Over the weekend there have been some interesting videos about Big Navi / Navi 21, which is now expected to arrive bearing the name AMD Radeon 6900XT. Coreteks, one of the TechTuber sources, has written up a summary of his own exclusive AMD RDNA 2 flagship GPU info reveal, alongside a digest of new content from the channel NotAnAppleFan.
Let us start with the Coreteks info. In this video the TechTuber claims to have a die shot of the Big Navi GPU. The image seems to be little more than a fuzzy rectangle, as you will see if you delve into the video. However, Corteks explains that he got a clear photo of the GPU and its surrounding components but decided to obscure the photo in several ways such as removing on-chip etched information and jumbling up the surrounding electronics components - to protect his source.
Even with all this information removed, the image is still said to be of value. Coreteks explains, using reference points within the original shot (component sizes like PCIe slots), that he was able to size up Big Navi. The Navi 21 GPU measures 29 x 18.5mm (536mm2) he asserted. Going through several other calculations comparing the Navi 10 and Navi 21 GPU, Corteks sums up that Navi 21 packs in about 2.5x as many transistors as Navi 10, about 26 billion transistors in all.
Looking across the room at the green team flagship, the GeForce RTX 3080, this Ampere architecture GPU packs in about 28 billion transistors. The number is comparable but rumours are pointing to the AMD part being clocked at 2.2GHz, while the reference RTX 3080 GPU clock speeds is 1.71GHz.
The info source now swings towards the NotAnAppleFan presentation. In a video called 'Big Navi AMD's 3090 Ambush', this TechTuber asserts that the AMD Radeon 6900XT will likely compete directly with the RTX 3090. Both TechTuber sources agree on the graphics clock speeds (2.2GHz, mentioned above) and the following; Navi 21 has 80 CUs, and 16GB GDDR6 of VRAM.
Moving onto the other important things about Navi 21 - having more CUs and faster clocks isn't of course the whole story. As was revealed previously, in official AMD presentations, RDNA 2 GPUs also feature a 50 per cent perf/watt improvement over first gen RDNA GPUs.
Official AMD slide
A pinch of salt, or two, may be required for some of the above. Rest assured, a lot of the fog will be cleared soon though, AMD has lined up a special RDNA 2 event for the 28th Oct and hopefully hardware launches won't lag long after that.
