AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs Could Stick with 18 Gbps GDDR6 Memory

[starfals]

Who knows, its all rumors at this time. Even Nvidia might stick to this as well. People keep thinking they will use the next gen stuff... what if they don't for 1 more generation? What if they don't even add display port 2.1? We don't know until we know. So far, i see a lot of bashing on AMD, but literally 0 on Nvidia. We are all talking about rumors here, that's the key thing.

 

[THU31]

Who knows, its all rumors at this time. Even Nvidia might stick to this as well. People keep thinking they will use the next gen stuff... what if they don't for 1 more generation? What if they don't even add display port 2.1? We don't know until we know. So far, i see a lot of bashing on AMD, but literally 0 on Nvidia. We are all talking about rumors here, that's the key thing.

NVIDIA will be bashed on for other things. All rumors suggest the 5080 will be a 16 GB card, and the 5070 will be a 12 GB card. That would be a complete joke.

 

[AusWolf]

NVIDIA will be bashed on for other things. All rumors suggest the 5080 will be a 16 GB card, and the 5070 will be a 12 GB card. That would be a complete joke.

They may not give us bigger VRAM, but they could very well give us a bigger price.

 

[ARF]

NVIDIA will be bashed on for other things. All rumors suggest the 5080 will be a 16 GB card, and the 5070 will be a 12 GB card. That would be a complete joke.

How will they justify putting so small VRAM when we all know that some games are already VRAM hungry and do need more than 16 GB?
There will be future videos that compare 20GB RX 7900 XT vs 16GB RTX 5080, and guess what, the results will be shocking, but against the black-leather-jacketed guy.

 

[Gameslove]

Instead of GDDR7 AMD can advice more VRAM.

Stay information that a RTX 5080s only have 16 VRAM....Not good deal with GDDR7...

 

[Mine18]

As long as AMD prices the cards well (500 USD and below), and mitigates any performance regressions with Infinity Cache, this is not a problem.
We need a new mid-range focused generation to raise the baseline GPU performance so that many more people will be able to play next gen titles at playable framerates at decent settings, and may even dabble in RT in lighter titles/at lighter settings.

Do we have any specs for these cards?

AFAIK, These are the most likely specs for N48 and N44
WGPs
CUs
Memory Bus
??? (Memory Bandwidth in GB/s?)
??? (Base Clocks? N44 has an error, assume it's 2515)
Die Size

 

[ARF]

18 Gbps over 256-bit means 2250 MHz and 576 GB/s memory throughput. The die will be relatively small, so how much L3 cache? 48 MB? 64 MB?

18 Gbps over 128-bit is even worse - only 288 GB/s memory throughput.

 

[THU31]

How will they justify putting so small VRAM when we all know that some games are already VRAM hungry and do need more than 16 GB?
There will be future videos that compare 20GB RX 7900 XT vs 16GB RTX 5080, and guess what, the results will be shocking, but against the black-leather-jacketed guy.

I don't know. I upgrade every generation, so I was fine with 12 GB on the 4070. But I'm not going to buy a 12 GB card in 2025, that's crazy. Besides, Blackwell is supposedly using the same node, so efficiency improvement will be rather small. And with the rumored gigantic difference between the 5090 and 5080, what kind of performance improvement can we even expect? 20-30%?

Maybe they want to start with a weak line-up again, and a year later they're going to do a Super refresh with 3 GB modules (so a 24 GB 5080 S and 18 GB 5070 S).

But if RDNA4 tops out at ~7900 XT performance, it's not a good upgrade either.

 

[chstamos]

They may not give us bigger VRAM, but they could very well give us a bigger price.

NVIDIA will be bashed on for other things. All rumors suggest the 5080 will be a 16 GB card, and the 5070 will be a 12 GB card. That would be a complete joke.

I'm waiting for their pathetic joke of an "enthusiast" mobile 5070 with 8 or 10 gigs, seeing how they're brazenly hawking 8GB mobile 4070 as we're speaking.

 

[overclockedamd]

I'm waiting for their pathetic joke of an "enthusiast" mobile 5070 with 8 or 10 gigs, seeing how they're brazenly hawking 8GB mobile 4070 as we're speaking.

They will just rebrand everything down a tier again below the 5080 and up pricing and shove in down our throats. I would not be surprised if they try to pull 4080 12GB kinda card again.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

I'm waiting for their pathetic joke of an "enthusiast" mobile 5070 with 8 or 10 gigs, seeing how they're brazenly hawking 8GB mobile 4070 as we're speaking.

Yeah, I know right!?!?

Can you imagine the fail that the RX 7700S would have been if AMD crippled it with only 8GB?

*checks Adrenalin*

 

[rv8000]

Who knows, its all rumors at this time. Even Nvidia might stick to this as well. People keep thinking they will use the next gen stuff... what if they don't for 1 more generation? What if they don't even add display port 2.1? We don't know until we know. So far, i see a lot of bashing on AMD, but literally 0 on Nvidia. We are all talking about rumors here, that's the key thing.

Don’t be surprised going forward, there’s a huge Nvidia bias on this forum.

 

[Mine18]

Yeah, I know right!?!?

Can you imagine the fail that the RX 7700S would have been if AMD crippled it with only 8GB?

*checks Adrenalin*

View attachment 345116

How much was your 7700S laptop? I reckon it's a fair bit cheaper than an equivalent 4070 laptop, and that's probably where that comment came from.

 

[AusWolf]

How will they justify putting so small VRAM when we all know that some games are already VRAM hungry and do need more than 16 GB?
There will be future videos that compare 20GB RX 7900 XT vs 16GB RTX 5080, and guess what, the results will be shocking, but against the black-leather-jacketed guy.

View attachment 345056

They'll justify it with some arbitrary benchmark numbers. Most modern games don't suffer much performance penalty with low VRAM, they just give you lower quality textures, assets pop in, etc. Nvidia will never talk about this, they'll just be like "look at the shiny million FPS, woohoo".

 

[Panther_Seraphin]

But if RDNA4 tops out at ~7900 XT performance, it's not a good upgrade either.

7900XT performance with a sub 250 watt power draw at ~$600RRP would be a killer launch in the current climate IMO

All of that depends on the die size and what sort of cost the memory will be. Looking at SK hynix financials recently was a bit of a wake up call!

 

[Random_User]

The difference is actually Nvidia is a much more formidable competitor than Intel ever was and still.

Nvidia is on it's own. They play their own game, and completely disregard the competition. They did it when they had during the PhysX times, when their marketshare was around the same as AMD/ATi. Even if intel, suddenly managed to get around 10% of dGPU market overnight, nVidia would don't give a dang. They walk with the proud stance, making the look, they are sole GPU maker, ever were and ever will. Nothing will change. They will set their own prices, and strenghen the market dependancy on their closed proprietary ecosystem.
And that's the whole point. No GPU vendors are able to penetrate the market, if they will follow the nVidia's flute. They must disregard nVidia, as they disregard everyone else. AMD and Intel must push their own game, despite competition. They must do their best, as there's no rivals are. This includes undercutting nVidia, and follow their own budgets, and their BOM and requirements, and set the pricing accordingly. Not like now, where AMD has the tech like much cheaper to R&D and manufacture, but somehow manages to sell the products with the pricetags of nVidia's R&D budget and premium. This doesn't work. AMD is in the situation, when they must sell their cards cheaper, and sacrifice margins, in order to get the marketshare. This is just stupid. AMD just teased people with their decent cards like 6800XT/7900XT, and they just drop the advancement, in hi-end, and even fully competitive mid-end, first time for the decade, and bail out so abruptly. And the sales, availability and marketing is stagnant and uncertain to say the least. AMD has to use the situation, while people are warmed for AMD products, and make some refresh of monolithic RX6800XT/6900XT, with some architecture improvements, and maybe on smaller more efficient node, and sell it as e.g 8600XT/8700XT for about $300 and $350-400, and the sales would be huge.
Intel priced their card below the competition. Yes their current products are lacking, and are inferior at power efficiency and high performance. But if they will be able to keep the smae full steam pace, and deliver the better products on the round three, they have a chance to gain much bigger mindshare, marketshare, and momentum and turn the tables drastically, and swiftly. This might be wishful thinking, but IMHO, Intel, has more theoretical chances to overcome AMD, with same or bigger marketshare, than AMD with their sluggish marketing and management. Considering how they fix their drivers, and even do complete overhaul, after overhaul, being first time into dGPU market...
Don't get me wrong, though, AMD has really nice products. But they have neither capacity, nor advantage, speed, and most importantly the wish to shake the market. Their products are either missing, not available for purchase, or their price is awful. AMD have not control over the partners, which can screw up them up, the damage contro and quality contro are non-existant. It just looks, like they don't even care about consumer GPU division at all.
And that's why Intel has more chance. Even without dirty tricks and bribes, and own foundries, Intel has stronger corporate stucture, are more known and widespread and OEMs will gladly jump their ship, abandoning AMD, as soon, as Intel will make a breakthrough.
Even if AMD will keep medium-range-only GPU products, they have to deliver in time, have the agressive pricing and be on par, or even have slight advantage. But tha'ts hard, and maybe that's why they don't even try anymore with Radeon division. After all, the APU OEM sales with AI give them certain high marging flow of money.

 

[Chry]

Maybe they should have simply skipped a generation and worked on new tech to win over with a new release in a couple more years or so.

 

[Mine18]

Maybe they should have simply skipped a generation and worked on new tech to win over with a new release in a couple more years or so.

RDNA 5 is rumored to release less than 2 years after RDNA 4 and will be the big high end thing AMD is cooking up, kinda like what happened with RDNA 1 and 2.

 

[ARF]

They'll justify it with some arbitrary benchmark numbers. Most modern games don't suffer much performance penalty with low VRAM, they just give you lower quality textures, assets pop in, etc. Nvidia will never talk about this, they'll just be like "look at the shiny million FPS, woohoo".

AMD never talks about the textures quality differences, either. Only some of us here...

 

[mb194dc]

Technological stagnation... You can see why nvidia pushing ray tracing so hard. Going to be zero reason to upgrade decent cards from last two gens for a while.

 

[ARF]

Technological stagnation... You can see why nvidia pushing ray tracing so hard. Going to be zero reason to upgrade decent cards from last two gens for a while.

They could use the 'abundant" GPU power to drive higher resolution monitors with superior image quality. 4K, 6K, 8K? 144 Hz? 240 Hz?
It depends on you - upgrade your monitors.

 

[AleXXX666]

I fully agree with the first part, as far as AMD graphics division is concerned, at least. The second part might be overstating things a bit. I think they can survive another mediocre gen, particularly if at the very least they manage to release a good value for money mid-range part. If they release a Polaris-valued part, they'll be good. Not the best for their image (you don't want to become the cyrix of gpus), but not a catastrophe either. 580s sold massively. But they are disappointing lately, this much is true.

I'm thinking that if nVidia hadn't been burning bridges left and right, and gotten a reputation for being a nightmare to work with, AMD might already have been having trouble in the console space as well, but I guess they have nVidia's... ahem... "unique" management style to thank for that. It never ceases to surprise me how nvidia managed to have a stable working relationship with nintendo, what with both companies being what they are.

In any case, if AMD should keep underperforming like that, I certainly think next time around (ie Playstation 7/ Xbox X series X model X squared X time around) intel might actually get a fighting chance at the consoles.

580s was disappointment from start...

 

[Vya Domus]

AMD really don't seem to be firing on all cylinders lately. If RDNA4 is as bad as what's being rumoured, then Radeon will be over.

We are at like what, at least 10 years of "AMD/Radeon being over" at this point ?

 

[evernessince]

AMD as a whole indeed "is doing fine", but this doesn't warm me up in the slightest when I put the Radeon in my PC case. The only thing I get is a disappointment and embarrassment, because of the low performance.

This has got to be one of the most inane comments I've read on the internet in awhile and that's frankly deserving of applause.

AMD has cards that go all the way up to a bit above 4080 level performance, a performance level of which no one finds embarrassing. Far from it, both the 4080 and 7900 XTX are extremely capable cards. The vast majority of people cannot even afford a card of that level of performance.

You seem to be under the influence of the halo effect, that because AMD doesn't have the performance leading card at the top of the stack somehow AMD's entire lineup is bad.

There's certainly an argument to be made to favor Nvidia for it's features but to argue that AMD's performance is embarressing ignores the fact that AMD matches Nvidia performance through it's entire stack excluding only the 4090. Unless you declare that every card slower than a 4090 is embarssing performance wise (which is a ridiculous claim), you have an extremely obvious double standard.

 

[64K]

This has got to be one of the most inane comments I've read on the internet in awhile and that's frankly deserving of applause.

AMD has cards that go all the way up to a bit above 4080 level performance, a performance level of which no one finds embarrassing. Far from it, both the 4080 and 7900 XTX are extremely capable cards. The vast majority of people cannot even afford a card of that level of performance.

You seem to be under the influence of the halo effect, that because AMD doesn't have the performance leading card at the top of the stack somehow AMD's entire lineup is bad.

There's certainly an argument to be made to favor Nvidia for it's features but to argue that AMD's performance is embarressing ignores the fact that AMD matches Nvidia performance through it's entire stack excluding only the 4090. Unless you declare that every card slower than a 4090 is embarssing performance wise (which is a ridiculous claim), you have an extremely obvious double standard.

It depends on what you are looking for a GPU to be able perform well on. Most gamers today are on the ray tracing bandwagon and the Nvidia GPUs are superior to the AMD GPUs in that respect.