Quick Notes: Navi Refresh and RDNA2 Both In 2020, According to AMD
by Ryan Smith on January 28, 2020 9:00 PM EST
As part of today’s FY2019 earnings call, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su had a few words to say about AMD’s future GPU plans – an unexpected nugget of information since we weren’t expecting AMD to reveal anything further at this time.
In short, for this year AMD is planning on both Navi product refreshes as well as parts based on the forthcoming RDNA 2 GPU architecture. To quote Lisa Su:
In 2019, we launched our new architecture in GPUs, it's the RDNA architecture, and that was the Navi based products. You should expect that those will be refreshed in 2020 - and we'll have a next generation RDNA architecture that will be part of our 2020 lineup. So we're pretty excited about that, and we'll talk more about that at our financial analyst day. On the data centre GPU side, you should also expect that we'll have some new products in the second half of this year.
All told, it looks like AMD is setting themselves up for a Vega-like release process, launching new silicon to replace their oldest existing silicon, and minting new products based on existing and/or modestly revised silicon for other parts of their product stack. This would be very similar to what AMD did in 2017, where the company launched Vega at the high-end, and refreshed the rest of their lineup with the Polaris based Radeon RX 500 series.
AMD's GPU Roadmap As Of July 2019
But as always, the devil is in the details. And for that, we’ll have to stay tuned for AMD’s financial analyst day in March.
Source: AMD FY2019 Earnings Call
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deksman2 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Its not impossible.Some rumours seem to suggest 'big navi' is twice as fast as 5700 xt... now, IF that has any merit whatsoever (I'm not saying it will, I'm just hypothesising here), then RDNA 2 has to have about 32% higher IPC, with another 12% boost coming from clock increases (thanks to 7nm+).
Its not unprecedented for gpu uArch's of new generation to introduce radical changes/improvements in IPC all the way up to 50% at same TDP.
So, depending on how good RDNA 2 actually is (which we won't know until its released), it could very well end up being Ampere competitor as well.
nt300 - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
From what we know based on various sources, RDNA2 is a new GPU uArch with a complete cache system overhaul, Variable Rate Shading and several other power efficiency enhancements. I can't say for certain how fast this rumoured Big Navi is going to be, but I am quite confident its on par or faster than the RTX 2080-Ti.Korguz - Monday, February 10, 2020 - link
source ??eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
The danger with announcing a new (hopefully better) line like RDNA2 now is that people like me will now wonder if I should wait with a dGPU purchase until both NVIDIA and AMD have rolled out their new architectures. After all, many of us don't plan on shelling out several hundred dollars or Euros more than once every couple of years.As for APUs, I hope AMD will roll out an APU version of their new console APU they are making for PS5 and the next Xbox. That might be interesting for an HTPC.
Spunjji - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Given that it still hasn't happened yet, I'm not confident that it ever will - the economics of it just don't make sense.deksman2 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
If your current hw is adequate for your purposes and you can wait until RDNA 2 is rolled out later in 2020, then you should definitely wait.If your hw has aged less than gracefully and you are in immediate need to upgrade, then you might as well buy what's presently available.
Something better will always be around the corner, however, if you waited this long and with new GPU uArch's being on the verge of being released (literally), then you might as well wait (if anything else, it will allow current generation of GPU's to drop in pricing).
Hul8 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
If you need a new GPU (current one broke) or "need" it now, then buy. (But go in knowing there'll be buyer's remorse later.)Otherwise, with the costly implementation, no competition, and no use in most games for real-time ray tracing, if you can make do with your current setup, a GPU from the next couple of generations will probably be a better purchase.
nt300 - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
The term "Refresh" can be interpreted differently from one another. In this context, what Dr. Lisa Su is saying is we will refresh our entire GPU lineup with new RDNA2 based graphics cards. Basically there's no more RDNA1 GPUs coming, as RDNA2 is the replacement moving forward.Korguz - Monday, February 10, 2020 - link
and you have a source for this.. or is it just your speculation based and what you have read ??