Following the well-received reveal of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series, gamers across the world have been waiting to see how AMD will respond with its RDNA 2 powered Navi 2X graphics cards. In particular, the high-end GPU known as Big Navi has been the focus of gamers hoping AMD will continue its strategy of providing good gaming performance at strong value prices.
With AMD confirming that RDNA 2 will be revealed on October 28, almost three weeks after the reveal of its Zen 3 CPUs, the rumors and speculation have started to grow. However, there is enough reliable information out there to give gamers solid direction on what to expect from the event.
While AMD has made a habit of changing the branding and naming of its graphics cards, the information available suggests it will be staying consistent with the current generation RDNA cards, the RX 5000 Series. A hidden Easter egg in a special AMD themed map on Fortnite used the code 6000 to reveal a message hyping up the reveal of something “big,” which is likely to be a reference to the Big Navi nickname for its most powerful new GPU. This suggests that the new range will use the RX 6000 branding, and though not confirmed most expect the 500, 600, and 700 model numbers for the cards to remain along with the XT designation for more powerful variants, meaning the flagship will be called the RX 6700 XT.
If focused only on maximum performance, then the answer is almost certainly no, as AMD is looking at the broader gaming market rather than breaking performance records. Current rumors suggest that AMD will be pitting its flagship Big Navi based card against the RTX 3080 rather than the enthusiast level RTX 3090, and that it will produce performance at least on a par with the RTX 2080 Ti, the holder of the most powerful gaming card title prior to the launch of RTX 3090 on September 24.
AMD has already stated that RDNA 2 will produce 50% more performance per watt than the first generation RDNA, and it has also made confident comments on social media to gamers suggesting that it won’t be able to compete with the RTX 30 Series. As with Nvidia’s reveal, AMD is likely to focus on comparing performance to its own current generation cards, and gamers will need to wait for benchmarks to see how it compares to Nvidia.
Although no official specifications have been revealed, AMD has been clear that its flagship Big Navi GPU will have a focus on ray tracing and will also include variable rate shading support, which Nvidia supported with the current RTX 20 Series cards. The PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series S, and the Xbox Series X consoles are powered by Navi 2X GPUs and will have a strong focus on ray tracing, which may help encourage multi-format developers to optimize titles for the RDNA 2 architecture.
How Big Navi and RDNA 2 cards will perform at ray tracing compared to the second generation support in the RTX 30 Series is unknown, though the flagship card will be expected to have more compute units than the 52 in the Xbox Series X, and 36 in the PlayStation 5. There have also been rumors that the lower priced RDNA 2 cards will lack ray tracing support, although this has yet to be confirmed. It’s likely AMD will discuss the ray tracing capabilities of its flagship, including how it will help developers to simplify and scale ray tracing across PC and the new consoles.
As with ray tracing, the flagship Big Navi GPU is designed for gaming at 4K resolution, with AMD stating that it hopes to disrupt the 4K graphics card market in the same way that Zen and Zen 2 CPUs have disrupted Intel’s hold on the gaming processor market. If the flagship card can indeed match or beat the RTX 2080 Ti for performance, it will definitely provide very strong 4K performance. Given the rumor that ray tracing will not be supported by the entry level cards, its likely that these will be focused on 1080P and 1440P gaming rather than 4K. AMD’s reveal will almost certainly focus on the 4K performance of its flagship card.
Price has typically been a strength of AMD, using competitive pricing to provide a little more performance per dollar, in some cases prompting Nvidia to reduce its prices to compete. The flagship card is not going to be cheap, but will almost certainly be priced to compete with the closest comparable Nvidia card, likely the RTX 3080. Although Nvidia has provided strong performance value with its RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 Founders Edition pricing at $699 and $499 respectively, there is always a chance that AMD will announce cheaper than expected pricing to steal sales, but a major price difference is unlikely in order to avoid sparking a price war that would damage profit margins for both companies.
Most analysts expect the RDNA 2 powered cards to launch a week or two after the announcement, placing them in mid November. Though with Nvidia quietly announcing the RTX 3070 will be available on October 15, 13 days before RDNA 2 is unveiled, AMD may look to launch early to minimize the RTX 3070’s time advantage. It may even make some details available before the announcement to raise hype and encourage gamers to wait.
As with Nvidia, there is a reasonable chance that the launch of the RDNA 2 powered cards will be staggered, potentially with the flagship Big Navi based card launching first, and the lower priced cards following up in late 2020 or early 2021. There are also rumors that only the AMD reference cards will be available at launch, with hardware partners launching custom cards in the following weeks, though the accuracy of this is unknown.
As with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series, the simple answer is that stock is likely to be extremely limited. Although AMD will obviously look to produce as many cards as it can, the fact that the RDNA 2 GPUs are also powering three new consoles will probably result in PC graphics cards being the lowest priority for production. When combined with expected high demand from gamers looking to take advantage of the next generation jumps in performance, this may result in some scalpers trying to sell cards at above retail price, but this should end once supplies increase early in 2021.
AMD’s RDNA 2 powered RX 6000 Series is expected to launch starting in November.
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