AMD has officially announced their Radeon RX 5700 series which includes the Radeon RX 5700 XT and the Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards. The new graphics card features AMD's next-gen Navi GPU which is based on a 7nm process node and features the RDNA core architecture to replace AMD's GCN architecture which was launched back in 2011.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series Official: RX 5700 XT Faster Than RTX 2070 For $449 US, RX 5700 Faster Than RTX 2060 For $379 US
AMD has officially lifted the lid off of the specifications and performance numbers of their latest Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards. The Radeon RX 5700 XT will be the fastest Navi based card while the Radeon RX 5700 will offer competitive performance for a lower price point. Both cards are based on the same architecture and same chip design, just that the RX 5700 is slightly cut-off when we compare their GPU configuration. The Navi based Radeon RX 5700 series is also the first graphics lineup to feature PCIe 4.0 support which offers twice the bandwidth compared to PCIe 3.0.
Before going in the specifications of each card, we should take a look at the design of the Radeon RX 5700 XT itself which is going to feature a more premium look compared to its non-XT brother. The reference variant will feature an all aluminum alloy shroud and backplate. Inside the card is an enhanced vapor chamber which is cooled off by a blower fan. The base of the vapor chamber makes use of graphite thermal interface material which is similar to the pads used on the Radeon VII graphics card. The PCB of the card offers a 7 phase digital VRM which AMD says is designed for overclocking.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT Official Design:
Ok, so let's take a quick look at the specifications and then move on to the performance numbers.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT Official Specifications
Starting with the specifications, the Radeon RX 5700 XT comes with 40 compute units in total and since AMD has already confirmed that the Compute unit design still features 64 stream processors, we will be getting 2560 stream processors in total. The AMD Navi GPU featured on the Radeon RX 5700 series comes with 160 Texture Mapping Units and 64 Raster Operation units.
The chip itself is clocked at 1605 MHz base clock but includes two additional clock speeds, a boost clock, and a game clock. The boost clock is rated at 1905 MHz while the game clock is rated at 1755 MHz. What I can make of the differences from these two is that the boost is the maximum speed the reference card would be able to hit, but the average clock speeds while gaming is the ‘game clock’ itself.
With the said boost clock, AMD expects a maximum of 9.75 TFLOPs of single-precision Compute from the Radeon RX 5700 XT. The card also features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory which runs across a 256-bit wide bus interface. AMD will be using the latest 14 Gbps memory dies which put them on par with the Turing TU104 cards that offer bandwidth of up to 448 GB/s. The card also features two 8 pin connectors and has a total board power or TBP of 225W. The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT will officially cost $449 US.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 Official Specifications
The second card is the Radeon RX 5700 based on the Navi Pro GPU. The reason we are not getting a Radeon RX 5700 Pro naming scheme is that it would be harder to differentiate that with AMD's own pro series cards which are aimed at content creators and workstation PCs.
This card has 2304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs. The clocks are maintained at 1465 MHz base, 1725 MHz boost clock and 1625 MHz game clock. At peak boost clocks, the card will be able to deliver 7.95 TFLOPs of Compute performance. The card features an 8+6 pin connector config & has a rated TBP of 180W. The AMD Radeon RX 5700 would officially cost $379 US.
Now based on the TBP numbers, this card should be put against the RTX 2070 which is a 175W TBP graphics card. It will be interesting to compare both cards in terms of efficiency since the NVIDIA Turing cards are based on 12nm FinFET while AMD is using the latest 7nm process node.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition Official Specifications
In addition to the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700, AMD is also launching a 50th Anniversary Edition variant of their Radeon RX 5700 XT featuring a black and gold shroud with frequencies of 1680 MHz base clock, 1830 MHz game clock and boost clocks of up to 1980 MHz. This variant would deliver a total Compute power of 10.14 TFLOPs and should be around 5-10% faster than the Radeon RX 5700 XT. This variant will be available for a price of $499 US. The card will be rated at a 235W TBP.
AMD Radeon RX 5000 '7nm Navi RDNA' GPU Lineup Specs:
| Graphics Card | Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary | Radeon RX 5700 XT | Radeon RX 5700 | Radeon RX 5600 XT | Radeon RX 5500 XT | Radeon RX 5300 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Architecture | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) | 7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen) |
| Stream Processors | 2560 SPs | 2560 SPs | 2304 SPs | 2304 SPs | 1408 SPs | 1408 SPs |
| TMUs / ROPs | 160 / 64 | 160 / 64 | 144 / 64 | 144 / 64 | 88 / 32 | 88 / 32 |
| Base Clock | 1680 MHz | 1605 MHz | 1465 MHz | 1130 MHz | 1670 MHz | TBD |
| Boost Clock | 1980 MHz | 1905 MHz | 1725 MHz | 1560 MHz | 1845 MHz | 1645 MHz |
| Game Clock | 1830 MHz | 1755 MHz | 1625 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1717 MHz | 1448 MHz |
| Compute Power | 10.14 TFLOPs | 9.75 TFLOPs | 7.95 TFLOPs | 7.19 TFLOPs | 5.19 TFLOPs | 4.63 TFLOPs |
| VRAM | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 6 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 4 GB GDDR6 | 3 GB GDDR6 |
| Bus Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 96-bit |
| Bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 224 GB/s | 168 GB/s |
| TBP | 235W | 225W | 180W | 150W | 130W | 100W |
| Price | $449 US | $399 US | $349 US | $279 US | $169 US (4 GB) $199 US (8 GB) | $129 US? |
| Launch | 7th July 2019 | 7th July 2019 | 7th July 2019 | 21st January, 2020 | 7th October 2019 | 28th August, 2020 |
Radeon RX 5700 "7nm Navi RDNA GPU" Feature Set and A Word on HW-Enabled Ray Tracing(Credits: Videocardz)
While we would share a few tidbits of the RDNA architecture itself below, there are also some highlights we should mention for the Navi GPU. According to AMD themselves, the Navi 10 GPU will be 14% faster at the same power and should consume 23% lower power at the same clock speeds as Vega 64 GPU. The AMD Navi GPU has a die size of 251mm2 and delivers 2.3x perf per area over Vega 64.
Also, when it comes to ray tracing, AMD is indeed developing their own suite around it. According to their vision, current GCN and RDNA architecture will be able to perform ray tracing on shaders which will be used through ProRender for creators and Radeon Rays for developers. In next-gen RDNA which is supposed to launch in 2020 on 7nm+ node, AMD will be bringing hardware-enabled ray tracing with select lighting effects for real-time gaming. AMD will also enable full-scene ray tracing which would be leveraged through cloud computing.
Radeon Multimedia Engine – Seamless Streaming
- Improved Encoding (New HDR/WCG Encode HEVC)
- 8K Encode (HEVC & VP)
- 40% encoder speedups
Navi Stats
- 40 RDNA Compute Units
- 80 Scalar Processors
- 2560 Stream Processors
- 160 64b bilinear filter units
- Multilevel Cache
- 4MB L2, 512Kb L1
- 2x V$L0 Load Bandwidth
- DCC Everywhere
- Streamlined Graphics Engine
- Geometry Engine (4 Prisms Shader Out, 8 Prim Shader In)
- 64 Pixel Units
- 4 Asynchronous Compute Enginers
- Balanced Work Distribution & Redistribution
- Designed for higher frequencies at lower power
New Compute Unit Design
Great Compute Efficiency For Diverse Workloads
- 2x Instruction Rate (enabled by 2x Scalar Units and 2x Schedulers)
- Single Cycle Issue (enabled by Executing Wwave32 on SIMD32)
- Dual Mode Execution (Wave 32 and Wave 64 Modes Adapt for Workloads)
- Resource Pooling (2 CUs Coordinate as a Work Group Processor)
AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series Official Performance Numbers
AMD has also shared the official performance numbers for their Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards. Performance for both cards is shown at 1440p resolution in a range of titles and it looks like both, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards would be on average, 10% faster than their competitors. The Radeon RX 5700 XT is pitted against the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 and the Radeon RX 5700 is pitted against the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060.
RX 5700 XT Performance Numbers:
RX 5700 Performance Numbers:
Based on the prices, the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT sounds like a very decent competitor against the GeForce RTX 2070 which is $50 US more expensive while having the Radeon RX 5700 at $379 US makes it $20 US more expensive than the GeForce RTX 2060 while offering 10% better graphics performance.
It will be interesting to see the efficiency numbers of these cards against their Turing based NVIDIA GeForce competitors which do seem to have an architectural advantage as they also feature DLSS and RTX but for gamers looking for an option outside of just GeForce, AMD Navi is finally here.
