** The AMD Navi Thread **

[Sargatanas2511]

So then is it the top Navi, the bottom Navi or the middle Navi?

See what I mean? The numbers are just numbers without any context, and if an "AMD employee" was going to leak some genuine technical details, you'd think they'd apply some context to it. But as it stands it's a nothingness, it's not even hype train because if those numbers represent the top Navi then it's woeful.

Remember to take all this with a pinch of salt currently but if it's true I would expect it to be the RX480/580/590 replacement and not the true high end going by the specs shown.

 

[LePhuronn]

Remember to take all this with a pinch of salt currently but if it's true I would expect it to be the RX480/580/590 replacement and not the true high end going by the specs shown.

I don't have much salt left with the amount I've been taking for so long and "true high end" has never, ever been a consideration for Navi; it's never been discussed as anything more than a midrange product. Until that random stuff about Navi 20 getting ray tracing came along at least, and even then Navi 20 and Navi 10 are different things.

The thing that still irks me a little is the phrase "Polaris replacement". Navi isn't a Polaris replacement, it's a Polaris and Vega replacement. Even if this new spec leak is true, that performance level replaces RX Vega cards, not RX 500 cards. Whether it's the top end Navi which can be chopped down to replace RX 500, or whether it's the bottom end Navi which leaves the RX 500 performance bracket open remains to be seen.

 

[Sargatanas2511]

I don't have much salt left with the amount I've been taking for so long and "true high end" has never, ever been a consideration for Navi; it's never been discussed as anything more than a midrange product. Until that random stuff about Navi 20 getting ray tracing came along at least, and even then Navi 20 and Navi 10 are different things.

The thing that still irks me a little is the phrase "Polaris replacement". Navi isn't a Polaris replacement, it's a Polaris and Vega replacement. Even if this new spec leak is true, that performance level replaces RX Vega cards, not RX 500 cards. Whether it's the top end Navi which can be chopped down to replace RX 500, or whether it's the bottom end Navi which leaves the RX 500 performance bracket open remains to be seen.

Navi 20 is supposed to be high end but I doubt that'll be a thing for another year or so. The rumours state it'll be competitive at the high end.

Navi 10 and 12 (if I remember right) are the high mid to entry level chips. This is going on memory though so I may well be wrong so feel free to correct as needed.

 

[LePhuronn]

Navi 20 is supposed to be high end but I doubt that'll be a thing for another year or so. The rumours state it'll be competitive at the high end.

I don't even think there will be a "high end" Navi. The high end card due next year will be 7nm+ "Next Gen"/Arcturus.

Navi 10 and 12 (if I remember right) are the high mid to entry level chips. This is going on memory though so I may well be wrong so feel free to correct as needed.

You remember correctly, although you're thinking of the much-derided AdoredTV and Reddit leaks. Those leaks pitched:

RX 3060 (cut-down Navi 12) to match RX580 performance with no additional PCIe power
RX 3070 (full Navi 12) to tip over RX Vega 56 performance
RX 3080 (Navi 10) to be RX Vega 64 +15% performance

I personally added a hypothetical RX 3090 based on a full Navi 10 (positing the notion that RX 3080 is a cut-down Navi 10) hitting RX Vega 64 +25% performance to bridge the gap between RX 3080 and Radeon VII (almost similar performance as Radeon VII but with 8GB or 11GB GDDR6).

 

[Sargatanas2511]

Snip

It's all rumour mill stuff at the moment and we have very little to go on, so I am just remembering things I have heard. I am sure Navi 20 is supposed to be high end though.

Even with Navi 12 and 10 potentially being within those performance margins, if the price is right and they can get the yields down they could sell by the bucketload.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

So then is it the top Navi, the bottom Navi or the middle Navi?

See what I mean? The numbers are just numbers without any context, and if an "AMD employee" was going to leak some genuine technical details, you'd think they'd apply some context to it. But as it stands it's a nothingness, it's not even hype train because if those numbers represent the top Navi then it's woeful.

It could be Navi 10s leading card comes out first and scaled down cards follow. But if any of this is true it would mean AMD aren't competing above £260 price point until 2020 and it would mean Navi 10 only matches the 2060, which would be disappointing. I'm not really considering R9 to be competing, although I suppose it is.

It also sounds contradictory to PS5 news/hype with it's ray tracing etc, although the PS5 hype could just be that.

 

[LePhuronn]

It's all rumour mill stuff at the moment and we have very little to go on, so I am just remembering things I have heard. I am sure Navi 20 is supposed to be high end though.

Indeed. Yes, Navi 20 is supposed to be high end, but I personally dispute that Navi 20 is actually a thing. There's even been conflicting rumours now as to whether or not Navi is even GCN any more. If it is then AMD either have worked miracles to squeeze RTX 2080 Ti performance out of it for Navi 20, or Navi 20 isn't a thing. If Navi isn't GCN (i.e. the roadmap "Next Gen" has come forward a year early) then it's entirely possible the new arch is scalable and Navi 20 is possible.

Personally my take is the rumours and leaks that are fuelling Navi 20 is actually "Next Gen" and there's confusion (either from leakers or reporters) in naming because a high-end part is happening at the same as the new low- and mid-range parts.

But yes it's all rumour so we have nothing but fevered speculation and talking twaddle

Even with Navi 12 and 10 potentially being within those performance margins, if the price is right and they can get the yields down they could sell by the bucketload.

I think that's entirely the point. Many people have poo-pooed the leaked prices because Nvidia charge a fortune and AMD took advantage of that with Radeon VII, but AMD could price themselves out of the market if they charge silly money for 3 year old performance. And now look at GTX 1660 prices...

 

[LePhuronn]

It could be Navi 10s leading card comes out first and scaled down cards follow. But if any of this is true it would mean AMD aren't competing above £260 price point until 2020 and it would mean Navi 10 only matches the 2060, which would be disappointing. I'm not really considering R9 to be competing, although I suppose it is.

It also sounds contradictory to PS5 news/hype with it's ray tracing etc, although the PS5 hype could just be that.

Wheel out your massive barrel of salt and dive in: let us use the AdoredTV leaks as the basis for pricing argument. AMD wouldn't need to compete above £260-£300 because their top-end Navi 10 is in the same performance bracket as the RTX 2070, and the Navi 12s fill the stack down. And others have rightly pointed out, there does leave a big gap in their product stack between Navi and Radeon VII, hence my hypothetical RX 3090.

This is why I've been banging on about context for those new leaked numbers because if they represent the top-end Navi then it's a good chunk below what we were hoping for, and also doesn't even draw parity with the outgoing RX Vega 64. It's a step backwards.

As for the PS5 talk, the Navi inside that is more likely to be this big Navi 20 *yes, I know, the one I don't think will exist ) rather than the midrange Navi 10/12. It's not really contradictory.

 

[pmc25]

Almost certainly there will be a high end Navi.

With it confirmed that PS5 is a derivation of the Navi architecture - and likely by extension XBwhatever - and all that engineering and optimisation time spent, they won't want to move straight to 'Next'. It'd make no sense from a cost perspective. Add to that all the mid-late 2020 crop of AAA titles will be optimised for Navi, and it's rumoured that PS5 will just use straight up Vulkan with a number of platform specific extensions .... why on earth would they not launch big Navi as soon as wafer volumes allow?

Also, it's been implied that the truly new architecture will use HBM3 (or whatever it'll be called) at the high end. I'm not sure that's going to happen anymore in 2020, at least not until the very tail end of the year.

Most likely IMO is Navi 10,12, and xx(big) coming later this year or CES time next. Then higher still EUV Navi later in 2020, either with the same design and much higher clocks, or more CUs ... or high end Navi could just be EUV from the get go.

Indeed, if PS5 is ~autumn 2020 as expected, and XBwhatever either before or after, there's no chance TSMC is going to be able to do all those GPUs and CPUs themselves, so Samsung will have a hand, and that would necessitate EUV. So it looks highly likely new high end Navi SKUs on EUV will happen, even if a DUV big Navi doesn't come.

 

[RavenXXX2]

 

[LePhuronn]

With it confirmed that PS5 is a derivation of the Navi architecture - and likely by extension XBwhatever - and all that engineering and optimisation time spent, they won't want to move straight to 'Next'. It'd make no sense from a cost perspective.

Apart from the long-standing rumour that Sony paid for Navi's development, so "all that engineering and optimisation" was done on somebody else's dime.

Unless some kind of miracle has been made, you're just not going to get anything more than RTX 2080 performance out of GCN - surely we would've seen it by now if it were possible. So where exactly can a "big" Navi go except replace Radeon VII as a proper product. That's moving sideways with a then 4 year old performance metric.

Now if it turns out that Navi is late (twice now) because it actually isn't GCN after then all bets are off.

 

[LePhuronn]

Oh, there's a full fat Navi 10 powering a card above the RX 3080 giving near Radeon VII performance in the $330 price bracket?

Called it

But only insofar it was a hypothesis derived from logical deduction of an unsubstantiated rumour

 

[Participant]

Vega 64 +10% for £250 will do me fine.

 

[pmc25]

Apart from the long-standing rumour that Sony paid for Navi's development, so "all that engineering and optimisation" was done on somebody else's dime.

Unless some kind of miracle has been made, you're just not going to get anything more than RTX 2080 performance out of GCN - surely we would've seen it by now if it were possible. So where exactly can a "big" Navi go except replace Radeon VII as a proper product. That's moving sideways with a then 4 year old performance metric.

Now if it turns out that Navi is late (twice now) because it actually isn't GCN after then all bets are off.

Navi is a gaming design. Not a generalist / enterprise type design.

Besides, in games where compute based shaders are heavily employed, you already see the obviously ML / AI / Rendering geared RVII around 2080Ti performance.

 

[Bacon?]

I don't understand the whole 'we've had this performance for years' part if I'm honest, unless we are talking about true high end cards (ie 1080ti 2080ti etc). What matters is the level of price that performance is at, and the power / heat requirements.

If for instance Navi is a slight increase of say 10% above Vega 64 while we've had that level of performance for some time it's not (from information by amd and rumours / leaks) unreasonable to expect it to be a mid range card in terms of pricing. Just look at the current Vega 56 pricing, which uses HBM and requires a more beefed up pcb due to the power requirements and a cooler to match. And that was a card designed for the high end.

A mid range card based on navi 10 should be cheaper due to those issues mentioned above and also the improved effecting from the 7nm node.

Polaris for instance was also a mid range card but still suffered heavily from effeciency issues relating to the node it was built on and the desired clock speed.

 

[Troezar]

I don't understand the whole 'we've had this performance for years' part if I'm honest, unless we are talking about true high end cards (ie 1080ti 2080ti etc). What matters is the level of price that performance is at, and the power / heat requirements.

If for instance Navi is a slight increase of say 10% above Vega 64 while we've had that level of performance for some time it's not (from information by amd and rumours / leaks) unreasonable to expect it to be a mid range card in terms of pricing. Just look at the current Vega 56 pricing, which uses HBM and requires a more beefed up pcb due to the power requirements and a cooler to match. And that was a card designed for the high end.

A mid range card based on navi 10 should be cheaper due to those issues mentioned above and also the improved effecting from the 7nm node.

Polaris for instance was also a mid range card but still suffered heavily from effeciency issues relating to the node it was built on and the desired clock speed.

Some people have had that level of performance What is forgotten is the average user dreams of that performance but can't afford it. Fastest card I've had is 1070 so 1080ti speeds for cheap would be a great upgrade for me.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

Well he's staking his reputation here going for that much detail, even posting the compute units, although I'm sure he'll have a good excuse if he's wrong.

He's also stating some outragous pricing, ie: 2060 performance - $200 2070 performance - $250 and 2080 performance - $330 2080ti performance - $430

While I'd love for this to all be true, I'm sceptical.

 

[ltron]

Well he's staking his reputation here going for that much detail, even posting the compute units, although I'm sure he'll have a good excuse if he's wrong.

He's also stating some outragous pricing, ie: 2060 performance - $200 2070 performance - $250 and 2080 performance - $330 2080ti performance - $430

While I'd love for this to all be true, I'm sceptical.

I hope it is true, but he says part 2 will contain disappointing news. 2080TI performance in August for $430 would be just what I want. AMD's high end must come out long before Nvidia's 7nm 3000 series or it will be crushed.

Let's be honest, Nvidia's cards are ludicrously overpriced just as was the case for Intel before Ryzen came out. These rumoured prices are very fair and would be a return to times when there was some sanity in the market.

 

[bru]

Anybody expecting 2080ti performance (from any of the Navi chips) for £330 +vat is going to be very very dissapointed.

 

[Bacon?]

Anybody expecting 2080ti performance (from any of the Navi chips) for £330 +vat is going to be very very dissapointed.

I don't think anyone is realistically expecting that level of performance regardless of price point. Unless there is indeed a big navi but I'm holding off on that unless they've found a way to make navi truly scalable.

2070 performance at considerably lower price point is what I'm expecting.