WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.520 NVIDIA may have hyped the crap out of its new MPR GPU lineup, 00:00:03.520 --> 00:00:07.400 but you weren't expecting AMD to sit around and do nothing, were you? 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, 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. 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:24.040 First off, let's talk about performance. AMD is initially releasing three cards, 00:00:24.040 --> 00:00:28.400 each of which is expected to compete with an equivalent RTX 3000 series model. 00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:33.440 At the top end is the $1000 RX 6900 XT, nice. 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:36.800 And it's supposed to deliver RTX 3090 level performance, 00:00:36.800 --> 00:00:42.400 but using significantly less power. And seeing as ampere cards are notoriously power hungry, 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:46.800 it could be an interesting option for enthusiasts that don't wanna spend even more money 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:51.000 upgrading their power supplies. Next up is the RX 6800 XT, 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, 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:59.120 we're looping back on GPU names now. This card is going to go for 649, 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:02.840 a little less than its direct competitor, the RTX 3080. 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:07.000 One step down from that is the RX 6800 non XT, 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:12.880 which AMD suggests will be slightly better than the 499 RTX 3070 for 80 bucks more. 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 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:22.400 to be sure, but how did they do it? And how much skepticism 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:26.480 should we view these first party numbers with? Our DNA too is actually built 00:01:26.480 --> 00:01:29.880 on the same seven nanometer process as the previous generation. 00:01:29.880 --> 00:01:34.480 So performance improvements are primarily driven by changes to the architecture itself, 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:38.160 instead of just cramming more transistors on a substrate. 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:41.760 But with higher and higher resolutions becoming more and more mainstream, 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:46.440 VRAM is becoming increasingly important. And AMD thinks a couple of innovations 00:01:46.440 --> 00:01:52.960 will give Radeon an edge in 4K. The first is what they're calling infinity cash, 00:01:53.160 --> 00:01:58.160 which is a small amount of memory directly on the GPU die itself. 00:01:58.160 --> 00:02:02.440 Although it only consists of 128 megabytes, it's very, very fast. 00:02:02.440 --> 00:02:05.680 AMD claims that the result is an effective VRAM bandwidth 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:09.240 of nearly 1700 gigabytes per second, 00:02:09.240 --> 00:02:12.880 a huge number compared to the GTDR6X standard 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:18.480 used by the upper tier RTX 3000 chips. However, the nominal bandwidth without infinity cash 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:22.520 is the far more pedestrian 512 gigabytes per second. 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. 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:32.600 But AMD does claim it's responsible for nearly half of the performance increase 00:02:32.600 --> 00:02:37.680 from the previous generation. Now the other big innovation is called smart access memory. 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:42.400 They random no more, which gives more direct VRAM access to the CPU 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:46.680 instead of allowing the CPU to access the VRAM only in smaller chunks. 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:49.680 AMD claims you'll get up to a 10% performance boost 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 00:02:55.320 --> 00:02:58.880 and a motherboard with an AMD 500 series chipset 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 00:03:02.820 --> 00:03:06.520 or an Intel based system. Keep in mind that the benchmarks we've already seen 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:11.500 had smart access memory enabled. So the numbers may be a little less impressive 00:03:11.500 --> 00:03:16.360 once independent testing on non Ryzen 5000 systems is conducted. 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:20.560 Another major first for AMD here is hardware ray tracing support 00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:24.000 through what it calls ray accelerators, which actually isn't a weapon 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 00:03:29.240 --> 00:03:35.160 NVIDIA introduced with the RTX 2000 series. However, AMD hopes that built-in de-noising technology 00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:40.160 can help its ray tracing solutions look actually better than NVIDIA's. 00:03:40.160 --> 00:03:43.560 What? There's also DirectX 12 Ultimate support, 00:03:43.560 --> 00:03:47.360 which you can learn more about up here, as well as compatibility with direct storage 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:52.240 to reduce CPU overhead and a DLSS-like feature called Super Resolution. 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. 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 00:04:03.880 --> 00:04:07.800 once the cards launch. You want to see that, don't ya? 00:04:07.800 --> 00:04:11.200 Yeah! Thanks, Andy. Thanks for watching, guys. 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. 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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