1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,520 NVIDIA may have hyped the crap out of its new MPR GPU lineup, 2 00:00:03,520 --> 00:00:07,400 but you weren't expecting AMD to sit around and do nothing, were you? 3 00:00:07,400 --> 00:00:13,640 That's not how Dr. Lisa Sue rolls. Team Red has fired back with its RDNA2 architecture for PC, 4 00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:18,760 set to come out in mid-November, so let's dive right in with what to expect. 5 00:00:18,760 --> 00:00:24,040 First off, let's talk about performance. AMD is initially releasing three cards, 6 00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:28,400 each of which is expected to compete with an equivalent RTX 3000 series model. 7 00:00:28,440 --> 00:00:33,440 At the top end is the $1000 RX 6900 XT, nice. 8 00:00:33,600 --> 00:00:36,800 And it's supposed to deliver RTX 3090 level performance, 9 00:00:36,800 --> 00:00:42,400 but using significantly less power. And seeing as ampere cards are notoriously power hungry, 10 00:00:42,400 --> 00:00:46,800 it could be an interesting option for enthusiasts that don't wanna spend even more money 11 00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:51,000 upgrading their power supplies. Next up is the RX 6800 XT, 12 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,960 not to be confused with the 2005 Vintage NVIDIA card of the same name, that's right, 13 00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:59,120 we're looping back on GPU names now. This card is going to go for 649, 14 00:00:59,120 --> 00:01:02,840 a little less than its direct competitor, the RTX 3080. 15 00:01:02,840 --> 00:01:07,000 One step down from that is the RX 6800 non XT, 16 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:12,880 which AMD suggests will be slightly better than the 499 RTX 3070 for 80 bucks more. 17 00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:18,840 Unsurprisingly, AMD has put out a few benchmarks, which you can see on this chart, impressive numbers 18 00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:22,400 to be sure, but how did they do it? And how much skepticism 19 00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:26,480 should we view these first party numbers with? Our DNA too is actually built 20 00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:29,880 on the same seven nanometer process as the previous generation. 21 00:01:29,880 --> 00:01:34,480 So performance improvements are primarily driven by changes to the architecture itself, 22 00:01:34,480 --> 00:01:38,160 instead of just cramming more transistors on a substrate. 23 00:01:38,160 --> 00:01:41,760 But with higher and higher resolutions becoming more and more mainstream, 24 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:46,440 VRAM is becoming increasingly important. And AMD thinks a couple of innovations 25 00:01:46,440 --> 00:01:52,960 will give Radeon an edge in 4K. The first is what they're calling infinity cash, 26 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:58,160 which is a small amount of memory directly on the GPU die itself. 27 00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:02,440 Although it only consists of 128 megabytes, it's very, very fast. 28 00:02:02,440 --> 00:02:05,680 AMD claims that the result is an effective VRAM bandwidth 29 00:02:05,680 --> 00:02:09,240 of nearly 1700 gigabytes per second, 30 00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:12,880 a huge number compared to the GTDR6X standard 31 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:18,480 used by the upper tier RTX 3000 chips. However, the nominal bandwidth without infinity cash 32 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:22,520 is the far more pedestrian 512 gigabytes per second. 33 00:02:23,480 --> 00:02:28,560 So it remains to be seen exactly how the high speed cash will play out from title to title. 34 00:02:28,560 --> 00:02:32,600 But AMD does claim it's responsible for nearly half of the performance increase 35 00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:37,680 from the previous generation. Now the other big innovation is called smart access memory. 36 00:02:37,680 --> 00:02:42,400 They random no more, which gives more direct VRAM access to the CPU 37 00:02:42,400 --> 00:02:46,680 instead of allowing the CPU to access the VRAM only in smaller chunks. 38 00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:49,680 AMD claims you'll get up to a 10% performance boost 39 00:02:49,680 --> 00:02:55,320 as a result, but the big caveat here is that you'll need both a Ryzen 5000 CPU 40 00:02:55,320 --> 00:02:58,880 and a motherboard with an AMD 500 series chipset 41 00:02:58,880 --> 00:03:02,820 in order to use it. So you'll miss out if you're using an older AMD platform 42 00:03:02,820 --> 00:03:06,520 or an Intel based system. Keep in mind that the benchmarks we've already seen 43 00:03:06,520 --> 00:03:11,500 had smart access memory enabled. So the numbers may be a little less impressive 44 00:03:11,500 --> 00:03:16,360 once independent testing on non Ryzen 5000 systems is conducted. 45 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:20,560 Another major first for AMD here is hardware ray tracing support 46 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:24,000 through what it calls ray accelerators, which actually isn't a weapon 47 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:29,240 that you'd see on the Starship Enterprise. They're actually similar to the ray tracing cores 48 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:35,160 NVIDIA introduced with the RTX 2000 series. However, AMD hopes that built-in de-noising technology 49 00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:40,160 can help its ray tracing solutions look actually better than NVIDIA's. 50 00:03:40,160 --> 00:03:43,560 What? There's also DirectX 12 Ultimate support, 51 00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:47,360 which you can learn more about up here, as well as compatibility with direct storage 52 00:03:47,360 --> 00:03:52,240 to reduce CPU overhead and a DLSS-like feature called Super Resolution. 53 00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:58,380 Basically, it all looks like a very worthy competitor to ampere with a few of AMD's own unique twists. 54 00:03:58,380 --> 00:04:03,880 Let us know down in the comments if you'd like to see a deeper dive into the tech behind RDNA 2 right here on Techquickie 55 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:07,800 once the cards launch. You want to see that, don't ya? 56 00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:11,200 Yeah! Thanks, Andy. Thanks for watching, guys. 57 00:04:11,200 --> 00:04:14,200 That's the end of this video. Like it if you liked it. Disliked it if you disliked it. 58 00:04:14,200 --> 00:04:17,660 Check out our other channels if you want to check out our other channels. 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