There have been a million and one leaks (or thereabouts) of what NVIDIA is cooking up to serve next within its Ampere line, like the
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, but what about AMD? Team Red has only just come out with its first RDNA 2 cards, but like NVIDIA, you can bank on the company adding more SKUs to the small pile. Namely, a Radeon RX 6700 series might be imminent.
Like its rival, AMD introduced RDNA 2 to the world with three higher end options, including the Radeon RX 6900 XT ($999),
Radeon RX 6800 XT ($649), and Radeon RX 6800 ($579). These are intended to compete with the GeForce RTX 3090 ($1,499), GeForce RTX 3080 ($699), and GeForce RTX 3700 ($499), respectively.
Not everyone has $500+ to spend on a graphics card, or needs the kind of performance that the top models have to offer. While not the end-all-be-all of data analysis, Steam's Hardware and Software survey shows that two-thirds of users rock a 1920x1080 resolution on their primary display, followed by 1366x768 being the next most common. The initial batch of RDNA 2 and Ampere cards are better suited for 1440p and even 4K gaming.
So with that in mind, Patrick Schur, a software engineer and active leaker on Twitter, posted an interesting tweet highlighting two new Navi GPUs: Navi 22 XT and Navi 22 XTL.
According to Patrick, Navi 22 XT will have a 186-221W TGP and will power the Radeon RX 6700 XT, while Navi 22 XTL will have a 146-156W TGP and power the Radeon RX 6700. Here is how those GPUs/SKUs compare to AMD's existing lineup...
- Radeon RX 6900 XT: Navi 21 XTX, 300 TGP
- Radeon RX 6800 XT: Nav1 21 XT, 300W TGP
- Radeon RX 6800: Navi 21 XL, 250W TGP
- Radeon RX 6700 XT: Navi 22 XT, 186-211W TGP
- Radeon RX 6700: Navi 22 XTL, 146-156W TGP
In a follow-up tweet, Patrick mentions it is also possible that Navi 22 XTL (Radeon RX 6700) ends up with a lower minimum TGP than 146W, but so far he has not seen it himself. For reference, the
Radeon RX 5700 XT (RDNA 1) is a 225W part, so the new cards based on RDNA 2 will come in below that, if these numbers end up holding true.
It is worth noting that references to Navi 22 had previously been highlighted in a
Linux driver release, back in July. There was not much information to go on, but rumor has it the Radeon RX 6700 series will debut with 40 compute units, same as the Radeon RX 5700 XT (but with a newer graphics architecture, obviously), and 20 fewer than the Radeon RX 6800.
AMD's upcoming cards could arrive early next year, and skirmish with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. it will be interesting to see how the parts compare, both in performance and in price.