Navi’s upcoming graphics architecture may be delayed until October

AMD’s graphics division RTG has been undergoing cancer for several years. Despite new initiatives, Nvidia has led the battle for performance per watt since the Kepler architecture in 2012, which has made it more difficult for AMD to compete for the performance throne. No change seems to be in sight on that front, but on the other hand, the upcoming Navi is believed to challenge Nvidia in the middle segment.

Previous information has claimed that a launch during the summer may be relevant, but sources to French Cowcotland believe that AMD has postponed the launch until October at the earliest. No specific reason is given, but Techpowerup claims that TSMC’s 7 nm capacity will not be enough for both graphics cards and the Ryzen 3000 series during the summer.

Not much is known about the upcoming Navi, other than that AMD should have put a lot of gunpowder on the architecture as it will probably be used in Playstation 5 and the next Xbox. Which meant that the resources for architectures like Vega were tightened.

What is known is TSMC’s 7-nanometer technology and graphics memory of either HBM or GDDR6 type. Whether Navi is based on GCN now to the years or if it will be a completely new architecture remains to be seen. In terms of performance, however, Navi is believed to be trying to take on, among other things, the Geforce GTX 1080, but at a lower price tag.

This is reflected in unconfirmed price information obtained by Cowcotland, which should be taken with a pinch of salt.

According to the information, AMD adopts a similar naming as Nvidia’s RTX 2000 series, but as usual the company jumps up a number. The top model will therefore be the Radeon RX 3080, which will have the Navi 10 graphics circuit paired with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and a TDP of 150 watts.

Remarkably, the top model Radeon RX 3080 is said to perform in line with RTX 2070, but ends up at just under SEK 3,000 including VAT. This can be compared with RTX 2070, which costs about twice as much – SEK 6,000 including VAT.

The TDP value is also a remarkable detail, as AMD’s card is 25 watts below Nvidia. The reason may be that AMD uses significantly more energy-efficient 7 nanometers, while RTX 2070 is based on TSMC’s 12 nm technology. The same story can also be found for the RX 3070 and RX 3060, where corresponding models from Nvidia have a higher TDP and price tag.

It remains to be seen how the architecture Navi is designed in practice, as well as what price it gets on store shelves and when it can be thought to find there. However, AMD is clear that the new graphics cards will come in 2019.

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