Question Speculation: RDNA2 + CDNA Architectures thread

[uzzi38]

All die sizes are within 5mm^2. The poster here has been right on some things in the past afaik, and to his credit was the first to saying 505mm^2 for Navi21, which other people have backed up. Even still though, take the following with a pich of salt.

Navi21 - 505mm^2

Navi22 - 340mm^2

Navi23 - 240mm^2

Source is the following post: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/PC_Shopping/M.1588075782.A.C1E.html

 

[leoneazzurro]

There were some quantifications about VRS in DIrt5 and some other games. But I think once the reviews are out we could have a better understanding.

 

[MrTeal]

It's as useless (or useful) as any other comparison. I just think that a comparison against Radeon VII is a particularly bad one because it was an awful card, at least from a gaming perspective. That the 5700 XT basically equaled it easily shows as much. That's the card that the 6700 XT ultimately replaces in some respects, the main one being that it lines up against it based on name. As a consumer, I ultimately don't care about transistors anyway because I'm buying performance, not a bigger/smaller number of transistors.

I think the more depressing fact is that the 5700 XT is going for $600 - $800 online right now. That really means that the 6700 XT reference card probably has a market price floor of $700 - $800 dollars.

Maybe. The 6700 XT will probably mine Eth around 45MH/s if you just scale the bus width down and compare it to big Navi, so it will be an inferior mining card to a 5700XT. Hopefully that will lower demand for it in mining circles relative to the 5700XT and other cards.

 

[blckgrffn]

Maybe. The 6700 XT will probably mine Eth around 45MH/s if you just scale the bus width down and compare it to big Navi, so it will be an inferior mining card to a 5700XT. Hopefully that will lower demand for it in mining circles relative to the 5700XT and other cards.

If my 5700xt doesn’t sell I am going to put a feeler out for a straight 6800 trade (ha, but maybe) or some sort of 6700xt trad. A miner who snags a 6700xt will hopefully make the trade and we can both be happy.

Dollar for dollar though, buying a 5700xt last year got you more performance even if it was only for what will soon be “legacy” titles.

 

[AtenRa]

Radeon VII was probably the biggest GPU turd of the past decade and anything will compare favorably against it.

Since it's basically the same performance as a 5700 XT you'd be better off comparing it against that. Of course a 33% larger die on the same process for 26% more performance and a 20% higher price doesn't look quite as good.

Well I made a mistake and wrote 26% faster when it is 35% faster vs Vega 7. It is also 42% faster vs RX5700XT , so its ok to be 33% bigger die at the same process.

https://tpucdn.com/review/pny-geforce-rtx-3070-xlr8-revel-epic-x-rgb/images/relative-performance_2560-1440.png

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Even at its MSRP the 6700XT isn't the worst deal in the world considering it's effectively providing RTX 2080 Ti performance at less than half the price with 1gb additional RAM.

Yes, it won't do quite as well in RTRT workloads but for a guy like me who wants top tier performance in the last gen if games it would be a steal...

At MSRP, of course...

 

[Dribble]

Even at its MSRP the 6700XT isn't the worst deal in the world considering it's effectively providing RTX 2080 Ti performance at less than half the price with 1gb additional RAM.

Yes, it won't do quite as well in RTRT workloads but for a guy like me who wants top tier performance in the last gen if games it would be a steal...

At MSRP, of course...

If we could buy gpu's at MSRP no one would buy a 6700XT - you'd get a 3070 as it's $20 more, similar performance in last gen and multiples of the performance in next gen games.

What that MSRP tells me is that AMD don't expect to have many to sell so they don't care.

 

[Mopetar]

If we could buy gpu's at MSRP no one would buy a 6700XT - you'd get a 3070 as it's $20 more, similar performance in last gen and multiples of the performance in next gen games.

What that MSRP tells me is that AMD don't expect to have many to sell so they don't care.

RDNA2 cards have been performing relatively better in the newer titles that run Vulkan or DX 12 and that it's the older DX 11 games where Nvidia has the larger advantage. The extra 4 GB of VRAM will probably also factor into many people's decisions about the card there as well. The case for Nvidia is if you want to turn on ray tracing because that's where they've got the biggest advantage.

MSRP doesn't matter or really tell us anything because it doesn't reflect reality right now. The 3060 had a $330 MSRP, but good luck finding a card at that price. There's no reference model and plenty of the AIB models started out well above $400 even before any scalping. The same is probably going to happen with the 6700 XT as well. AIB cards priced closer to $600 out of the gate and plenty of scalping on top of that.

 

[MrTeal]

If we could buy gpu's at MSRP no one would buy a 6700XT - you'd get a 3070 as it's $20 more, similar performance in last gen and multiples of the performance in next gen games.

What that MSRP tells me is that AMD don't expect to have many to sell so they don't care.

I don't think the volume of cards they have really matters, they'll still sell out <$500. AMD might as well set the price at $479 now and adjust down later if needed rather than set the price at $429 or $449 and still have them sell for $600+

 

[Ajay]

Aren't there still a tariffs in effect for GPUs (and other computer components) that are jacking up MSRPs? A quick search didn't give me the %, but it's still a drag.
AMD said that they will have regular 'drops' of reference cards available on their web store at MSRP (hopefully limited to 1 card per address). I had hoped that the 6700XT would come in closer to $400, but for the likely performance, it looks correctly priced ATM. If I could buy the 3060 Ti or this card at MSRP, I might try to save a few bucks and get the NV card; either one will give me the performance boost I want (better visuals at 1440p) and would last several years. However, this is a surprisingly annoying time for gamers looking for a new GPU - at least I was ABLE to buy my 1070 during the last mining rush and ONLY paid $50 more for it than MSRP. This time around, it's completely nuts.

 

[Stuka87]

Aren't there still a tariffs in effect for GPUs (and other computer components) that are jacking up MSRPs?

Yup, and there are currently no plans for those to be removed. Comparing current GPU prices to GPU prices from 5 years ago is a complete waste of time, and I feel anybody doing it is basically trying to troll and/or rile up users here.

 

[psolord]

Aren't there still a tariffs in effect for GPUs (and other computer components) that are jacking up MSRPs? A quick search didn't give me the %, but it's still a drag.
AMD said that they will have regular 'drops' of reference cards available on their web store at MSRP (hopefully limited to 1 card per address). I had hoped that the 6700XT would come in closer to $400, but for the likely performance, it looks correctly priced ATM. If I could buy the 3060 Ti or this card at MSRP, I might try to save a few bucks and get the NV card; either one will give me the performance boost I want (better visuals at 1440p) and would last several years. However, this is a surprisingly annoying time for gamers looking for a new GPU - at least I was ABLE to buy my 1070 during the last mining rush and ONLY paid $50 more for it than MSRP. This time around, it's completely nuts.

The problem is not just mining.

People are imprisoned in their houses due to covid. No cinemas, no restaurants, no coffee shops, no clubs, no sports, no sex. So what remains? TV and gaming. Everybody remembered that they have a semi decent PC somewhere and it can give them entertainment by adding a new graphics card.

Surely the promise of lazy income increase thanks to the powervirus, does not pass under the gollum's radar.

 

[uzzi38]

Looks like Navi23 has half the Infinity Cache per memory channel - 4MB vs 8MB. So looks like the full die will have just 32MB IC.

Dimgrey Cavefish/Navi23 の Infinity Cache はメモリチャネルあたり 4MiB | Coelacanth's Dream (coelacanth-dream.com)

 

[uzzi38]

Btw, anyone thinking this may be a problem need not worry. A 32MB IC is as effective at 1080p as a 128MB IC at 4K. Combined by the fact that Navi23 has less than half the CU count of even the 6800XT alongside half the memory bus, there's no indication at all that it'll run into a memory bottleneck... at least at 1080p. It could potentially be an issue at 1440p, but even then the hit rate seems to be just a touch under 50%, so even then I think the IC should be around about enough.

Still pretty sure we're looking at around 5700XT levels of performance, considering it's 20% less CUs than the (roughly) 25-30% faster 6700XT.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

Let's say 32MB IC is enough for FullHD, then why use 3x more for N22 aimed at 1440p? 64MB would be enough for 1440p. Saved up space could have been used for more CU instead.

 

[uzzi38]

Let's say 32MB IC is enough for FullHD, then why use 3x more for N22 aimed at 1440p? 64MB would be enough for 1440p. Saved up space could have been used for more CU instead.

Probably because across the RDNA2 GPUs they probably designed for either 4MB per memory channel or 8MB per memory channel and nothing else. And 4MB per memory channel on Navi22 would have been too little.

 

[moinmoin]

Let's say 32MB IC is enough for FullHD, then why use 3x more for N22 aimed at 1440p? 64MB would be enough for 1440p. Saved up space could have been used for more CU instead.

N22 is still a high level die rivaling 6800's N21. N23 is by all accounts an entry level die. It also has one display engine fewer than N21 and N22 (5 instead 6) which is common for entry level models.

 

[Mopetar]

Btw, anyone thinking this may be a problem need not worry. A 32MB IC is as effective at 1080p as a 128MB IC at 4K.

The performance difference from going to 32 MB from 64 MB, even at 1080p, seems be pretty substantial. I don't know what the real world impact of that would be, but it seems like a 15-20% drop in cache hit rate from a rough eyeball estimate, which is bigger than the raw numbers might suggest.

I wonder if this was the plan all along or more of a game day decision due to limited wafer supply and obscene demand. I don't know that a 64 MB infinity cache Navi 23 die would be worlds better than one with only 32 MB of cache, but I am quite sure that you can fit more dies on a wafer if they're using 32 MB less cache and ultimately that may be far more important than actual performance.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

N22 is still a high level die rivaling 6800's N21. N23 is by all accounts an entry level die. It also has one display engine fewer than N21 and N22 (5 instead 6) which is common for entry level models.

In what is N22 rivaling RX 6800?
I don't see how N23 with supposedly 32CU and Navi10 level of performance is only entry level die while a 40CU N22 is a high level one.
BTW shouldn't N24 be an entry level die?

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

Probably because across the RDNA2 GPUs they probably designed for either 4MB per memory channel or 8MB per memory channel and nothing else. And 4MB per memory channel on Navi22 would have been too little.

If N22 had only 4MB It could be a problem for performance, but I don't expect designing 6MB instead of 4 or 8MB would be such a big problem.

 

[Timorous]

Btw, anyone thinking this may be a problem need not worry. A 32MB IC is as effective at 1080p as a 128MB IC at 4K. Combined by the fact that Navi23 has less than half the CU count of even the 6800XT alongside half the memory bus, there's no indication at all that it'll run into a memory bottleneck... at least at 1080p. It could potentially be an issue at 1440p, but even then the hit rate seems to be just a touch under 50%, so even then I think the IC should be around about enough.

Still pretty sure we're looking at around 5700XT levels of performance, considering it's 20% less CUs than the (roughly) 25-30% faster 6700XT.

View attachment 40640

If it is slower than the 5700XT and 230mm² it seems pointless.

 

[Mopetar]

It certainly is a curious case, but without having the silicon in hand it's really hard to make comparisons even if on the surface they seem similar. We do know that Navi 22 has really high clock speeds, even for the reference design. It only has 66% of the compute units (40 vs. 60) compared to the 6800, but the clock speeds being so much higher mean that in terms of raw throughput it hits far closer to the 6800 than one might think, especially in any case where it isn't bound by something like memory bandwidth or ROPs.

Even though Navi 23 has a CU count that's much closer to Navi 22 than Navi 22 has to the most cutdown Navi 21 die, we don't know if it was designed with the same high clock speeds in mind that we're seeing with Navi 22. If you look at the TDP figures AMD released, the 6700 XT isn't that much lower than the 6800 precisely because it's clocked so much higher. It's entirely possible that the power targets for Navi 23 are much lower and that it won't clock as high.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

If it is slower than the 5700XT and 230mm² it seems pointless.

That depends. Certainly Navi10 level of performance for N23 would be best, but new features and much lower TBP could be worth It especially in mobile segment where AM|D is not faring very well. Smaller size also helps lowering production costs and allowing to produce more.

 

[Mopetar]

That depends. Certainly Navi10 level of performance for N23 would be best, but new features and much lower TBP could be worth It especially in mobile segment where AM|D is not faring very well. Smaller size also helps lowering production costs and allowing to produce more.

The TDP should be substantially lower considering the 6700 XT has almost the same TDP (it's 5W greater) than the 5700 XT even though the clocks are ~30% higher. The mobile Navi 10 parts are still 150W+ parts, so AMD being able to get something that comes in below that is going to be important.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

From Patrick Schur

If he is right and TBP is 135W at most like what glo. said, then It would be great, but of course we should forget about clocks similar to N22.

 

[moinmoin]

In what is N22 rivaling RX 6800?

Less difference in performance than the difference in price (MSRP of course...) would suggest?

BTW shouldn't N24 be an entry level die?

N23 is for Full HD. N24 will be weaker and more suitable for mobile, like HD Ready, potentially replaced by future APUs.