AMD Big Navi Rumored To Be Twice As Powerful As Radeon RX 5700 XT
by
Brandon Hill
—
Thursday, January 23, 2020, 03:27 PM EDT
AMD's current family of 7nm Radeon RX Navi midrange graphics cards are no doubt impressive, as witnessed by the recently released Radeon RX 5600 XT (our full review). The Radeon RX 5600 XT is flanked by the Radeon RX 5500 just below it , and the Radeon RX 5700 above. However, AMD doesn't currently have a flagship-class graphics card that is capable of taking on the likes of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and that's hopefully where "Big Navi" comes in.
According to recent rumblings, Big Navi could have some big performance credentials backing it up, if a new report from ChipHell is accurate. The GPU running the show is reportedly called Navi 21 and it features second-generation RDNA 2 architecture (first-generation RDNA underpins the Radeon RX 5500/5600/5700 series).
But the big news is that Big Navi reportedly also features a whopping 80 CUs (Radeon Compute Units). This is exactly twice as many CUs as found in the Radeon RX 5700 XT, which could have us looking at a card theoretically offering twice the performance of AMD's current-gen top-end Navi card. This rumor definitely sounds promising, although we don't know what kind of thermal constraints AMD will be running into with the 7nm+ process that it will likely be employing for Big Navi.
Radeon 5700 GPU - How much bigger will Big Navi be?
But if that 80 CU figure is accurate, it could give AMD just enough of a performance punch to pose a credible threat to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which has been unopposed ever since it launched in September 2018. But even that possibility comes with a caveat; NVIDIA could counter anything that AMD lays on the table with its 7nm Ampere family (GeForce RTX 3000), which the company is reportedly prepping for a 2020 launch. As we saw with the announcement of the Radeon RX 5600 XT and NVIDIA's subsequent price cut on the GeForce RTX 2060, these GPU giants love to mess with each other and the competitive environment is pretty cut-throat.
Regardless, on thing is for sure and it's that AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su has indeed confirmed that "Big Navi" is coming, on multiple occasions since CES 2020. "My main message to our fans is this is just a beginning for us in 2020. I’ve heard a little bit through Twitter and Reddit that people are wondering about, you know, Big Navi," said Su in a recent interview on an episode of The Bring Up. "I can say you’re gonna see Big Navi in 2020."
At this point, we don't know what the official product name of Big Navi will be, although we've seen product registrations submitted to the EEC that reference Radeon RX 5800 XT and Radeon RX 5950 XT. Hopefully, we'll find out soon enough...
Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.
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