“AMD launches Radeon Navi on July 7 – goes up to Geforce RTX 2070”

It’s going to be a packed hardware summer with AMD this year. Almost the entire range of products for desktops will be replaced. The menu includes new processors in the Ryzen 3000 series as well as new graphics cards with the Navi architecture, where joint production of TSMC’s energy-efficient 7-nanometer technology is common.

In connection with a press event in China, a representative of AMD’s largest partner manufacturer Sapphire has revealed that the launch of Navi will take place on 7 July. It is worth mentioning that the date is the same as has been the case in advance speculation for several months.

The person in question must also have confirmed that AMD with Navi is not taking up the fight for the performance throne, but that the focus is on the middle class. In such cases, it would be a similar strategy as with the 2016 launch of the Polaris architecture, where the top model Radeon RX 480 competed with the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060.

Initially, these will be two graphics cards that go up against Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 2060 and RTX 2070, which have recommended price tags of 349 and 499 USD respectively. The new duo will pay 399 and 499 USD, corresponding to just over 4,800 and 6,000 kronor, including VAT.

Earlier in the spring, images were published on circuit boards for an AMD graphics card, where the number of memory card slots spoke for a 256-bit memory bus, which is common for mid-range graphics cards. The number of solder points in each location, 180 pieces, also confirmed that the type of memory used is fresh GDDR6 and not GDDR5, whose capsules have 170 points.

Support for hardware accelerated ray tracing is delayed

The same representative also claims that the graphics cards in question are without support for acceleration of ray tracing at the hardware level. This is interesting as Sony has already revealed that the next generation Playstation will support this and is based on the Navi architecture.

One possibility is that AMD has developed such support in the Navi architecture specifically for Sony’s upcoming gaming console and that it does not fit into its own graphics cards, or that it takes time for the company to release a higher-performance variant. It is also possible that Navi will be without hardware acceleration for ray tracing, that they solve something at the software level or that the function is added first with the next architecture “Next-Gen”, which is believed to have the code name Arcturus.

► AMD’s graphics architecture after Navi a stronger shining star – Arcturus

However, Sapphire’s representative must have denied that it will be a higher performing variant of Navi, which in such cases may mean that built-in acceleration for ray tracing will not come until the next generation. The launch of the next architecture will take place in 2020.

Before the launch, AMD will share more details about both the Navi architecture and the new processors in the Ryzen 3000 series. This will take place during both Computex and the gaming fair E3, on 27 May and 10 June respectively.

Source: Zhihu via Videocardz

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