There have been game and {hardware} delays left proper and centre over the previous couple of months, however AMD have confirmed that their upcoming Big Navi GPUs are nonetheless because of launch earlier than the tip of 2020. Speaking at Bank Of America’s Global Technology Conference webcast, AMD’s chief monetary officer Devinder Kumar mentioned, “We remain on track to launch our next generation of Zen 3 CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs in late 2020,” and he additionally acknowledged that we’ll see these AMD Navi graphics playing cards earlier than the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Will these 4K-capable playing cards be going face to face with Nvidia’s upcoming Ampere GPUs someday this autumn? Here’s the whole lot you have to know.
While a lot of the webcast was fairly dry monetary chat, Kumar did verify that AMD’s Big Navi GPUs will probably be their “first RDNA 2-based product”, which suggests they’ll arrive on PC earlier than the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X this Christmas. Kumar didn’t reveal an actual launch date for AMD’s Big Navi playing cards, however the present hearsay doing the rounds on-line is that it is going to be someday this autumn, which can also be the present hearsay window for Nvidia’s RTX 3000 graphics playing cards.
“Big Navi is a halo product,” Kumar continued. “Enthusiasts love to buy the best, and we are certainly working on giving them the best.”
As you might have seen, there’s a somewhat massive gap in AMD’s graphics card line-up in the meanwhile, as they at present don’t have something to rival Nvidia’s flagship RTX playing cards, such because the RTX 2080, RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2080 Ti. Indeed, their present top-end graphics card, the RX 5700 XT, is extra of an RTX 2070 Super competitor than anything. But that’s all set to vary with the launch of their Big Navi or Navi 2X GPUs.
Widely anticipated to be correct 4K-capable graphics playing cards, AMD’s Big Navi GPUs will utilise their 2nd era RDNA 2 structure, which AMD have mentioned will carry a number of enhancements to their general efficiency, particularly their efficiency per watt. It can even introduce different applied sciences reminiscent of ray tracing and variable price shading.
We received a glimpse of what ray tracing will appear like on one among AMD’s RDNA 2 GPUs when Microsoft first introduced DirectX 12 Ultimate, which you’ll be able to watch beneath. Be warned, you would possibly want some sun shades for this, as that is one shiny demo video.
However, it’s attainable AMD have gotten much more graphics playing cards than simply these Big Navi GPUs arriving earlier than the tip of the 12 months, as Kumar went on to say that, “With the RDNA 2 architecture, it goes through the entire stack. It will go from mainstream GPUs all the way up to the enthusiasts, and then the architecture also goes into the game console products […] as well as our integrated APU products.”
This would tally with statements AMD made earlier within the 12 months, once they confirmed a full Navi refresh in 2020. As a outcome, it’s attainable we’d see successors to AMD’s present crop of 1st Gen Navi playing cards, the RX 5500 XT, the RX 5600 XT and the RX 5700 sequence, to carry them in step with Big Navi, however there’s at present no telling whether or not they’ll arrive all of sudden or in dribs and drabs all through the tip of 2020 and past into subsequent 12 months. As quickly as we all know extra, I’ll let you understand.
Either approach, the race for the subsequent best graphics card is about to get much more attention-grabbing.