AMD's RDNA 2 flagship is going to be big - GPU die size leaks

[WYP]

AMD's next-generation flagship will be 2x larger than AMD's RX 5700 XT.



Read more about AMD's rumoured RDNA 2 GPU die sizes.

 

[Dicehunter]

AMD need to give this thing a decent price especially if it's only going to be as fast as a near 2 year old 2080 Ti, I know early "leaks" show it could be twice the speed of the 5700Xt which would put it a nice chunk faster than the 2080 Ti but I've learned my lesson with AMD GPU's, Expect less and you won;t be disappointed.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

If it does end up being twice as fast as a 5700 XT, which I don't see being an impossibility given the die size comparison, that would be incredible. If they could keep the price within the €700 ballpark, the 2080Ti would become an even bigger joke than it already is. If you apply the same math as the Navi 21 die being twice as powerful as the 5700 XT because it's twice as big, the smaller Navi 22 chip should be as fast as a 2080Ti. If they price it the same as they've priced the 5700 XT, I'm getting that.

 

[AlienALX]

I wouldn't call the 2080Ti a joke. Over priced? yes, but that is what you get with a flagship product that has no competition.

Ryzen prices have slowly crept up. At launch the 3950x was £750. That's a lot of money tbh, but that is what happens when you achieve that feat. You can charge whatever you like. You don't even really have to sell loads, because your lower tier products will mop up sales.

If the 2080Ti still costs what it does when this launches I don't expect it to be any less than £800. Even if they only get away with it for a week or two. R7 launched at £700. And it was notably worse than the competition at the same price.

I do expect Nvidia to release 3000 though, which should slap AMD back into reality. So I hope that they can manufacture it cheap 'cause I see it getting rather bloody.

Well, once the Covid prices go away. Because right now nothing is cheap. I bought a 2070 Super for £438 and a 2070 Dual Evo for £369. Now? a worse 2070 Super is around £540.

I definitely timed those purchases very well.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/evg...acing-graphics-card-4352-core-1350mhz-gpu-177

For now it looks like I did good on that too ffs.

 

[ET3D]

AMD need to give this thing a decent price especially if it's only going to be as fast as a near 2 year old 2080 Ti

I don't see why the 2080 Ti's release date should have an effect on the price. All AMD needs to do is compete with the 2080 Ti's current price. It could reduce the price if NVIDIA releases a successor at the same price, but if AMD beats the 2080 Ti in performance, I don't see a need to sell it short if that's the only competitor.

 

[Avet]

I don't expect AMD to have a 3080 Ti killer. Hopefully, something will be in the ballpark of 3080. That would be nice. It would restrain Nvidia from going haywire with the prices.

I really hope these cards will be a success for AMD. I don't know how many more failed generations can Radeon division survive.

 

[Dicehunter]

I don't see why the 2080 Ti's release date should have an effect on the price. All AMD needs to do is compete with the 2080 Ti's current price. It could reduce the price if NVIDIA releases a successor at the same price, but if AMD beats the 2080 Ti in performance, I don't see a need to sell it short if that's the only competitor.

From early info Nvidia's 3000 series is going to be quite the performance uplift over the 2000 series at roughly the same price and AMD's 5950X, Or whatever they call it, Is going to be hovering somewhere around 2080 Ti performance levels, AMD's GPU has to be lower than the 2 year old 2080 Ti or they'll literally be telling people "Go buy Nvidia".

 

[AlienALX]

From early info Nvidia's 3000 series is going to be quite the performance uplift over the 2000 series at roughly the same price and AMD's 5950X, Or whatever they call it, Is going to be hovering somewhere around 2080 Ti performance levels, AMD's GPU has to be lower than the 2 year old 2080 Ti or they'll literally be telling people "Go buy Nvidia".

I've heard no rumours on Nvidia pricing at all. Anywhere.

AMD will never match Nvidia. Even ever again I doubt. Quite simply as RTG have made so many mistakes that they don't have the cash to invest. Which is what it is all about.

That said they don't really need to bother. If the "5950" or whatever it's called is as good as the 2080Ti it will do well.

I can't see Nvidia changing their pricing much unless AMD can get close. 20 series cards cost too much right up until AMD launched the 5700/XT. It was only when AMD dropped the prices a few months after launch (something they always do unlike Nvidia) that Nvidia dropped the prices of 20 Super cards to suit, though not from the 2080 Super up.

I reckon it will go as usual. 3080 first. Clear out the suckers, then release the 3070 and Ti at the same time. Mostly to get every one who bought the 3080 to buy a 3080Ti. It's been working for them for years and years now.

3060 and so on will be the last to release as usual.

I don't expect AMD to have a 3080 Ti killer. Hopefully, something will be in the ballpark of 3080. That would be nice. It would restrain Nvidia from going haywire with the prices.

I really hope these cards will be a success for AMD. I don't know how many more failed generations can Radeon division survive.

If it goes anything like before the 80 card will be around the same speed as the previous Ti model. Or maybe 10% faster or so. It's so they can entice any one with a Ti to jump on the new card. Few months later? Ti model faster than that.

So with that logic in mind I reckon 2080Ti performance from the 3080 should be very close, meaning AMD can get close too if the rumours are true. That means Nvidia may release more more quickly. However, AMD have a gap to patch too. 2070 Super and 2080 Super are still faster than their cards. So they need to fill that hole too.

Hopefully the 8 card and 9 cards should fit in there nicely.

 

[The_Crapman]

It has been a looong time since amd/ati have been at parity with Nvidia. Probably the 7970 Vs GTX 680? Would be nice for AMD to drop a decent card at a reasonable price, but they won't, they're not THAT stupid. They'll follow Nbleedia's lead and price it as the market stands, get as much money as they can do. My bet is navi21 will sit in between the 3080 and 3070, in both performance and price, although it may come in closer to 3070 price to push Nvidia into dropping it a little. All the cards will end up perfectly shuffled into each other; red green red green red green, just like they always do. It's tantamount to price fixing, but with enough "competition" for it not to be.

 

[AlienALX]

680 was ever so slightly faster IMO. The 7970 did get better, but was released to topple the GTX 580 3gb (and at the same price of £439). I hated my 7970 though. Every one was raving about them but mine was hotter and louder than my GTX 480. Talking of which I straight traded it for a pair of brand new EVGA GTX 480s which demolished it. They weren't even that hot or loud.

AMD held in there with the 290/X vs the Titan but again temps and noise were absolutely lousy. Especially with the stock variants.

After that though? yeah HBM was their worst decision ever. That and they were miles behind, so started clocking balls off their cards to make them compete leaving nothing in the tank. I couldn't even get 50mhz out of my Fury X cards. Not even when I went full water with one.

That is where they really fell off a cliff and Nvidia just sprinted ahead though.

Polaris is and was their most impressive release for years because although unremarkable it was perfectly sensible. Raja really did a good job there. I mean who wasn't cheering when they competed with the 970 and 980 at 30% less?

That was a good idea by AMD. Don't try and get above your station. So what did they do? Vega. /facepalm.

I remember when I bought my 7970 Jen said "GCN is AMD's Fermi" and he was spot on. No one listened because, well it's Jen and he's a prat but he had a point. Tank, hot, guzzled power.

Thankfully AMD came along with Navi, which has really brought them back into the game. Let's face it, only die hard pillocks buy top end cards now. Nearly every one buys mid range cards. Mostly because they have a modicum of sense, unlike me

 

[The_Crapman]

Gtx 480's weren't bad chips, the stock coolers on them were just appalling. They had a massive thick slab of iron on top that got heatsoaked and kept the entire thing hot. I had a gelid icy vision on one and it was cool and quiet (if a little gigantor), and a gigabyte SOC, which had a pretty thin hsf but still let you clock the nuts off it without damaging your ears. Same for the 7970 and just about every stock cooler since amd took over.

Having seen what the 2080super could do in the rig I built for my brother, I've been hankering for some phenomenal cosmic power. The 5700 from the mod will be a nice upgrade from the 980ti though, especially with a block and a wee bios bump,

 

[WYP]

One of the big problems that AMD had was bandwidth. They needed more memory bandwidth and GDDR5 couldn't deliver. There is a reason AMD's R9 290X used a 512-bit bus and Nvidia didn't need to go that large.

Nvidia invested in mobile and it paid off in a big way. They got a lot of good memory bandwidth saving techniques and it went a long way towards increasing their efficiency and lowering their memory speed requirements. It also helped them deliver higher performance/watt. Maxwell was a huge leap for Nvidia, and it's the reason why Nintendo's Switch console is even possible.

AMD was stuck in stuck in a huge financial hole since bulldozer, and their R&D could only go so far. They needed to knuckle down and create good CPUs, and GPUs suffered because of it. With the funding for the mid-generation refresh consoles and the node shift to 14nm, AMD was able to get Polaris and Vega out there, and that was around the same time that RTG (Radeon Technologies Group was formed under Raja Koduri.

TBH, HBM was necessary for AMD, as their GPUs needed more bandwidth to operate well than Nvidia. It was both a blessing and a curse. It's easy to say that it was a mistake in hindsight, but GDDR5 would have left AMD with memory starved chips.

Since RTG was formed, AMD has been working on fixing its GPU situation, but sorting things out takes years. These things take years of planning.

Look at Zen,

- AMD Re-hires Jim Keller in August 2012 and starts planning Zen shortly after. Piledriver released in May 2012. By then, AMD knew that Bulldozer was done.

- 2015, AMD officially reveals Zen. September 2015, Jim Keller leaves AMD to join Tesla.

- Early 2017, AMD releases Zen.

- Mid 2019, AMD releases Zen 2


Now look at Radeon;

- June 2015, AMD releases its R9 Fury X

- 2015, AMD creates its Radeon Technologies Group under Raja Koduri

- Late 2017, Raja Koduri leaves AMD - In his memo to AMD employees, he urges them to "Stay focused on the roadmap"

- 2019, AMD reveals RDNA. RDNA delivers huge performance gains over GCN/Polaris/Vega

- 2020, AMD Reveals RDNA 2, promising 50% gains in efficiency over RDNA without a major node change.


The way I see it, the decisions that RTG made under Raja Koduri are starting to pay off.

 

[Dawelio]

Something I find interesting is that everyone here speaks of old hardware, different SKUs against each other. Which sure, makes a point. Yet no one has mentioned the other part of the coin to any GPU, which also has a big impact on a GPUs perfomance: The driver(s).

As far as I'm aware, not many people recommend AMD today due to their drivers are really bad. Nvidia for all intents and purposes aren't perfect, but way better in their driver department than AMD.

For someone like me, who isn't that into the whole tinkering aspect and just want to basically "plug and play", having a stable driver is a must. Yet again, even I know nothing is 100% perfect. But hearing the current things about AMD, isn't very comforting honestly.

And I'm not a fan boy to either, I use an AMD CPU and an Nvidia GPU, since they gave me the best value at the time and is stable. That is pretty much all I care about, since at the end of the day, it's your wallet that hurts when purchasing the product. And it's the stability and reliability that will determine how well your day to day usage of your PC is.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Pretty excited for Navi 2. Eagerly awaiting both next gen cards and consoles

 

[Dicehunter]

Pretty excited for Navi 2. Eagerly awaiting both next gen cards and consoles

I'm keeping my expectations low so if things do turn out well I'll be surprised XD

 

[grec]

As far as I'm aware, not many people recommend AMD today due to their drivers are really bad. Nvidia for all intents and purposes aren't perfect, but way better in their driver department than AMD.

I don't think it's right to say AMD drivers are bad full stop, I think it's more that they can be issue bound early on for a given piece of hardware. Once hardware has been around for 2-6 months they seem no more problematic than their NVidia counterparts.

I know a fair few friends with 5700XT's who've had no issues, but apparently that is not universal, though it's hard to tell whether it's just reported differently because of AMDs older reputation on this.

 

[Dawelio]

I don't think it's right to say AMD drivers are bad full stop, I think it's more that they can be issue bound early on for a given piece of hardware. Once hardware has been around for 2-6 months they seem no more problematic than their NVidia counterparts.

I know a fair few friends with 5700XT's who've had no issues, but apparently that is not universal, though it's hard to tell whether it's just reported differently because of AMDs older reputation on this.

From what I’ve heard, reviewers on Youtube (which I’m not saying is correct or so here) mentioned that despite a product been on the market for a year or longer, the drivers are still not good.

 

[grec]

From what I’ve heard, reviewers on Youtube (which I’m not saying is correct or so here) mentioned that despite a product been on the market for a year or longer, the drivers are still not good.

Which product tho, Navi hasn't been out a year and I remember seeing the "Navi drivers are fully fixed" kinda YT videos popping up a couple of months ago so assumed they're pretty stable now. Maybe things were worse for the Radeon VII?

 

[AngryGoldfish]

I wouldn't call the 2080Ti a joke. Over priced? yes, but that is what you get with a flagship product that has no competition.

Ryzen prices have slowly crept up. At launch the 3950x was £750. That's a lot of money tbh, but that is what happens when you achieve that feat. You can charge whatever you like. You don't even really have to sell loads, because your lower tier products will mop up sales.

If the 2080Ti still costs what it does when this launches I don't expect it to be any less than £800. Even if they only get away with it for a week or two. R7 launched at £700. And it was notably worse than the competition at the same price.

I do expect Nvidia to release 3000 though, which should slap AMD back into reality. So I hope that they can manufacture it cheap 'cause I see it getting rather bloody.

Well, once the Covid prices go away. Because right now nothing is cheap. I bought a 2070 Super for £438 and a 2070 Dual Evo for £369. Now? a worse 2070 Super is around £540.

I definitely timed those purchases very well.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/evg...acing-graphics-card-4352-core-1350mhz-gpu-177

For now it looks like I did good on that too ffs.

But that's what I mean. It's not just marginally overpriced, it's grossly overpriced for what you are getting. That's why it's such a joke (to me). It's the kind of GPU that I'd hesitate to buy even if I was a fan of Nvidia and had the income. I never have had that kind of income so I couldn't say for sure. But where my head is at the moment and where games are at, the 2080Ti is an uninteresting GPU with a grossly inflated price.

 

[AlienALX]

Something I find interesting is that everyone here speaks of old hardware, different SKUs against each other. Which sure, makes a point. Yet no one has mentioned the other part of the coin to any GPU, which also has a big impact on a GPUs perfomance: The driver(s).

As far as I'm aware, not many people recommend AMD today due to their drivers are really bad. Nvidia for all intents and purposes aren't perfect, but way better in their driver department than AMD.

For someone like me, who isn't that into the whole tinkering aspect and just want to basically "plug and play", having a stable driver is a must. Yet again, even I know nothing is 100% perfect. But hearing the current things about AMD, isn't very comforting honestly.

And I'm not a fan boy to either, I use an AMD CPU and an Nvidia GPU, since they gave me the best value at the time and is stable. That is pretty much all I care about, since at the end of the day, it's your wallet that hurts when purchasing the product. And it's the stability and reliability that will determine how well your day to day usage of your PC is.

AMD have been otherwise occupied. They are not Intel. So drivers go on the back burner when the same team are drawing up the drivers for the next gen consoles.

They dropped the ball. That doesn't, however, mean that they are genuinely bad at all times. In fact for a while they were better than Nvidia (when Crimson initially launched) however if you look at the time stamps and what they have been doing elsewhere you can easily come to a conclusion.

Any way it's a moot point as they have fixed the issues with Navi now. It's also hard when not all people have the same issue. I had no problems with drivers on my Vega. It was the card itself that blew.

Nvidia have had driver issues recently themselves dude. In fact, they have for years for those using two monitors and could only fix it by clocking the GPU to full clocks or the screens would cut out.

But that's what I mean. It's not just marginally overpriced, it's grossly overpriced for what you are getting. That's why it's such a joke (to me). It's the kind of GPU that I'd hesitate to buy even if I was a fan of Nvidia and had the income. I never have had that kind of income so I couldn't say for sure. But where my head is at the moment and where games are at, the 2080Ti is an uninteresting GPU with a grossly inflated price.

Oh yeah I totally agree. That said this is down to the people who will buy anything Nvidia will sell them, regardless of price. People had a choice. It didn't happen overnight, it crept in. Nvidia were clearly testing the waters once they knew they were ahead. And people failed. To control themselves.

I don't recall exactly what I had paid for my Titan XP. It was about 6 months after release. Maybe £650? or a hair more? either way I just took advantage of a good month. Like, the way my rent was paid some months I had to find £200 or more and other months I got three rent payments so had a completely clear one. I really didn't mind paying that though because I paid £699 each for my Titan Blacks. That was a hard limit for me.

Usually I just buy whatever is a couple of years old. New, usually. I don't like buying used hardware because you don't know where it's been or who it's been with. Like an example I bought a used Fury X. It was covered all over in scuffs and scratches. Old thermal paste, you name it. I would imagine it belonged to the hairy one at GCN, but clumsy oafs totally do my head in. I worked with one once, he was a complete pig. Used to eat fried chicken for lunch then throw the bones behind the stock.

Oddly enough that one died.

The PC I built recently? was sheer luck. So how much it cost was really irrelevant. Mostly because to me it's just a figure. I could either do something to improve my life with it or sit and look at a number all day in my bank account. It wouldn't have made any difference to my life, or my illnesses. A computer however? well given it is my only gateway to the world given I have been self isolating for ten years? yes, that's very important. And I had been having stability issues with my old one which then of course relates to my mental stability. I was trying to get by on a phone, but I only contact people via email and it's a hateful interface for proper long winded and sometimes complex emails.

So yeah, the price didn't really come into that. That was totally beyond anything resembling normal to me. Like, late last year I upgraded PC 2 which is every bit as critical (at mum's) and spent £1000. That was my hard limit. It hadn't been upgraded in about four years. Then I upgraded my home PC and again, set a hard limit of £1000. I did quite well tbh. I ended up spending slightly more on that, because I wondered if the issue was the Titan XP but it wasn't. It was just a loose connector.

Do bear in mind of course that I hadn't upgraded either PC with any hardware for three years. Like, literally nothing but keyboard mouse and some RGB.

Yeah, prices right now on high end stuff are just ridiculous. At least we know one thing. Unless AMD make this GPU very hard (it will be, *) to manufacture and ridiculously expensive (it shouldn't be, well not crazy) they will drop prices. They always do. Even for no reason. Well, there is a reason (sales slowing etc) but yeah they do things that Nvidia and Intel never do. Which is awesome.

* The only thing that worries me is the size of this die. Big monolithic dies are a royal PITA, and you end up with quite a bit of waste and failed cores. However, if they can fuse them off and use them for lower end GPUs then they will be OK, but that big die is still going to come at a high cost. That's just a fact of life for anyone using wafers. It's also why Ryzen has done so well, because it never relies on monolithic dies. They are all the same pretty much, and all the same size.

That was a masterstroke by Keller. He really did take into account how the whole process works, right down to the manufacturing. Man's a genius, no doubt.