AMD Could Launch Next Generation RDNA 2 GPUs at CES 2020

[medi01]

...much-needed features like ray tracing...

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

If they wanna be selling GPUs in the near future, they'll have to invest in RTRT. It's not niche like VR and 3D where AMD can wait around for market forecast and in the meantime give away market and mindshare to Nvidia.

Like I'll bash Nvidia for RTX price hike to my grave but even I will admit Nvidia has started an arms race here. Developers are making games based on ray tracing. Consumers are thinking that RTX = raytracing. Who can blame them. Rtx is shorter and easier sounding. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only calling rtrt these days.

If AMD waits too long sheep consumer will think that ray tracing is only capable on nvidia. Like streaming = Nvidia, VR = nvidia, machine learning/workstation = nvidia, in the old days 3D gaming = Nvidia.

 

[Chrispy_]

The cynic in me thinks that one reason the 5700 and 5700XT are fed so much voltage is so that AMD can just used improved yields next year to achieve similar clocks at reduced voltages for huge performance/Watt savings as projected.

Those of us with Navi who care about performance/Watt have already dialled down the voltages to get 20-30% efficiency gains. AMD do have this nasty habit of totally ruining their power efficiency just to chase that last 5-10%.

 

[efikkan]

I'm just hoping this somewhat competes with High end Ampere.... AMD needed 7nm RDNA to compete with Nvidia's 12nm Touring so I'm not holding my breath.

I really liked the 7970 and 290X but really its been 6 years now since AMD has competed with Nvidia Top card.

People have been anticipating "big Navi" to compete with RTX 2080 / Ti. But just do the math; a 50% larger Navi would consume ~300-350W, or run with lower clocks than RX 5700 XT, that's getting pretty hot and challenging to cool silently. And this is with AMD having the advantage of a better node, once Nvidia's next gen is out, AMD and Nvidia will be competing on more comparable nodes…

Yeah, it's sad that AMD haven't competed in the high-end in so many years, but they haven't even had a semi-complete lineup since the 300 series either. Just look at their 2019 lineup; Radeon VII launched and then disappeared when RX 5700/XT launched, RX 5500 announced but MIA. I want competition, but this is not nearly good enough.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

People have been anticipating "big Navi" to compete with RTX 2080 / Ti. But just do the math; a 50% larger Navi would consume ~300-350W, or run with lower clocks than RX 5700 XT, that's getting pretty hot and challenging to cool silently. And this is with AMD having the advantage of a better node, once Nvidia's next gen is out, AMD and Nvidia will be competing on more comparable nodes…

Yeah, it's sad that AMD haven't competed in the high-end in so many years, but they haven't even had a semi-complete lineup since the 300 series either. Just look at their 2019 lineup; Radeon VII launched and then disappeared when RX 5700/XT launched, RX 5500 announced but MIA. I want competition, but this is not nearly good enough.

At this point it's too late to be competitive with a 2080 / Ti their next Cards likely need to be competitive with the 3080 / Ti. Competition is good because not only do we typically get better products but also slightly better pricing...... Rumors aren't even remotely worth taking serious this time last year the 5700XT with its 2070 like performance was suppose to be $249


https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-navi-rtx-2070-250/

comically people actually believed this.

 

[efikkan]

At this point it's too late to be competitive with a 2080 / Ti their next Cards likely need to be competitive with the 3080 / Ti.

I know.
Nvidia will be launching a new architecture on a new node, this may in fact increase their lead.
Meanwhile, AMD is trying to compete with Pascal…

Rumors aren't even remotely worth taking serious this time last year the 5700XT with its 2070 like performance was suppose to be $249

AMD Navi Could Beat Nvidia RTX 2070 For Just $250 | Digital Trends

AMD's Navi is only a few weeks away from being unveiled and the rumor mill is heating up. The latest rumors suggest that the top Navi GPU set to launch in the first half of 2019 could be comparable to Nvidia's RTX 2070 and may cost as little as $250, with far lower power requirements than AMD's...

www.digitaltrends.com

comically people actually believed this.

The article even states where the rumors come from…
I don't know if it's comical or just sad, I mostly think it's the latter. The fanboys feeding the extreme hype and unrealistic expectations only cause more division and hostility in the community.

But it's important to realize that many of these less serious "sources", webpages like Wccftech etc. and numerous Youtubers, are just making up stuff to draw attention.
Some lies which got mainstream coverage includes; (many of these were regarded as "facts")
- Right after Polaris (RX 480) launched: rumors of a big Polaris.
- Right before and after Vega10 launched: repeated claims of a bigger Vega, and that Vega10 was the smaller one.
- For the past two years: Arcturus as the successor of Navi.
And that's just a few of them.

Probably less than 5% of the "leaks" covered in the tech press are actual leaks. But most of claimed "leaks" don't pass a basic "smell test", so it's not that hard to filter out a good portion of the BS.

 

[sutyi]

At this point it's too late to be competitive with a 2080 / Ti their next Cards likely need to be competitive with the 3080 / Ti. Competition is good because not only do we typically get better products but also slightly better pricing...... Rumors aren't even remotely worth taking serious this time last year the 5700XT with its 2070 like performance was suppose to be $249


https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-navi-rtx-2070-250/

comically people actually believed this.

NAVI10 launch prices might have been sub 300US in one moment of time for all we know. But then nVIDIA came along with Turing and successfully raised prices across its whole product stack and the supposedly midrange RTX 2060 6GB launched at 349USD and the 2070 at 499USD.

Lisa Su said that they are done being the budget alternative... so when NAVI10 got in the same performance ballpark as earlier mentioned nVIDIA SKUs they priced it accordingly. They still offer slightly better price to performance metric compared to nVIDIA, but nothing revolutionary.

 

[medi01]

If they wanna be selling GPUs in the near future, they'll have to invest in RTRT

Uh, I've read "NV cannot sell 2070s, after AMD released 5700", are they lying?
"much needed" UI gimmick supported by less than 1% of games, a feature, which even owners of $700+ cards switch own?

Developers are making games based on ray tracing.

No, they aren't, unless they are explicitly paid for wasting resources on a limited set of reflection/shading gimmicks, that is the whole freaking point.

Not until AMD pushes it into consoles and next gen AFFORDABLE GPUs, will RT get any traction at all.
And even then, it would be AMD who'll set the pace.

But just do the math; a 50% larger Navi would consume ~300-350W

Ignoring the fact that 50% larger Navi would NOT actually consume 50% more power, much larger Navi would also come using 7nm EUV, 5700 is DUV.

RX 5500 announced but MIA

It's low end, where AMD is already covered by existing offerings, with 570 still spanking nvidia's xx50, for less bucks.

 

[Mouth of Sauron]

If they wanna be selling GPUs in the near future, they'll have to invest in RTRT. It's not niche like VR and 3D where AMD can wait around for market forecast and in the meantime give away market and mindshare to Nvidia.

Like I'll bash Nvidia for RTX price hike to my grave but even I will admit Nvidia has started an arms race here. Developers are making games based on ray tracing. Consumers are thinking that RTX = raytracing. Who can blame them. Rtx is shorter and easier sounding. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only calling rtrt these days.

If AMD waits too long sheep consumer will think that ray tracing is only capable on nvidia. Like streaming = Nvidia, VR = nvidia, machine learning/workstation = nvidia, in the old days 3D gaming = Nvidia.

They do? Because today hardware can supply stable 120/144+FPS in 4k? Right... It can't and probably would need 2+ generations to be able to. And this is much closer goal than doing RT...

A common misconceptions regarding RT... It's nothing invented by NVIDIA this or previous year. Technique exists over 50 years. It relays on complex and high level math. There was no breakthrough in theoretical mathematics as of long, and neither NVIDIA or AMD will make revolutionary hardware that shorten calculations 100 times... NVIDIA making *some* hardware support is... marketing gimmick. Can other, non-hardware RT supported GPUs do the calculations, can CPU, can ASICs, can xxx? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Is it real-time full RT? Nope! It takes much rendering time to make even short scenes...

Does powerful and serious industry like Hollywood still uses render-farms? Yup! And it's sure as hell that they won't replace them with 4 NVIDIA GPUs doing the same job in next year... (also, feel free to check, render farms today are not at all consisting of any number of GPUs alone, there are CPUs all around and complex architecture)

So, due to paradigm-shift, NVIDIA will assure constant and stable RT in real-time in next years and AMD must run like crazy to 'bridge the gap'? And it will be available at high resolutions? Nope, no and consider yourself lucky if anyone implements full RT in real time in 720p, in next 2-3 generations...

And yes, you are the only calling "rtrt" these days Maybe it's just me, but this is the first time in my life that I hear of r-trt term...

 

[Easy Rhino]

This is what happens when you have very good executive leadership. AMD's Lisa Su is worth every they pay her. I would actually say at this point the shareholders should give her a raise.

 

[gamefoo21]

I think it's interesting that V20 or the V2... is smaller than the V10 and stomps it.

V20 in the professional form is a number crunching beast. Navi simply isn't set up for the same level of compute performance. Navi is more like the Fury fork of GCN, while Vega is the 290 branch. Fury followed by the 480/Polaris variants lost the ability raw number crunch and went the NV path.

I also think it's interesting that AMD put the devolved rendering hardware into the V20 design and disabled it citing a lack of support from DX/VK. So I wonder if AMD basically crippled V20 on the rendering path because it would have smashed Navi. Navi as it sits is horribly bottlenecked by that horrible memory controller, look at the Vega on that Intel cpu, and it's basically a 560 with HBM and it punches above a 570.

The Xbone 1X is a variant of the old 290X core but with 384bit memory and it absolutely owns the desktop 480/580/590 in the power envelopes.

Fury X is 64 CU of early Polaris class guts
Vega 10 is 56-64 CU of Hawaii class guts
Vega 20 is 60-64 CU of massively optimized Hawaii and Navi bits

It's a little sad that AMD gimped the consumer version of V20, and didn't give it the full 4096 shaders to go with the 4096bit HBM. Kind of a shitty move with the 50th being a paint job and that's it.

VII: FP64 (double) 3.360 TFLOPS (1:4)
57XT: FP64 (double) 0.6096 TFLOPS (1:16)

Enough ranting...

AMD could get 10-15% more performance out of Navi easily by making a 384bit memory bus version of the 5700XT, and you'd have 12GB of vmem.

AMD doesn't seem to have any desire to chase the crown or even make a 2080 competitor.

 

[blobster21]

the new GPU architecture will get around 10-15% performance improvement

*YAWN*

 

[Fluffmeister]

I just miss the days when Vega was going to dominate the world.

 

[Super XP]

I'm just hoping that we could get a proper jump in performance per power, and per market segment for this one.

NVIDIA will not have mercy with their 7nm\+ lineup of GPUs.

Agreed. I mean, they released the RTX Super line just to combat the 5700 & 5700XT.
Because NAVI already defeated the 2070 RTX none Super lineup.
The high end RDNA2 is said to be in direct competition with Nvidia's high end RTX 2080-Ti. If AMD can beat Nvidia on price with equal or more performance, that would help further increase its GPU market share. There will be a RDNA2 high end GPU released to battle Nvidia's upcoming high end, this was spoken by AMD's CEO and CTO of there Radeon Group.

 

[R0H1T]

This is what happens when you have very good executive leadership. AMD's Lisa Su is worth every they pay her. I would actually say at this point the shareholders should give her a raise.

I'd go a step further & say that they should ensure she stays with them probably another 5 years or so, having said that RDNA2 & whatever comes at CES needs to be damn good for AMD's own good in the GPU space.

 

[Super XP]

I'd go a step further & say that they should ensure she stays with them probably another 5 years or so, having said that RDNA2 & whatever comes at CES needs to be damn good for AMD's own good in the GPU space.

Agreed.
AMD's ZEN 3 is already said to be a substantial performance uplift over ZEN 2. The good news, that ZEN 3 launch should put some much needed hurt on Intel.
AMD needs to move aggressively in the GPU front. They have an opportunity here, especially with the success of RDNA. AMD needs to take this opportunity and capitalize on it as much as possible. They don't have to beat Nvidia, but they have to at least compete with them in all segments including the high end.

 

[Turmania]

Unless Nvidia does an Intel and stagnate for couple of years, I have no confidence on AMD catching them in fact, I'm very confident the gap will widen by next summer.Navi''s best card is rx 5700. The stock one with the best power draw and performance and better than nvidia options between 300-350 price range.

 

[medi01]

Unless Nvidia does an Intel and stagnate for couple of years

Yeah!

I mean it's not like 1080-ish performance could not be had for much cheaper than 1080 could be had in release year.

ANd not like we have 250mm2 AMD chips beating 550mm2 NV chips.

The way in which people are delusional about shitty green is amazing.

 

[Casecutter]

Last word I heard was Nvidia came out with a statement on back July 7, indicating that TSMC, not Samsung, would "still be producing" GPU's for them. (Okay)... It's still not assured which GPU's? Sounds Like Nvidia is collaborating with both TSMC and Samsung confirming it working with both companies going froward.

Can't say for positive Nvidia ins't going to Samsung for 7nm chips? If so it's a unknown and could take time to smooth out issues. Do we hear of any Samsung 7nm yet in validation or in any R&D testing? When is Nvidia saying the Turning replacement is coming? Several months back the "word" was like Q4 of 2020.

RNDA 2 doesn't necessarily mean a small "tick" of Navi, it could be more a "tock" in furthering architecture improvements. I don't know what is the news is here, but it's not "Launching" but probably more about "announcement" of what to expect say May-June. I really think AMD AMD/RGT will come with a bigger RNDA 2 chip, and then re-spin the the Navi parts as 6X00. It will get some small bump (aka 480 to 580) enough to differentiate as not a straight-up "renames", while a price drop to boost it against Nvidia parts.

 

[wolf]

Have they really given up gunning for top spot? They might just catch up with Turing by the time Ampere launches...

 

[Super XP]

Unless Nvidia does an Intel and stagnate for couple of years, I have no confidence on AMD catching them in fact, I'm very confident the gap will widen by next summer.Navi''s best card is rx 5700. The stock one with the best power draw and performance and better than nvidia options between 300-350 price range.

I think people forgot about how long it takes to design a CPU and/or a GPU from the ground up. There's an approx 5+ years turnaround to design a CPU from the ground up.
AMD hired Jim Keller in 2012 to lead the ZEN design team. AMD launched ZEN in 2017. All this and still keeping Piledriver CPU's refreshed and as competitive as AMD could make them.
When AMD released ZEN in 2017 they were already working on RDNA. Not sure for how long, but give it an approx: 5 year time frame from ground up to release. Today's Navi is more or less a Hybrid of old tech with new tech, and yet the 5700 & 5700XT performs so well, it forced Nvidia to release a revamped RTX lineup called Super.
The big difference will be with RDNA2 and future RDNA3. RDNA2 from AMD's CEO & the Radeon Group said they are going to finally compete in the high end sector.

AMD just can't pull a 2080-Ti competitor out of its hat without years of hard work & design ya know lol

Bulldozer > Piledriver > Steamroller > Excavator > ZEN > etc.,
AMD Processor Designs Leading up to the Superior ZEN Micro-Architecture

AMD doesn't seem to have any desire to chase the crown or even make a 2080 competitor.

In an interview with AMD's CEO Lisa Su, she said that AMD will be competing in the high end once again. This interview was back in 2018. So its not a matter of chasing, it's a matter of finishing up a product that is in fact competitive in the high end. All rumours point to Big Navi. We will know soon enough in 2020.

If they wanna be selling GPUs in the near future, they'll have to invest in RTRT. It's not niche like VR and 3D where AMD can wait around for market forecast and in the meantime give away market and mindshare to Nvidia.

Like I'll bash Nvidia for RTX price hike to my grave but even I will admit Nvidia has started an arms race here. Developers are making games based on ray tracing. Consumers are thinking that RTX = raytracing. Who can blame them. Rtx is shorter and easier sounding. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only calling rtrt these days.

If AMD waits too long sheep consumer will think that ray tracing is only capable on nvidia. Like streaming = Nvidia, VR = nvidia, machine learning/workstation = nvidia, in the old days 3D gaming = Nvidia.

Not only did Nvidia fail with Ray Tracing, they tried to cover it up with the nonsense called DLSS which also failed miserably. The platform that's going to apply Ray Tracing in an efficient manner will be Next Generation Gaming Consoles by Sony & Micro$oft. Powered by ZEN3 and RDNA2, all game developers will properly code for Hardware Ray Tracing aligned with next gen consoles. Most games are going to be ported over onto PC.

Nvidia's implementation of Ray Tracing failed for obvious reasons. Next Gen Gaming Consoles will bring Ray Tracing to Mainstream with a common goal, to ensure games run with Ray Tracing properly.

 

[Super XP]

Wow that is fast. Less than a year from 1st gen Navi.

GPU's move faster over CPU's. At least that is what I've observed for the past several years.

 

[kapone32]

I posted in a thread that my thought process is that 2020 will be "Navi" for AMD. They could announce their 5700 successor at CES but I could definitely see a announcement of "Big" Navi at Computex. With a release date of July 7. As much as some of you may think that AMD has no interest in the high end just look at HEDT that Intel created and AMD now dominates. Intel (because of their revenue) are about 2 years ahead of AMD but the 5700 is no slouch. Though it may not be as fast as the 2080TI it trades blows with the 2080 non Super. For those concerned about power draw I could see AMD using HBM (which should be a little less expensive now) to mitigate the power draw. At the end of the day we need AMD or Intel to direct compete with Intel so they can stop gouging us the 2080TI is about 30% faster than the 5700XT and costs 200% more.

 

[Totally]

No news of RX 5800/5900 to complete the stack.

Those cards were always speculation. It was the digit in the tens place that differentiated big/small chips, so I didn't buy into the hype and won't until an officially announcement. Plus if AMD had a big chip in the works, they'd make sure every living thing on the planet know the moment the considered working on one.

 

[TheGreatPascalian]

Anyone who thinks AMD will launch RDNA2 at CES is delusional. They will show 64 core TR, ZEN2 mobile. RX 5600 series and thats about it. If lucky they will show ZEN3 ES sample doing benchmarks.