AMD Teases Radeon RX 6000 Card Performance Numbers: Aiming For 3080?
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2020 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Navi 2x
- RX 6000 Series
As part of today’s Zen 3 desktop CPU announcement from AMD, the company also threw in a quick teaser from the GPU side of the company in order to show off the combined power of their CPUs and GPUs. The other half of AMD is preparing for their own announcement in a few weeks, where they’ll be holding a keynote for their forthcoming Radeon RX 6000 video cards.
With the recent launch of NVIDIA’s Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series parts clearly on their minds, AMD briefly teased the performance of a forthcoming high-end RX 6000 video card. The company isn’t disclosing any specification details of the unnamed card – short of course that it’s an RDNA2-based RX 6000 part – but the company did disclose a few choice benchmark numbers from their labs.
Dialing things up to 4K at maximum quality, AMD benchmarked Borderlands 3, Gears of War 5, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). And while these are unverified results being released for marketing purposes – meaning they should be taken with a grain or two of salt – the implied message from AMD is clear: they’re aiming for NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 with this part.
Assuming these numbers are accurate, AMD’s Borderlands 3 performance are practically in lockstep with the 3080. However the Gears 5 results are a bit more modest, and 73fps would have AMD trailing by several percent. Finally, Call of Duty does not have a standardized benchmark, so although 88fps at 4K looks impressive, it’s impossible to say how it compares to other hardware.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that as with all vendor performance teases, we’re likely looking at AMD’s best numbers. And of course, expect to see a lot of ongoing fine tuning from both AMD and NVIDIA over the coming weeks and months as they jostle for position, especially if AMD’s card is consistently this close.
Otherwise, the biggest question that remains for another day is which video card these performance numbers are for. It’s a very safe bet that this is AMD’s flagship GPU (expected to be "Big Navi", Navi 21), however AMD is purposely making it unclear if this is their lead configuration, or their second-tier configuration. Reaching parity with the 3080 would be a big deal on its own; however if it’s AMD’s second tier-card, then that would significantly alter the competitive landscape.
Expect to find out the answers to this and more on October 28th, when AMD hosts their Radeon RX 6000 keynote.
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andrewaggb - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
Nothing wrong with 3070-3080 territory so long as the price, power, heat, noise, drivers, etc all hold up. Honestly considering how far behind AMD has been on the GPU front if they're in the same range on these metrics that would be great. Guess we'll see.Zen 3 looks good. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to Rocket Lake, but it sounds to me like probably equivalent performance and Zen 3 will use less power and have higher core offerings. Not a great spot for Intel to be if that's the case.
Hifihedgehog - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
I took a second look at the link where I grabbed my numbers. It appears the 65 fps number I got for the RTX 3080 is wrong. Eurogamer's chart shows 65 at the top but there is an error in the system. The actual mean frame rate it shows is 60.9 fps at the bottom for the RTX 3080. So we are actually looking at RTX 3080 performance.raywin - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
the 30 series launch is a complete mess, even by nvidia standardsJorgp2 - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
Will this have HBMDigitalFreak - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
No. GDDR 6.james4591 - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
Even if it can get near a 3080's performance, the question is, what is the pricetag going to be? If it replaces the RX 5700XT at the same pricetag, then AMD is going to really hurt Nvidia in the price to performance ratio.The good part is, the AMD driver team has really turned things around for themselves. The 20.9s have been really well done.
I'll say it this way, if the Reference model gets near the 3080, AIB partners like PowerColor and Sapphire will beat the 3080. If it end up cheaper, then Nvidia will have a problem.
hehatemeXX - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
Either the CU/GCN architecture not scaling well, or they used the second, third tier chip. I don't think they achieved much in terms of raw IPC, but rather through simple clock speeds.Demiurge - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
What are you talking about?silverblue - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
I think the idea here is either it's not the top-end Navi with its 80 CUs (in which case increased clock speed over the 5700XT may have played a significant part), or having double the CUs doesn't yield anywhere near double the performance in these titles. It's a bit soon to tell.haukionkannel - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
There will be 40cu 6700 that replase 5700. 6900 has near 80cu so it will be douple the price of 5700xt aka douple the 6700xt...