The Navi line of next-generation AMD GPUs remains shrouded in secrecy with nothing more than vague confirmation that they are in the works and the rumor mill churning out speculative details in anticipation.
Matters took a turn during AMD keynote at Computex 2019, with the manufacturer providing tantalizing new snippets about the Radeon RX 5000 GPU series – the 5000 numbering an homage of sorts to AMD’s fiftieth anniversary.
The GPUs make use of newly-developed RDNA architecture. Hefty lettering aside, RDNA promises maximum gaming performance and efficiency with AMD touting it as “the future of gaming.” AMD explained a 1.25 times boost per clock and 1.5 times better overall performance when compared to the current Graphics Core Next architecture.
The architecture features a new compute unit design, multi-level cache hierarchy designed to reduce latency as well as raise bandwidth while lowering power draw, and a streamlined graphics pipeline optimized for higher overall clock speeds and improved performance per clock — all this with a smaller physical footprint.
Interestingly, the keynote also confirmed that the RDNA architecture would power the chip (rumored to be codenamed Gonzalo) in the upcoming Sony PlayStation 5.
AMD provided a sneak peek at the desktop gaming Radeon RX 5700 series set for release in July. The 7nm fabrication cards pack GDDR6 memory alongside the integration of PCIe 4.0 aligning it with AMD’s new 3rd-gen Ryzen CPUs. Allied, these seem on the verge of equaling the appeal of the market-leading Intel-Nvidia pairing in terms of performance and, hopefully for AMD, appeal to consumers.
AMD didn’t stop there and regaled us with a brief preview pitting the card against the Nvidia RTX 2070 with a demo of the mummy-slaying shooter Strange Brigade — a game that favors AMD architecture by default skewing the test somewhat. The results were, nevertheless, impressive with a 10% increase in performance over Nvidia’s GPU.
The RX 5700 is the first from the Radeon RX 5000 series whose full gamut of gaming, consoles, and cloud streaming GPUs launch on June 10th during the Next Horizon Gaming shindig at E3 2019. Expect in-depth details and a retail pricing structure.