AMD Teases Radeon RX 6000 Card Performance Numbers: Aiming For 3080?
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2020 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Navi 2x
- RX 6000 Series
As part of today’s Zen 3 desktop CPU announcement from AMD, the company also threw in a quick teaser from the GPU side of the company in order to show off the combined power of their CPUs and GPUs. The other half of AMD is preparing for their own announcement in a few weeks, where they’ll be holding a keynote for their forthcoming Radeon RX 6000 video cards.
With the recent launch of NVIDIA’s Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series parts clearly on their minds, AMD briefly teased the performance of a forthcoming high-end RX 6000 video card. The company isn’t disclosing any specification details of the unnamed card – short of course that it’s an RDNA2-based RX 6000 part – but the company did disclose a few choice benchmark numbers from their labs.
Dialing things up to 4K at maximum quality, AMD benchmarked Borderlands 3, Gears of War 5, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). And while these are unverified results being released for marketing purposes – meaning they should be taken with a grain or two of salt – the implied message from AMD is clear: they’re aiming for NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3080 with this part.
Assuming these numbers are accurate, AMD’s Borderlands 3 performance are practically in lockstep with the 3080. However the Gears 5 results are a bit more modest, and 73fps would have AMD trailing by several percent. Finally, Call of Duty does not have a standardized benchmark, so although 88fps at 4K looks impressive, it’s impossible to say how it compares to other hardware.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that as with all vendor performance teases, we’re likely looking at AMD’s best numbers. And of course, expect to see a lot of ongoing fine tuning from both AMD and NVIDIA over the coming weeks and months as they jostle for position, especially if AMD’s card is consistently this close.
Otherwise, the biggest question that remains for another day is which video card these performance numbers are for. It’s a very safe bet that this is AMD’s flagship GPU (expected to be "Big Navi", Navi 21), however AMD is purposely making it unclear if this is their lead configuration, or their second-tier configuration. Reaching parity with the 3080 would be a big deal on its own; however if it’s AMD’s second tier-card, then that would significantly alter the competitive landscape.
Expect to find out the answers to this and more on October 28th, when AMD hosts their Radeon RX 6000 keynote.
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Hifihedgehog - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
While I was expecting Zen 3 to blow past expectations, I am underwhelmed by the RX 6000 series. 61 fps in Borderlands 3 maxed out means it is slower: 5% slower than the RTX 3080 (65 fps) and 20% slower than the RTX 3090 (76 fps). So close and yet so far. The point is beating the competition, not coming close. I guess that I will continue using my GTX 1080 Ti for a couple more years. I am, however, strongly tempted by the Ryzen 9 5950X because it's 4.9 GHz boost is effectively 5.8 GHz on my 3950X and that would be YUGE!Hifihedgehog - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-...Wreckage - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
If these are the best case scenario numbers from AMD (why wouldn't they be), then they will have to price it against the 3070. Although if it gets beat by last gen cards with DLSS and or Ray Tracing it may be DOA.MisterAnon - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
DLSS is a gimmick. It is a marketing name for upscaling, and reduces quality compared to native resolution. It is not something you just dial up.bigboxes - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link
Look who you're responding to.JlHADJOE - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
Various publications have now had look at DLSS 2.0 and it's sometimes even better than native res. DLSS 1.0 was pretty janky, but with 2.0 it's definitely not just a marketing name for upscaling anymore.https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-...
https://babeltechreviews.com/the-death-stranding-i...
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-...
Spunjji - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
It *IS* just a marketing name for upscaling, though. That's literally what it does! It's fairly complex upscaling, but it's still upscaling. There's no way in hell it's "better than native res" unless you compare with the worst possible forms of AA enabled. Getting really bored of people posting this junk.krazyfrog - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
It's not junk if it's true. DLSS 2.0 has at worst maintained image quality and at best slightly improved it in multiple titles, including Death Stranding, Control, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. The recent Boundary demo also looks exceptional with DLSS enabled. There are multiple side by side comparisons at this point showing the difference between DLSS 2.0 enabled and disabled. In most cases it's a wash even when staring at a 400% zoomed in shot. If you need to look in that close and still can't spot any difference then the feature is working as intended. No one is saying it's not upscaling but outright dismissing it simply because it's upscaling without even considering all the recent examples is foolish.jordanclock - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
The biggest takeaway with DLSS, especially 2.0, is that you can get better performance than native resolution and use that to enable settings that you could not at native resolution. There is no downside to DLSS 2.0 that I've seen anywhere, except that it still requires devs to add support for a on a title-by-title basis.Calling DLSS "just upscaling" is as uselessly reductive as calling supersampling antialiasing "just downscaling."
quadibloc - Friday, October 9, 2020 - link
And if DLSS were just upscaling, devs wouldn't need to add support for it. The output would just get upscaled, just like when you're watching a TV show on a TV set that upscales. In fact, DLSS and AMD's equivalent are both sorely lacking a feature where they could just upscale without any support by telling the game the monitor is at a lower resolution.