AMD RDNA GPUs thread

Notebookcheck is reporting references to a whole range of RDNA products that would complete the GPU roster. The top-end Navi 21 even mentions hardware accelerated real time ray tracing and 16 GB HBM2. There also seems to be mobile variants (which would be a welcome addition in this mostly-green dedicated GPU market).
At this point, it's all speculation, of course.

 

Would be nice if there would be an gtx 1080 replacement on the mobile front. Most laptops run the max-q variant, which is an gtx 1080 on an mild OC. The whole chiplet infrastructure would benefit laptops, cause the heat can be spread across an coldplate before it get's sucked in the heatpipes.

Really looking forward to an high end AMD CPU/GPU/APU inside laptops. for DTR's they should bring back the PGA socket, making upgrading easy again. HBM would make GGDR memory obsolete, if they can 3d stack leveraging a smaller PCB area, would create more room for higher quality traces. 2019/2020 is becoming an very interesting year looking at the prospects

 

Since RDNA is supposed to go 10% beyond 2070 level of performance (at least the RX 5700X is) in the desktop space at 225W TDP... and if undervolts will be similarly applicable, I'm thinking for laptops we could get at least 2070 level of performance for a much lower power draw (180w tdp or less)... provided the OEM's modify the chips voltages and only mildly drop the clocks.

And while I agree that chiplets will probably be the way to go with GPU's... we probably won't see those until at least 7nm+ (or 6 or 5nm)

 

True, RTX 2070 performance would not be bad, but the powerdraw (IMO) should be 150w or less (TBP) so you could have an CPU next to it say 95 watts 6 or 8 core around 4/4.5 Ghz all core @7nm
With the Intel mitigations installed going with the high road would not be beneficial this time around (especially when AMD's platform is still new and with some good chipset drivers, and windows scheduler update/more agressive memory frequency's) AMD would become faster over time just like how the vega 64 right now most of the times beats the 1080 due to better drivers. Intel is lagging, better cause AMD could take over some shares of the mobile space.

I think accelerating their APU designs to bring out products @7nm would be more beneficial even though it now runs 12nm+ (aka zen+) Not to mention chiplet design would be awsome but more for money savings.
3d stacking in combination with infinity fabric would utterly destroy anything Nividia (mellanox) or Intel (Foveros) has up their sleeves. The radeon pro DUO amd created in partner ship with Apple is a good indicator of it. The card even though it uses two gpu core's is still being recognized as 1. removing the cooling bottleneck, would let AMD create dual gpu laptop designs where as a desktop design would be a single large chip.

So for example they could smack two navi 10 gpu's togheter to form an radeon 7 for example or a navi 20 chip. by doing that they remove the heatspot from 1 core to two core's making it easier to dissipate the heat over an large area. Using a vapor chamber (just like how AMD used on the radeon 7) would bring us back the big workstation designs i'm used to.

 

Don't think we'll see 95W/105W TDP Zen 2 CPU's in laptops just yet.
65W TDP parts, yes... as those have already been done in Asus GL702ZC and Acer Helios 500.
As for the TDP being 150W for the GPU... possible... but I don't know.
They might just go with 5700 (non XT version) and just undervolt it (and depending on how far the voltage is dropped, I think it can drop power consumption by 30-40W again without even touching the clocks- but OEM's don't really do this... they will drop both the voltages and clocks if history serves - they're not about to simply drop the voltages and test each chip individually to see what works and what doesn't).

 

Yup, RDNA and Zen2 sounds really interesting as for me. Hopping to see mobile workstations based on new 65W desktop AMD CPU's or at least new professional MXM videocard from the red one. As for me we deserve to have socketed processors on our hi-end laptops.

 

Socketed processors are fine, but they mean nothing if the OEM's don't release a BIOS update that allows us to install new ones... in that regard the OEM's could have just made the 1700 and 2700 in GL702ZC and Helios 500 completely soldered and there wouldn't have been any difference whatsoever.
Asus clearly stated they won't support newer generations of CPU's (no Zen+ or Zen2) in GL702ZC, and Acer... well, they hadn't said much of anything on the subject at all, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did the same as Asus.

As for MXM GPU's... again, good idea, but means squat if the OEM's don't actually make an AMD laptop GPU that's MXM in the first place.
Both GL702ZC and Helios 500 had fully integrated GPU's onto the motherboards.

 

I had seen some discussions about custom bios for this models, so it's only question of time to have such bios been released. There was really lack of sens to make such bios upgrade for 1st and 2nd gen of Ryzen, 'cause they didnt have so much difference between gens, but the 3rd gen would give much higher performans per watt and per takt, so... And about MXM i totally agree, 'case videocard's market segment seems to be not so important for AMD ( unluckuly). Why AMD didn't made V56/V64 for an MXM slot and not even trying ? For me it is a secret too.

 

There have been discussions about GL702ZC and Helios 500 getting custom BIOS-es yes, but purely from an academic point of view. Nothing was actually done. There's that, and I don't know how safe would it be to install a custom BIOS like that which wouldn't break the unit in totality... plus, if something like that happens, you'd need a backup plan to restore the previous BIOS - and I utterly hate relying on DOS type functionality for anything like that (its the same like when people recommend upgrading the BIOS using bootable DOS... whereas its literally faster and a heck of a lot easier to just install it from Windows).

In regards to AMD not making an MXM version of V56... wouldn't that be up to the OEM's?
AMD did actually make an RX 570 and RX580 in MXM formats, but they were never used in consumer laptops as such... RX 570 for mobile was announced a while back, but I hadn't seen any real laptops using it.

So, it wouldn't surprise me if AMD did actually make the V56 for MXM, its just that both Asus and Acer chose not to use MXM versions of those GPU's and made a custom version that's integrated into the motherboard.
I doubt AMD would have been part of that particular process (in whether the GPU would be MXM or integrated on the motherboard)... I think its the OEM's that make the final decision on whether to make a GPU integrated or MXM.

I very much doubt that the case video card market segment is not important to AMD.
Its just that before in the past, OEM's tended to shun AMD out of the market because Intel paid them hefty sums to use Intel hw... so if OEM's ended up using AMD, they would have crippled those laptops and priced them well outside what they should be priced (nothing to do with AMD as such).

 

I want Navi and Ryzen 2 in a laptop NOW.

I was thinking of getting an AMP just for Navi but then thats just me trying to make use of my R3 more than I am now (which isnt much atm). Became more of a substitute machine for when I am working on my Ranger.