[Rumor, Tweaktown] AMD to launch next-gen Navi graphics cards at E3

[EXCellR8]

I wouldn't really consider graphics to tie into any actual recreational opportunity... but then again if it hits 60 degrees here I WILL game with the windows open. Does that count?

Has AMD stated any reason other than aesthetics for the weird "wave" droop in the reference cover of the 5700XT cooler? First time I saw it I thought the image was distorted.

 

[gorobei]

Has AMD stated any reason other than aesthetics for the weird "wave" droop in the reference cover of the 5700XT cooler? First time I saw it I thought the image was distorted.

if you look at the promotional animation of the card in exploded view, the housing around the radial fan follows the curve of the droop. so basically instead of molding the wall of the circular housing and a separate exterior straight wall, they combined the two. it makes it a little easier as far as casting the plastic goes. if it is a glass fiber reinforced plastic a simpler mold helps with longevity of the die.

 

[gorobei]

I watched few youtube vids. And theres like, no good news with navi.
It costs the same (or almost the same) as overpriced turding.
Blower, well, blows.
No bios modding, no powerplay tables, no fun.
No bios switch.
Its a "halfway there" architectrure, rdna 2.0 will bring some form of rt, from what ive seen it also doesnt have variable rate shading.
225W is a lot for a 7nm midrange card.
I mean theres no evident redeeming factor with these.
Oh, and i can get refurbished 1080 for half the price with a warranty.Or 1080Ti ,still cheaper a bit.
Im not a cheapskate, i will be getting 3900X ,because it looks like an awesome deal.But not this.
meh.
Even buildzoid looked somewhat pissed/sad in the video

i think one of the consoles announced that they had variable rate shading, and those are using navi lite so it would be odd if middle navi didnt have VRS.

 

[soresu]

I'm sorry but I'm tired of this argument that no matter what amd does people will still buy nvidia - its a pretty lame way to defend amd. If amd made good products at good prices it would sell, but they don't hence they don't sell. Vega and Navi both committed the same mistake - by making an inferior card than Nvidia and expecting people to pay the same as nvidia. Its a good thing as amd cpu division is not making boneheaded decisions compared to their gpu division otherwise we would still be stuck with Intel 4C/4T CPUs for $250 even in 2019.

Its a completely valid argument, I know a guy that will never change from Intel CPU's, simply because he won't - some people are just like that even if we aren't.

 

[Thala]

i think one of the consoles announced that they had variable rate shading, and those are using navi lite so it would be odd if middle navi didnt have VRS.

I cannot rember that variable rate shading was announced in conjunction with the new consoles. Do you possibly have a link?
I do remember, that XBox Scarlett will support realtime raytracing in hardware though - which gives evidence that porting from Xbox Scarlett down to PC with Navi GPU is not the most trivial thing. Ironically Nvidia is in a better position getting a faithful port.

 

[gorobei]

I cannot rember that variable rate shading was announced in conjunction with the new consoles. Do you possibly have a link?
I do remember, that XBox Scarlett will support realtime raytracing in hardware though - which gives evidence that porting from Xbox Scarlett down to PC with Navi GPU is not the most trivial thing. Ironically Nvidia is in a better position getting a faithful port.

sorry i dont have specific link, i get suggested a bunch of tech videos on YT and i cant find any indication of which one in my browser history.

 

[JDG1980]

Around 2007-2008. Laptops received a 1080p decoding chip. Making integrated graphics easily capable of running 1080P youtube blu-ray movies and HD content quite easily. The discrete GPU's could decode all of the various formats but struggled in comparison because they used brute force. If there was a 4k decoding chip added to a RX570 or RX580 type card. That would crush a 1080ti in performance.

Polaris already supports full hardware 4K@60Hz video decoding for both H.264 and H.265. So does Pascal. Any modern video card you buy can already do what you describe. Even a modern iGPU can do it.

The only relevant video decoding feature Polaris was really missing was a hardware path for VP9 (Youtube).

 

[JDG1980]

The Vega 56 at 300 looks really good now.

After thinking it over, I'm wondering if perhaps that's the point. Maybe AMD has a ton of leftover Vega and Polaris stock due to the second cryptocurrency boom, and wants to clear it out. This means they need to ensure that these outdated parts are a better deal than Navi for now. An overstock of these parts would also explain why only Navi 10 was announced now, and not the smaller chip - they want to hold that back until Polaris is sold out.

If this is true, we should see both the release of Navi 14 and price cuts for Navi 10 once the back stock clears.

 

[mohit9206]

After thinking it over, I'm wondering if perhaps that's the point. Maybe AMD has a ton of leftover Vega and Polaris stock due to the second cryptocurrency boom, and wants to clear it out. This means they need to ensure that these outdated parts are a better deal than Navi for now. An overstock of these parts would also explain why only Navi 10 was announced now, and not the smaller chip - they want to hold that back until Polaris is sold out.

If this is true, we should see both the release of Navi 14 and price cuts for Navi 10 once the back stock clears.

The pricing is because amd wants to cash in the price inflated gpu market and not give a damn about the current state of the gpu industry. They don't give a damn about having a healthy consumer gpu market. Having excess supply of older gpu doesn't seem to be main reason for this pricing decision.

 

[Shamrock]

Prediction:

All AMD 5700 (and XT) products will be sold out in 6 hours, in the USA.

 

[piesquared]

Prediction:

All AMD 5700 (and XT) products will be sold out in 6 hours, in the USA.

I wouldn't take that bet, i'm sure they will also. And from high demand rather than lack of supply. At 250mm^2 they'll be able to make boat loads of them.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Wow this thread went from pressure cooker to dumpster fire in a flash! Love it! got the anti-hype train going and everything.

A couple observations:

1) AMD is making ~80mm^2 Zen 2 chiplets on the same process, and potentially selling these tiny things from $200 to $325 per chiplet depending on the product. Better yields, bigger market, better product vs. the competition. I'd bet good money that AMD is actually (artificially or otherwise) supply constrained on Navi chips and does not want to get into a price war with NV. AMD will end up with nothing to sell and NV will move a ton of products after the price has lowered and there is no competition in town.

2) AMD needs to clear the channel of Vega I chips without doing a total write-off and current pricing not only won't spark a price war but will make vega products look good by comparison. You can already see a bunch of "**** it Vega for $300 bucks looks like a good deal now" popping up around the internet. Once Vega is cleared from the channel, AMD is free to lower the price without fear of outright obsoleting a bunch of stuff in the channel. Might be cause for the smaller Navi launch delay as well (or AMD is playing this smart and stringing the launch out for as long as possible).

3) Its interesting that AMD's 50th Anniversary edition are not being discussed. Looks like the exact same blower cooler as the XT version, but clock speeds are increased ~75hz for "gaming" and the potential to hold higher boost clocks. Seems like a fairly balanced design with plenty of bandwidth, the additional core clock might translate into a linear increase in performance. Hints of solid OC potential and potential "free" performance from aftermarket cards holding higher boost clocks?

4) Have read some strange cognitive dissonance about Nvidia Super (Its like everyone's branding guy has been on a 3 month long bender and everything is getting stupid names): Its being released as a response to Navi and will result in across the board price drops (people are delirious, they're speculating some outrageous stuff like $100 across the board cuts, or each performance tier dropping to the price of the one below it) while simulaniously accusing AMD of not doing enough to drop prices. If the rumors are true... congrats AMD got you cheaper NV cards, ya happy now?! I'm not sold on these rumors; NV don't **** around with margins, they will sell higher performance for the same or slightly higher price. Any price drops will be purely the result of existing stock clearing the channel.

Anyhow, since it looks like I'll be sitting on the sidelines with my 980TI for the foreseeable future, I am excited by the changes the AMD has made to their arch and am excited to see what it holds in store. New arch is a new arch and it will be fun to see what it can do when its put through the paces, how much performance is left to be extracted from it in the form of drivers and future arch tweaks and most importantly... CAN IT SCALE BEYOND the 4096/64 CU, 64 ROP, fixed Shader Engine limit of the GCN arch.

Anyhow, I'm pumped. Any tech is good tech, especially when its a new GPU launch.

 

[DrMrLordX]

That's not really addressing it so much as adding another argument the logic of which I don't disagree with.

. . . really?

The 2070 is terrible, and targeting a terrible card is not a great idea, even if you beat it by a small margin on performance and price. Relying on uninformed buyers who also want to burn over $400 on a dGPU is a recipe for disaster. That cross-section of people is pretty small. If I'm blowing that much on a dGPU, I'm doing my research.

If that doesn't make any sense then I don't know what to tell you.

which is exactly why you don't use MSRP for comparison

When was the last time a dGPU didn't sell at MSRP on launch day?

If this is true, we should see both the release of Navi 14 and price cuts for Navi 10 once the back stock clears.

That's an odd strategy though. Why position your brand new product at price points where only a small number of people would actually want to buy it, just to sell your old stuff at razor-thin margins? You would really have to expect to push a metric ton of RX 580s, 590s, and Vega 56s out of the channel that way for it to be profitable. Plus in many ways, you're just directing people to the ubiquitous $279 1660Ti.

1) AMD is making ~80mm^2 Zen 2 chiplets on the same process, and potentially selling these tiny things from $200 to $325 per chiplet depending on the product. Better yields, bigger market, better product vs. the competition. I'd bet good money that AMD is actually (artificially or otherwise) supply constrained on Navi chips and does not want to get into a price war with NV. AMD will end up with nothing to sell and NV will move a ton of products after the price has lowered and there is no competition in town.

Might be an artificial constraint. TSMC is experiencing slowdowns in wafer orders. There should be no supply shortages of note.

2) AMD needs to clear the channel of Vega I chips without doing a total write-off and current pricing not only won't spark a price war but will make vega products look good by comparison. You can already see a bunch of "**** it Vega for $300 bucks looks like a good deal now" popping up around the internet. Once Vega is cleared from the channel, AMD is free to lower the price without fear of outright obsoleting a bunch of stuff in the channel. Might be cause for the smaller Navi launch delay as well (or AMD is playing this smart and stringing the launch out for as long as possible).

See above, not sure why AMD would opt to sell leftover Vegas when they could be selling new product instead. Write-downs stink, but they're just orphaning their new product and damaging their brand (again).

3) Its interesting that AMD's 50th Anniversary edition are not being discussed. Looks like the exact same blower cooler as the XT version, but clock speeds are increased ~75hz for "gaming" and the potential to hold higher boost clocks. Seems like a fairly balanced design with plenty of bandwidth, the additional core clock might translate into a linear increase in performance. Hints of solid OC potential and potential "free" performance from aftermarket cards holding higher boost clocks?

Depends on how the cooler holds up. The board looks built well enough to push more power than stock, but we know nothing about how fast Navi heats up when you try running it out of spec. We also know nothing about undervolting or any of the other usual AMD tricks.

4) congrats AMD got you cheaper NV cards, ya happy now?!

Maybe, maybe not. Are ASPs going to drop across the spectrum? If so, then good! That's what the dGPU market needs right now.

I'm not sold on these rumors; NV don't **** around with margins, they will sell higher performance for the same or slightly higher price. Any price drops will be purely the result of existing stock clearing the channel.

That seems to be the prevailing estimate: that NV will sell refresh cards at old price points and let street prices fall where they may (while cutting off supplies of everything except the 1660/1660Ti, which they won't refresh because they're too recent).

 

[beginner99]

Considering how small the die size is for these GPU's, AMD can EASILY reduce the price of these cards by $100 and still make decent profits, Nvidia would not want to go into a price war with AMD as their die size is much bigger and their cards are more complex due to RT cores, making the yields smaller.

Exactly why AMD should have made lower prices. If the competition can't keep up that is best case scenario to build market share. And margin doesn't help AMD if they sell too few units.

AMD is coming up with about 7% faster card at $50 less, that is a good deal, and no AMD are NOT going to pander to Nvidia loyalists who want absurd, insane, ludicrous prices for AMD cards, ONLY so Nvidia feels pressure and lowers their price a bit, so they can buy Nvidia cards anyways

What I want is a better deal regardless from whom.

1) AMD is making ~80mm^2 Zen 2 chiplets on the same process, and potentially selling these tiny things from $200 to $325 per chiplet depending on the product.

You are forgeting the IO die which is larger

 

[DrMrLordX]

Exactly why AMD should have made lower prices. If the competition can't keep up that is best case scenario to build market share. And margin doesn't help AMD if they sell too few units.

NV has demonstrated that they see the consumer dGPU market as a cash cow to be milked, aggressively. It would be nice if someone would treat us differently. AMD didn't come through . . . not this time, anyway. $379 is the new low-end!

You are forgeting the IO die which is larger

I/O die on Matisse is GF 12nm. I/O on Rome is GF 14LPP. Or at least, I think it is. Anyway, AMD is not using TSMC for the I/O die yet.

 

[IntelUser2000]

It looks like Ray Tracing is here to stay. Numerous game announcements with Ray Tracing support. Cyberpunk 2077 is a big one.

We'll see whether those games allow ray tracing without hardware acceleration. AMD and Intel GPUs may have no choice but to make it hardware, whether with instructions to accelerate such parts, or use dedicated cores like Nvidia does.

 

[Auer]

It looks like Ray Tracing is here to stay. Numerous game announcements with Ray Tracing support. Cyberpunk 2077 is a big one.

We'll see whether those games allow ray tracing without hardware acceleration. AMD and Intel GPUs may have no choice but to make it hardware, whether with instructions to accelerate such parts, or use dedicated cores like Nvidia does.

A bit surprised that AMD had nothing for RT at this launch tbh.

It does indeed seem like it's here to stay, and I dont think AMD should wait too long.

 

[Juiblex]

Crossing fingers something will be available around 150 watts. The 5700 might be too high in wattage. Noise is one of my main factors for me with computing. I want to match it with the Ryzen 3700x which is 65watts. Currently, I have a Haswell 4690 at 88watts, and a Radeon 480 at 150-165 watts and to be honest that is too loud for me. Granted my case sucks and lets a lot of noise through. I don't want to buy an Nvidia, but a 1660 or 2060 might be a better bet. I'm waiting for reviews to see.

 

[Dribble]

A bit surprised that AMD had nothing for RT at this launch tbh.

It does indeed seem like it's here to stay, and I dont think AMD should wait too long.

Well the consoles are going to have it so you want to be developing it as you'll need it for the next gen consoles. The devs like the idea of it anyway - most renderer writers have wanted ray tracing since forever. Nvidia are also pushing hard, and giving lots of support to anyone who wants to have a go. It's not surprising we are going to start seeing lots of games with it in, particularly if the devs have an eye to a next gen console launch of that game.

Obviously AMD PC cards will get hardware support since they are developing it for the consoles, but if we don't end up in a very similar situation to tessellation (Nvidia do it better so keep adding it in gameswork games at a level AMD hardware can't manage) I'd be surprised.

 

[Stuka87]

Crossing fingers something will be available around 150 watts. The 5700 might be too high in wattage. Noise is one of my main factors for me with computing. I want to match it with the Ryzen 3700x which is 65watts. Currently, I have a Haswell 4690 at 88watts, and a Radeon 480 at 150-165 watts and to be honest that is too loud for me. Granted my case sucks and lets a lot of noise through. I don't want to buy an Nvidia, but a 1660 or 2060 might be a better bet. I'm waiting for reviews to see.

Small Navi that comes in Septemberish(?) should be in the 75-125W range for its sub models. The 2060 uses ~170W while gaming. AMD advertises the 5700 at a board power of 185W, so they should be similar with the 2060 being slightly better. The 1660 is 130W, it won't have competition until small Navi comes out.

 

[Stuka87]

It looks like Ray Tracing is here to stay. Numerous game announcements with Ray Tracing support. Cyberpunk 2077 is a big one.

We'll see whether those games allow ray tracing without hardware acceleration. AMD and Intel GPUs may have no choice but to make it hardware, whether with instructions to accelerate such parts, or use dedicated cores like Nvidia does.

If they are all using Microsofts implementation, then all of them can work without dedicated ray tracing hardware. But that doesn't mean the ray tracing can be done by the CPU. Even Crytek's demo with the Radeon VII was using hardware, it was just using standard compute hardware for it rather than dedicated RT hardware.

Thing is, many of these games won't be playable with RT for what will most likely be years. Especially demanding games like Cyberpunk.

 

[Det0x]

When was the last time a dGPU didn't sell at MSRP on launch day?

All green cards since the 10xx series ?

Make all the reviewers write MSRP price in their review of the card, and sell them yourself for MSRP+100$ a couple of months before the AIB get their cards released at the "MSRP"

 

[Glo.]

Small Navi that comes in Septemberish(?) should be in the 75-125W range for its sub models. The 2060 uses ~170W while gaming. AMD advertises the 5700 at a board power of 185W, so they should be similar with the 2060 being slightly better. The 1660 is 130W, it won't have competition until small Navi comes out.

N7 process is not good for anything big(hence the reason why Zen Chiplets have under 100mm2). Im not sure how that will affect the small Navi GPU. I wish the power spike increases with die size will be in a linear manner, and we could get 160 mm2, 128 Bit GDDR6 GPU with 90W of power draw. But personally I am expecting faster than GTX 1660 GPU, but slower than GTX 1660 Ti with 105-110W power draw(lower than GTX 1660).

I would not mind if small Navi would achieve maximum clock targets(1980 MHz), with sub-120W of power draw for whole board. That way we would get close performance to GTX 1660 Ti, even. But not as fast.

 

[lifeblood]

A bit surprised that AMD had nothing for RT at this launch tbh.

It does indeed seem like it's here to stay, and I dont think AMD should wait too long.

Is RT here to stay? I think it holds a lot of promise but will it ever actually be widely used in gaming?

Phys-X held a lot of promise, how has that worked out? Fully destructible environments sounded like a lot of fun and nvidia did make a big deal out of it, but I haven't heard a peep about it since. Has it become mainstream or did it die a slow quiet death? Anyone know?

<Edited for spelling>

 

[Glo.]

AMD did the wise thing actually to forget about RT on small and medium Navi GPUs. Its a waste of silicon right now, because it hinders performance too much.

The only GPU that is worth buying for RT is RTX 2080 Ti.