News AMD Announces Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700: Navi Takes the Fight to GeForce RTX

[cangelini]

AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 won’t best Nvidia’s top-end RTX cards. But they may give the RTX 2070 and 2060 serious competition, if they're priced right.

AMD Announces Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700: Navi Takes the Fight to GeForce RTX : Read more

 

[clutchc]

Sounds like AMD is reusing some old card nomenclature. The 2900XT from 2007 and the 5700 series from 2009.

 

[mamasan2000]

Don't forget X800XT and X700XT before that

 

[Rathbone]

I'm a little confued by the Navi announcement.

It looks good but equivalent to RTX2070 is gonna be around 45 FPS at 4K in many of the latest games. However Xbox next and ps5 state, allegedly, 60fps at 4K. That will also be for games that haven't been released yet. And ps5 will do 8K gaming?!

TBH I thought that last point was that PS5 would have 8K output in the same way that my old intel 510 had HD output which isn't the same as HD gaming.

PS5 has also stated it will have ray tracing as standard. This doesn't seem to be the case for Navi.

So is Navi hiding something up it's sleeve? Are there parts of Navi for next box and PS5 which are embargoed until 2020? Or will the rest of the performance benefits come from elsewhere?

No offence to AMD, I want them to do well in the GPU market, but these GPUs can't promise 60fps at 4K.

 

[AgentLozen]

I was also thinking about the next gen consoles after reading this Navi analysis. Rathbone is asking the right questions about the recent Project Scarlet and Next Gen PS5 hardware. They're supposed to support ray tracing and 8K output and 120FPS frame rate. PC gamers understand those perks as requiring a $2500 desktop. You want ray tracing? 8K output? 120FPS? You're going to have to pay.

Its still early, but I think that what we're going to end up seeing is (imagine me doing finger quotes) "ray tracing" and "8K Output" and "120 FPS frame rates". None of those features are going to be present on next gen hardware without compromises.

Even still, I'm really happy to see that AMD is bringing competitive hardware to the market. Nvidia's pricing model is starting to get disdainful towards its customers.

 

[-Fran-]

Console makers are customizing Navi's "not-quite-GCN" brand new arch, as well as Zen's original design to squeeze the most performance in areas they deem important. Some small tweaks can have really big impacts in certain aspects of rendering scenes or even modeling.

Overall, like I said in another thread, I'm a bit disappointed on the value proposition of these cards. The 5700XT should have an MSRP of $400 and the 5700 should be $300. I'm hoping to see partners (hello Sapphire!) with superb designs at the proposed MSRP (I hope!). The blower reference design is just bad for anything that uses anything more than 150W. These cards will be using ~230W given how they have an 8pin and a 6pin.

Also, they left a massive gap under the $350 mark. I smell more Polaris refreshes, which would suck.

Cheers!

 

[InvalidError]

AMD is struggling to sell its RX570/580 at massively discounted prices despite being much faster than anything Nvidia has to offer at those price points and now AMD launches its new GPUs that are barely faster than Nvidia's year old GPUs while drawing ~50W more at about the same prices. Can't imagine how AMD imagined this being any good, most people who wanted this sort of performance at this sort of price already have it. Why buy a $400+ 5700 when you can get better performance out of an under-volted ~$350 Vega56?

I foresee early price cuts on the 5700/5700XT in AMD's future, doesn't make much sense at MSRP.

 

[Phaaze88]

They appear to have made a trend out of this. Whether it's intentional...
Happened with RX 480/580. People expected those to shake Nvidia up. They didn't, but they did become great options for the budget-mid range graphics market. Not enough. People expected more.
Ryzen 1xxx & 2xxx, same thing, but competing with Intel. Didn't blow 'em away either, but great price for the performance you get. Again, not enough. Some people were still disappointed. More, moar...
Looks like those folks will finally get what they want with Ryzen 3xxx... Oh, what's this? They're priced higher than expected? But they may finally take the performance crown this time. "But the price..." Moar for less.
There's just no pleasing everyone. But it's not ideal for AMD to make this trendy, either.

 

[ATI9800Pro]

Don't forget X800XT and X700XT before that

There were the Radeon 9800XT and 9600XT before that too.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

People simply expect the non-dominant competitor that's significantly smaller to somehow come up with products that are better and sell for less. AMD messed up with these Navi cards, but I can't say that I was surprised.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

Then when they get a chip that's comparable to the competition, they are written off.

 

[InvalidError]

But they may finally take the performance crown this time. "But the price..." Moar for less. There's just no pleasing everyone. But it's not ideal for AMD to make this trendy, either.

It isn't just "no pleasing everyone", there is some common sense to it too: very few people will bother upgrading for 10-20% more performance, even more so if they have to spend 10-20% more for it. I'd be far more worried if people decided to accept this as the new normal and welcome the return of the price-gouging AMD-Intel oligopoly from the early-mid 2000s.

Mainstream PCs used to become SIMULTANOUSLY faster and cheaper every year until about 2011, followed by the great stagnation from 2011 to 2017, then Ryzen made the whole market lurch forward, Ryzen 2 inched ahead in 2018 with slightly faster CPUs at slightly lower prices, and now we appear to be back to overall stagnation 2019 with Ryzen 3 where increased performance comes with disproportionately higher prices. This should be a worrisome trend for anyone who likes reasonably fast yet affordable PCs.

 

[TJ Hooker]

It looks good but equivalent to RTX2070 is gonna be around 45 FPS at 4K in many of the latest games. However Xbox next and ps5 state, allegedly, 60fps at 4K. That will also be for games that haven't been released yet. And ps5 will do 8K gaming?!
TBH I thought that last point was that PS5 would have 8K output in the same way that my old intel 510 had HD output which isn't the same as HD gaming.

A 2070 can only do ~45 fps at 4k with high/max settings. Console games do not run at the equivalent of PC max settings. And of course developers can optimize for consoles better. And as you say, saying it supports 8K video output is totally different than saying it'll game at 8K.

PS5 has also stated it will have ray tracing as standard. This doesn't seem to be the case for Navi.

Just because it doesn't have hardware accelerated ray tracing doesn't mean it can't do ray tracing. It just won't be as fast at it and/or be able to do ray tracing to the same extent. Just look at how Nvidia enabled ray tracing on non RTX cards.

Also, keep in mind that the console APUs will be semi custom chips. The GPU may be based on the Navi architecture, but it's not going to be the same chip that's in these graphics cards. They may incorporate some additional tweaks.

 

[digitalgriffin]

AMD is struggling to sell its RX570/580 at massively discounted prices despite being much faster than anything Nvidia has to offer at those price points and now AMD launches its new GPUs that are barely faster than Nvidia's year old GPUs while drawing ~50W more at about the same prices. Can't imagine how AMD imagined this being any good, most people who wanted this sort of performance at this sort of price already have it. Why buy a $400+ 5700 when you can get better performance out of an under-volted ~$350 Vega56?

I foresee early price cuts on the 5700/5700XT in AMD's future, doesn't make much sense at MSRP.

The RTX2070 launched at $599 for Founders Edition and supposedly $550 or so for OEM custom versions.

If NVIDIA does a $100 price cut, as rumored, then that will put the RTX2070 at $450 essentially cutting off the legs of AMDs 5700 XT. You can get new EVGA RTX2070's at $470 now.

At more heat, noise & NO tensor cores, it will be a very hard sell. AMD needs to get these to $400 at most. I'm an AMD fan, but it's still born like Fury Nano. Value isn't there compared to NVIDIA equivalent.

And their fan shroud engineer needs to contact me. There are some basic changes to the design they could do which would be pennies and lower the sound output of a blower style cooler without altering performance. Blower style fans are great for high static pressures (Good for blowing through fins) and moving lots of air. But they are noisy if you don't design them right.

I'm also a little surprised they didn't go with a SWDI design (Single wheel dual inlet). At high speed the traditional blower just STARVES for air and part of the reason you hear a whoosh whine. It creates larger pressure gradients inside the wheel which lead to greater "whoosh". That's just one fix. The second fix is to apply a noise canceling chamber shape on the back of the fan wall and line it with cheap foam tape which is pennies. The difference would be small (wide band probably about 2->3dB to overall white noise figure) But every bit helps.

 

[Tanquen]

No HDMI 2.1, WTF?

 

[clutchc]

@ mamasan200
@ ATI9800Pro
You're right. I did forget about those. The nomenclature goes back even further than I thought.

 

[Olle P]

AMD is struggling to sell its RX570/580 at massively discounted prices despite being much faster than anything Nvidia has to offer at those price points and now AMD launches its new GPUs that are barely faster than Nvidia's year old GPUs while drawing ~50W more at about the same prices. Can't imagine how AMD imagined this being any good, ...

The math is simple: If cutting the prices doesn't increase sales, don't cut the prices!
The Vega cards will disappear from the market, so those are a non issue.
With Navi slightly faster and cheaper than Nvidia's competition it could be a win, though I expect Navi to behave much like Vega when it comes to tuning voltage and frequencies.

... Not enough. People expected more.
Ryzen 1xxx & 2xxx, same thing, but competing with Intel. Didn't blow 'em away either, but great price for the performance you get. Again, not enough. Some people were still disappointed. More, moar...

Well, some will never be satisfied. Sales figures still show that enthusiasts buy more Ryzen than Intel's Core options, so obviously not that many are disappointed.

... very few people will bother upgrading for 10-20% more performance, even more so if they have to spend 10-20% more for it.

So what? I don't expect anybody to buy a new card every year. The only reason to replace a relatively new graphics card is if the needs differ, like if you've happily enjoyed gaming on a 60Hz 1080p monitor using a Radeon RX570 and now bought a 144Hz 1440p monitor.
Then a 20% increase in performance is insufficient, but you also expect to pay way more for the required ~400% increase in graphics performance.

At more heat, noise & NO tensor cores, it will be a very hard sell.

Have you tested these cards yourself?
I'd wait for hands on experience or at least some unbiased reviews before jumping to any claims on heat and noise. I also expect Navi to favor lower voltage like Vega.
And tensor cores are useful for what? I've been under the impression that their only use in gaming is to either reduce the image quality (DLSS) or heavily reduce the frame rate (ray tracing)...

And their fan shroud engineer needs to contact me. There are some basic changes to the design they could do...

I wouldn't bet that your proposed changes haven't been tried/evaluated and either rejected (for good reason) or implemented (but not clearly shown).

 

[InvalidError]

The math is simple: If cutting the prices doesn't increase sales, don't cut the prices!

Math won't help you here. If people won't buy your products despite a massive performance per dollar advantage, you have a fatal branding and marketing issue. Barely beating the competitions' 1-3 years old products for about the same price won't help overcome that. It is also difficult to take AMD's claims of improved efficiency seriously when Navi still needs 30-40W more to match Maxwell and Turing's performance despite AMD's 7nm advantage.

AMD isn't in a position to command Nvidia-level premium in the GPU space, Navi sales will likely fall flat until AMD drops the 5700/XT MSRPs by $75-100.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Have you tested these cards yourself?
I'd wait for hands on experience or at least some unbiased reviews before jumping to any claims on heat and noise. I also expect Navi to favor lower voltage like Vega.
And tensor cores are useful for what? I've been under the impression that their only use in gaming is to either reduce the image quality (DLSS) or heavily reduce the frame rate (ray tracing)...

I wouldn't bet that your proposed changes haven't been tried/evaluated and either rejected (for good reason) or implemented (but not clearly shown).

I don't need to test them. 2070 is 175 Watts TDP. 5700XT is 225 Watts TDP. One of the most effective electric heaters in the world is computer hardware because just about all that power goes to heat loss. It's a well known fact.

Also blower cards (Centrifugal fans) are noisier than axial fans. This is a well known fact and not because everyone says so. I have an aerospace background.

And as to the proposed changes on the shroud, AMD choose a blower because they were concerned about airflow. Their point is valid for enclosed cases with poor airflow. Blowers are good for high pressure and airflow. But they are noisy. But the backwall near the fan creates several issues from acting like a resonance surface, and creating an uneven pressure flow around the fan which throws the bearing pressure off. I get that it's there to maintain pressure so that air shoots out with greater force when it exits. Also a close wall like that reduces efficiency in other areas due to boundary effect. There are better ways to do this. AMD probably just doesn't know because I doubt they have a full time aerospace engineer who also has a degree in acoustics as well.

Tensor cores might be useful to a handful of people true, with a small number of titles. But when all things are equal, you choose the one with even the small improvements. And remember the same things were said about Mantle (which became Vulkan) when AMD introduced it.

 

[Olle P]

I don't need to test them. 2070 is 175 Watts TDP. 5700XT is 225 Watts TDP. ...

And what's the power efficiency of an RTX 2070 when overclocked?
My point is that if you underclock the 5700XT to match the performance of an RTX 2070 and tune the voltage down as well there won't be much difference.
I'll wait for actual tests before passing definitive judgement...

 

[InvalidError]

I'll wait for actual tests before passing definitive judgement...

Might also want to wait for price drops on the 'old' RTX lineup when Nvidia launches the "Super" Turing refresh, the 5700/5700XT may end up outclassed on performance per dollar almost right out of the gate.