AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 ‘Vast Navi’ performance tease unearths an RTX 3080 rival

This day’s AMD match would possibly possible also unprejudiced were Zen 3’s sizable level to, however the firm tossed a juicy bone to the Radeon faithful, too. After asserting the beastly Ryzen 9 5900X (among others), CEO Lisa Su then showed off gameplay photos of Borderlands 3 running on the CPU at 4K resolution with an undisclosed Radeon RX 6000-series graphics card. And yes, Web, AMD’s “Vast Navi” goes toe-to-toe even with Nvidia’s brutally rapid GeForce RTX 3080.

The mysterious Radeon RX 6000 GPU averaged 61 frames per 2nd even with the game running on its punishing “Badass” performance preset. (Borderlands 3 is an AMD-partnered title.) Su also published that the Ryzen/Radeon combo hit 88 fps in Call of Accountability: Up to date War (an Nvidia-partnered title) and 73 fps in Gears 5 on Ultra visible presets. AMD plans to impart the Radeon RX 6000-series “Vast Navi” graphics playing cards formally on October 28 in a dedicated match.

In a call prior to the Zen 3 match, Radeon chief Scott Herkelman told me that AMD decided to tease Vast Navi’s performance due to neighborhood request for extra knowledge. It completely turn into as soon as an explore-opening level to.

AMD

Hexus tested the $700 GeForce RTX 3080 in Gears 5 and Borderlands 3 utilizing the identical visible presets as AMD did with this Radeon RX 6000 preview, on AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X. The RTX 3080 hit 59.4fps in Borderlands 3, compared to the Radeon RX 6000’s 61fps on this preview. In Gears 5, the RTX 3080 hit 77fps, compared to the Radeon RX 6000’s 73fps. The processor makes a distinction, even supposing, because in Eurogamer’s GeForce RTX 3080 review with a Core i9-10900K, Nvidia’s card hit 65fps in Borderlands, and 80fps in Gears 5. (The Call of Accountability sport lacks a standardized benchmark, with the blueprint to be ready to’t examine AMD’s outcomes against assorted assessments, as two wildly assorted scenes will likely be primitive.)

That seemingly locations AMD’s upcoming card neck-and-neck with Nvidia’s staggeringly mighty gaming flagship, reckoning on the processor it’s paired with. That’s damned impressive—on the other hand it’s important to fancy what AMD didn’t level to as of late, too.

Dissecting the AMD vs. Nvidia chess match

Most importantly, Herkelman stressed that AMD didn’t thunder which Radeon RX 6000 graphics card ran these benchmarks. We don’t know whether these outcomes advance from the final observe Vast Navi GPU, or a extra modest offering. (Herkelman also mentioned there’s light magnificent-tuning left to ranking prior to launch.) AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X, the CPU primitive for the tease, also hasn’t been tested by self sustaining reviewers.

Processors largely aren’t a performance limiter at lofty 4K resolutions, but as we showed earlier, they can have an effect on performance outcomes. That procedure that pitting AMD’s benchmarks against Hexus and Eurogamer’s is no longer a easy apples-to-apples comparison. It’s also price noting that every person three video games that Su showed off within the Radeon RX 6000 teaser plod on DirectX 12, moderately than the extra accepted DX11 graphics API.

While this will likely be an ideal-case displaying for AMD’s forthcoming graphics playing cards, it would possibly possible also even be AMD’s sly are attempting and residing the stage with an ideal-case displaying for Nvidia’s rival RTX 3080.

AMD

Nvidia’s unique “Ampere” GPU architecture contained within the RTX 30-series delivers its perfect performance in neatly-liked APIs esteem DirectX 12 and Vulkan. Ampere also scales very neatly at ultra-high resolutions, where the insane number of shader cores inner these GPUs can flex their muscle groups with out being constrained by assorted ingredients of the architecture. (Presumably that’s why Nvidia advertising alive to on 8K gaming performance with the GeForce RTX 3090.) The RTX 3080’s beneficial properties over last generation’s RTX 2080 Ti slim down a good deal whilst you happen to progress all the manner down to 1440p resolution, as our be pleased RTX 3080 review benchmarks showed, and Hardware Unboxed aptly defined. Varied ingredients of Ampere become the bottleneck below 4K.

There’s tons of room for AMD to maneuver here. Radeon RX 6000 GPUs are built utilizing RDNA 2, the 2nd generation of the RDNA graphics architecture that debuted within the (implausible) Radeon RX 5700-series. First-gen RDNA GPUs delivered magnificent effectivity beneficial properties that in a roundabout procedure set apart Radeon graphics playing cards on a par with GeForce’s then-vaunted energy effectivity, but AMD by no procedure launched an particular particular person graphics card with a gargantuan RDNA 1 die, or staunch-time ray tracing capabilities.

RDNA 2—whose high-stop iterations were informally dubbed “Vast Navi”—addresses both of these, on top of handing over one more 50 percent performance-per-watt lengthen, AMD says. AMD already confirmed that the unique graphics playing cards will also reinforce staunch-time ray tracing, ethical esteem the next-gen Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles also built with RDNA 2.

AMD

How Radeon RX 6000 graphics playing cards deal with staunch-time ray tracing will topic. Nvidia’s RTX GPUs render the strenuous cutting-edge lighting fixtures technology by offloading rather about a the work to dedicated hardware—RT cores that calculate bouncing light rays, and tensor cores that “denoise” the rest image. That in actuality educated hardware takes precious die thunder within Ampere. Microsoft already confirmed that the AMD chip contained within the Xbox Series X will also exercise some originate of hardware acceleration for ray tracing, however the specifics will build a distinction within the PC model of RDNA 2.

If AMD’s ray tracing resolution doesn’t capture as powerful on-die thunder as Nvidia’s, that leaves the Radeon playing cards extra room to cram in primitive rendering hardware—shaders, ROPs, geometry pipelines, et cetera. And if AMD can indeed load up Vast Navi with extra of that primitive hardware—in particular now that CDNA’s arrival procedure AMD can jettison compute-notify extras from RDNA to focal level squarely on gaming—it also can indeed potentially bring a sizable battle to Nvidia, and perchance powerful extra so on the extra accepted resolutions, where Ampere’s scaling isn’t rather as potent.

Or perchance no longer. We won’t know for sure except Radeon RX 6000 graphics playing cards are really in our hands. These initial 4K numbers from AMD explore very promising, even supposing.

AMD Radeon

Ample sport theory. You’ve been asking to scrutinize how neatly Vast Navi hangs with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080, and AMD delivered Radeon RX 6000 benchmarks as of late. Vast Navi appears to be like pretty frightful, a ways extra capable than anything else Radeon has delivered in fresh memory, and potentially ethical as rapid as Nvidia’s unique gaming champion. But now that we’ve viewed some numbers, we’re left with a ways extra questions than prior to. One factor is definite even supposing: Given Nvidia’s ongoing inventory woes with the RTX 3080 and 3090, AMD ethical gave pissed off lovers a right motive to wait and scrutinize what Radeon RX 6000 graphics playing cards are in a position to.

Again, explore for the bulky Radeon RX 6000 level to on October 28, full with a brand unique-explore triple-fan cooling resolution.

Senior editor Brad Chacos covers gaming and graphics for PCWorld, and runs the morning files desk for PCWorld, Macworld, Greenbot, and TechHive. He tweets too.