at $599. That would be a stupid business decision when the 3070 is at $499 and the 3080 is at $699. Thats only a $100 difference between each tier and is still at the bottom high-performance segment which is not exactly where most of the money comes in.

RTX 2060 Super = $399
RTX 2070 Super = $599

RTX 2070 non-Super came out the year prior for the same $599 price (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this), so this wouldn't count

My bet is 3070TI 12 gigs to match 6800 at $599 and 3080TI with 16 gigs to compete with 6900XT at $1099 in Q1 2021.

 

[ratirt]

Production is already mature though. AMD skipped 5nm and all the ensuing supply war and stayed with mature (as of now) 7nm. I think opposite will happen. AMD keeps the best of the best Navi 21 dies for RX 6900 XT while relegating slow/not-so-best dies to RX 6900 to fight off RTX 3080 Ti.

I don't think they have skipped 5nm. They just stayed with 7nm. Maybe AMD didn't see a reason to go 5nm. From what we have seen so far, 7nm does the job. Why go 5nm and risk low yields and price increase.

 

[BoboOOZ]

AMD's focus today is not on CPU or GPUs, it's on console SoCs. Want to buy a Ryzen 4000 mobile CPU from AMD today? If you're not Lenovo, HP, Dell or Asus, good luck, no stock as their allocation at TSMC is now being used up to make enough chips for Sony and Microsoft.

Just to point out the obvious, the number of wafers reauired for console APUs is huge, it' more than everything else they do (CPU or GPU alike).

 

[Crustybeaver]

Nice 6900. Finally a top of the line since Fury days!

Almost, the 980Ti was top of the line but it was better on the AMD optimised games.

 

[Super XP]

I've said this before and I'll say it again, RDNA2 is the real deal. After the ZEN2 and now ZEN3 success, AMD pulled off RDNA2 and caught Nvidia by Surprise.

 

[Vayra86]

All Nvidia has to do is to transfer Ampere to TSMC 7nm euv process because going with Samsung 8nm (aka 10nm) was a shitshow. They'll probably do that in the next 18 months imo.

That still doesn't fix the memory part, only die size and power. So they'll go wider in bus.... and AMD can still get faster memory and bus. The best Nvidia's got in our current knowledge is a way to buy a generation worth of time. As we know from Intel's current position, that may very well not be enough.

Thinking of rabbits for Nvidia, I think their attempt to acquire ARM plays a role in that and if it does, time is not on their side.

One point that did stand out negatively for me... the price of the 6800 at 579. That doesn't look good against the 3070 at 500 even with the small performance advantage it seems to have.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

NV did it to cut price so if you want 7nm EUV prepare to pay more for any card NV has presented so far transfered to 7nm EUV.

I agree on that, Ngreedia never gives anything for free unless it has to. But AMD has become the same greedy profit margin rising corp as Intel and NV. I'm seriously considering boycotting them both by buying GPUs only on 2nd hand market.

 

[randompeep]

Just to point out the obvious, the number of wafers reauired for console APUs is huge, it' more than everything else they do (CPU or GPU alike).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but no way AMD would actually make comparable profit from the desktop GPUs as they do with the mobile Ryzens they've released the past years.
As some people say here and there, yeah the console SoC's is where the fat cash at

 

[Super XP]

Rasterizaton performance are good but AMD really expect to sell those GPU at those prices ? or perhaps they can't price them any lower ?

So its OK for Nvidia to rip people off with high prices but when AMD prices its GPUs at a fair value its too expensive for you?

I agree on that, Ngreedia never gives anything for free unless it has to. But AMD has become the same greedy profit margin rising corp as Intel and NV. I'm seriously considering boycotting them both by buying GPUs only on 2nd hand market.

I have to respectfully disagree with your comment labeling AMD as equally greedy as Nvidia and Intel. Quite the opposite actually, AMD obviously has to answer to its shareholders and is careful to produce reasonable margins. That is why, out of the 3 companies, AMD is well known to price its products fairly.