AMD Big Navi has finally been unveiled in all its glory, with Team Red showing off the Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6800 and the mighty Radeon RX 6900 XT which will take on Nvidia’s RTX 3080, RTX 3090 and RTX 3070 GPUs.
Seeing as these RTX 3000 GPUs tout impressive performance, graphics card enthusiasts have excessive expectations of AMD’s long-rumored Nvidia killer. That’s particularly with CEO Lisa Su dropping performance hints earlier in October that factors towards AMD GPUs returning to the excessive end.
AMD even showed off benchmark results of its high-end 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X processor from the AMD Ryzen 5000 line paired with an RDNA 2 graphics card, and they seem pretty impressive.
And now that AMD has given us extra particulars about its Massive Navi cards, and the RDNA 2 tech they run on, we’ve a much better concept of what sort of GPUs we’re getting once they launch.
RDNA 2 can also be the graphics architecture behind the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, so we’ve a good idea of what kind of performance these next-gen consoles will bring.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? AMD’s excessive-finish graphics cards
- When is it out? November 18
- What will it value? Starting at $579 (around $440, AU$820) for the Radeon RX 6800
AMD Big Navi release date
It looks as if AMD Massive Navi launch date rumors have been in every single place for the reason that very starting of time – or at the very least since Navi rumors first began showing in late 2018. Initially, we had heard that Massive Navi could be launching at Computex – however Computex didn’t even occur.
Days after Nvidia’s announcement of the RTX 3080 nevertheless, AMD teased the launch of each its Zen 3 desktop processors and RDNA 2 graphics cards, with the latter anticipated to return in proper earlier than Halloween on October 28 at 12pm EST – only a couple weeks earlier than the November 10 launch of the Xbox Series X that the graphics structure will be powering.
On the day, AMD announced that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT will launch on November 18. Meanwhile, the Radeon RX 6900 XT will arrive a little in a while December 8.
AMD Big Navi price
AMD has traditionally loved a reputation for providing extra affordable merchandise than their competitors.
And to again this up, we would wish to level to the AMD Radeon VII. With this graphics card, AMD genuinely provided a efficiency that was pretty close to what the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 provided on the time, whereas sitting with a price tag of $679 (about £540, AU$970), which was very close to the RTX 2080’s $699 (£649, AU$1,119) price tag on the time.
Now, since launching its Navi lineup, AMD has put some price pressure on Nvidia’s mid-range lineup, most notably baiting Nvidia into lowering its costs on its Tremendous cards on the last minute. So, we’d see one thing that challenges the RTX 2080 Ti for perhaps $200 (£200, AU$300) lower than that card’s MSRP, but do not anticipate graphics card costs to drop to where they have been earlier than Nvidia Turing made everything more expensive.
So, AMD’s Big Navi lineup starts at $579 (around $440, AU$820) for the Radeon RX 6800, whereas the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT costs $649 (around £500, AU$1,000) and the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT will cost $999 (£770, about AU$1,400).
With the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, AMD has undercut Nvidia’s rival RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 cards, respectively.
AMD Big Navi specs and features
A giant thing for Big Navi is taking over Nvidia’s strongest graphics cards, which requires a number of muscle, particularly for the RX 6900 XT, which is directly targeting the RTX 3090. Whereas we’ve not got our arms on these graphics cards yet, the on-paper specs are incredibly impressive.
Right off the bat, the Radeon RX 6800 XT is wanting like it is going to be the headline graphics card right here, even when it’s not fairly in the identical league because the Radeon RX 6900 XT – it is also a lot inexpensive. AMD is claiming that this RTX 3080 competitor can be twice as highly effective as the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT.
That first-generation RDNA graphics card is filled with 40 compute models, with 2,560 Stream Processors (SPs), backed with a game frequency of 1,755 MHz. The Radeon RX 6800 XT, alternatively, is filled with 72 Compute Models, with a game frequency of two,015MHz. Assuming every RDNA 2 Compute Unit has the identical quantity of Stream Processors as RDNA, we’re taking a look at about 4,608 SPs. When that is mixed with the upper power budget and the 50% performance-per-watt objective that AMD claims, it is not onerous to consider that AMD will truly hit that quantity.
However are you aware what different graphics card is around twice as quick because the RX 5700 XT? The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. Even according to the graphs AMD itself gives, the RX 6800 XT and the RTX 3080 are going to be buying and selling blows, with neither card pulling definitively forward throughout the board – this can be why Nvidia is rumored to be readying a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.
What’s maybe much more fascinating, nevertheless, is that the Radeon RX 6800 cuts the GPU right down to 60 Compute Models, power down by 50W and brings the game clock down by 200MHz. This graphics card seems to be a reasonably sizable enhance in efficiency over the RTX 2080 Ti – which is about the identical stage because the newly-launched RTX 3070. Nevertheless, the benchmarks proven off listed below are with Smart Access Memory enabled.
This can be a feature that offers your CPU direct access to GPU memory, which takes a lot of latency out of the render pipeline. There is a catch, although – this characteristic can be solely accessible with AMD Ryzen 5000 processors on 500-series motherboards (together with X570, B550 and A520). When AMD spoke on this characteristic it advised that enabling this feature along with Rage Mode, which is basically an AMD-supported overclock, can boost performance as much as 13%. So, if you’re utilizing an older AMD processor and even an Intel chip, you could expertise a lot much less efficiency.
How a lot of efficiency will rely upon these features stays to be seen, however you may relaxation assured that we’ll be placing it to the take a look at as soon as we get our arms on each the AMD Ryzen 5000 processors and the AMD Radeon 6000 graphics cards.
The biggest shock, nevertheless, came on the finish of AMD’s presentation, when CEO Lisa Su revealed the Radeon RX 6900 XT. With this GPU, power consumption stays shockingly the identical because the Radeon RX 6800 XT, however because it will get bumped as much as 80 Compute Models, together with the same 2,015MHz Game Clock, performance gets a reasonably large enhance.
Again, AMD confirmed off efficiency claims each with Rage Mode and Good Entry Memory enabled, which is a bit on the shady facet, but it seems like will probably be inside the similar ballpark because the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090. And, once more, that is whereas costing a lot much less at $999 (about £770, AU$1,415) compared to the RTX 3090’s $1,499 (£1,399, around AU$2,030) price ticket.
On the finish of the day, nevertheless, it is vital to take all of AMD’s efficiency claims with a grain of salt. Team Red is trying to promote a product, so it is going to choose absolutely the best-possible outcomes to share. AMD Massive Navi efficiency appears unbelievable, however we’ll have to attend until we get these graphics cards in our lab to see simply how highly effective they really are.
Till then, we are able to nonetheless sit and enjoy the truth that AMD is lastly taking Nvidia on on the excessive finish. We will not cease excited about the trajectory AMD took with Ryzen beginning in 2017, and we actually hope it takes an identical path with its RDNA graphics cards. Essentially the most fascinating query is: will Nvidia take AMD’s assaults mendacity down like Intel has? Or will it hit again with robust innovation and pricing? We’re undoubtedly hoping for the latter, however we’ll accept the graphics card market being thrilling once more.
We have additionally included all of the publicly available AMD Big Navi specs down under, in your reference:
AMD Radeon RX 6800 specs:
- 60 compute units
- 1,815MHz game clock
- 2,150MHz boost clock
- 128MB Infinity cache
- 16GB GDDR6 memory
- 250W total board power
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT specs:
- 72 compute units
- 2,015MHz game clock
- 2,250MHz boost clock
- 128MB Infinity cache
- 16GB GDDR6 memory
- 300W total board power
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT specs:
- 80 compute units
- 2,015MHz game clock
- 2,250MHz boost clock
- 128MB Infinity cache
- 16GB GDDR6 memory
- 300W total board power
These Big Navi GPUs will feature “Rage Mode” for one-click overclocking, along with AMD Good Entry Memory, and when paired with an AMD Ryzen 5000 processor, these features are, AMD guarantees, in a position to give some serious boosts to game performance.