Two AMD Radeon Navi graphics cards have made a sudden appearance on 3DMark and AOTS benchmarks. The Navi based GPU variants were found by TUM_APISAK and it looks like we also have some early specifications for what look to be engineering samples running in test labs.
AMD Radeon Navi GPUs Appear on 3DMark and AOTS Benchmarks Along With Early Specifications
The two AMD Navi GPU variants are not the same since they have a different device id. The variant which has the specifications featured on 3DMark is the '731F: C1' and it comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and 8 GB of memory that is clocked in at 1250 MHz. Now what is interesting about this memory clock is that if we speculate that it's GDDR5 based, then that would translate to 5 GHz which is quite low for a 256-bit variant that this card seems to be.
This is where I am inclined to believe that the card is actually using the GDDR6 memory interface with an effective clock speed of 10 GHz, which is more likely. This would give the card a total of 320 GB/s bandwidth which is higher than AMD's current mainstream flagship, the RX 590, that features 256 GB/s of bandwidth. No other details for this GPU are mentioned and neither is the performance but one thing is clear that this is a very early sample and like all other AMD GPUs we have seen in the past, the final GPU clocks would be higher than 1 GHz.
The other AMD Radeon Navi variant is the '7310:00' and this variant has no specs mentioned right now but it was spotted in the AOTS benchmark. The same variant also appeared in GFXbench few months back and scored 1520 Frames (23.6 FPS) in the Aztec Ruins High Tier benchmark section and 3404 frames or 54.9 FPS in the Manhattan benchmark section.
Now if we compare the scores to the competition, we will note that the Manhattan benchmark hits a 60 FPS limit on all cards and even the older GTX 960 which the AMD Navi variant is unable to do so making it seem like a low-end part. The card also has lower performance in the Aztec Ruins benchmark, but we can still consider this a very early sample test and probably an unoptimized driver to go along with it. Following are some graphics performance comparisons for this specific Navi variant against other cards:
AMD Radeon Navi Graphics Cards - Here's What To Expect
We know a few tidbits about the features the AMD Navi GPUs will support such as ray tracing which was recently confirmed to be a highlight on the next-gen Sony and Microsoft consoles which are utilizing AMD Navi 10 GPUs and Zen 2 based Ryzen CPUs. There was also talk about Variable Rate Shading being introduced on Navi GPUs as a bid by AMD to more modernize their Radeon graphics card for the mainstream market.
Navi would possibly be the last GPU architecture based on AMD's GCN (Graphics Core Next) DNA. It was confirmed through AMD's Linux driver that Navi is indeed based on GCN and has the latest GFX1010 codename while Vega was termed as GFX900. There will be some major improvements made on the Navi architecture in terms of IPC. Also, 7nm efficiency will be a showcase of the new cards, providing more drastic results compared to the Radeon VII which was also 7nm based, but was simply a die shrunk Vega 10 GPU (Vega 20).
We have already seen a leaked PCB shot for an upcoming Navi based GPU with GDDR6 memory and some rumored specifications which I have listed down below but one thing is for sure, Navi based Radeon GPUs will replace the existing mainstream cards while the Radeon VII will continue serving the enthusiast market as AMD's flagship until a high-end Navi card is introduced which is currently rumored for sometime in 2020.
Alleged AMD Radeon RX 3000 Series Specifications
| Graphics Card | GPU | Compute Units | VRAM | TDP | Performance Class (Competition) | Price (RUMORED) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RX 3090 XT | Navi 20 | 64 | - | 225W | Radeon VII + 10% | $500 US |
| RX 3090 | Navi 20 | 60 | - | 180W | ~Radeon VII | $430 US |
| RX 3080 XT | Navi 10 | 56 | - | 190W | ~RTX 2070 | $330 US |
| RX 3080 | Navi 10 | 52 | 8GB GDDR6 | 175W | Vega 64 +10% | $280 US |
| RX 3070 XT | Navi 10 | 48 | - | 160W | Vega 64 | $250 US |
| RX 3070 | Navi 12 | 40 | 8GB GDDR6 | 130W | Vega 56 | $200 US |
| RX 3060 | Navi 12 | 32 | 4GB GDDR6 | 75W | RX 580 | $140 US |
