Will RDNA 3 be PCIe 5?

With the launch on the horizon, you may have a few questions about the upcoming RDNA 3 cards

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The year 2020 was an exciting one for consoles and PCs alike. We received the eagerly anticipated next-gen consoles from Xbox and Sony in addition to brand-new CPU and GPU releases from AMD and NVIDIA.

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These versions saw considerable performance increases over their predecessors, mainly because TSMC and Samsung switched to a smaller (7nm) manufacturing process. AMD intends to base its RDNA 3 and Zen 4 architecture on the TSMC-developed 5nm technology. As a result, we have high hopes for increased performance.

We hope a new generation of RDNA architecture will be produced using TSMC’s 5nm production technology. The total number of streaming processors is 12288 with 6 Shader Engines and just 48 WGPs, which is significantly fewer than what was previously mentioned in leaks.

Nevertheless, that is twice as many cores as the RX 6900 XT (5120 SPs). A few reports have been making the rounds that Navi 31 may feature a TDP of 450W, but nothing has been proven.

According to Robert Hallock, the PCIe version is much less significant for GPUs than for storage, which is why AMD is providing PCIe 5 with a lot of options depending on the chipset.

All chipset versions include two slots, but PCIe 5 is not required for GPUs unless they are extremely expensive. Due to the ability to transmit data seamlessly, DirectStorage games will feature far more detailed worlds and hence need much more bandwidth.

The performance will be more negatively impacted because they will use it during gaming rather than just when a level is loaded. However, the GPU won’t be the bottleneck (for x16 cards) with PCIe 4.0 because PCIe 5.0 x4 has the same bandwidth as PCIe 3.0 x16.

On November 3, 2022, AMD is anticipated to webcast the introduction of at least some of its RDNA 3 graphic cards. Although there is little information available yet, recent leaks and reports indicate that the business will reveal three GPUs at its event.

Will RDNA 3 have ray tracing? Will it be better

There is no doubt that upcoming AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards will perform better than its current generation Radeon equivalents. Still, team red keeps quiet about how much of an upgrade we can anticipate.

These new RDNA 3 architecture-based graphics cards may have more than twice the ray tracing performance of their forerunners. According to trustworthy hardware leaker Greymon55, the new architecture should also increase frame rates in standard rasterization by a factor of “2X.”

Regardless of whether these claims are in comparison to the Radeon 6950 XT or 6900 XT, they represent a remarkable potential improvement. The Nvidia RTX 4000 series is where this potential RDNA 3 flagship will shine the brightest.

Although the purpose of these “increased ray tracing capabilities” is unknown, it should be clear that the next-generation AMD RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs will have more than enough ray tracing performance and new (and improved) features. NVIDIA is the undisputed leader in GPU ray tracing. Thus AMD will be better able to fight against it, but RDNA 3 won’t be playing around.

It will take something exceptional to stop the Lovelace card’s “absurd frame rates,” as we wrote in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 review. Compared to Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR 2.0 did help level the playing field, but team green’s “Frame Generation” function could be too challenging to overcome.

We might be in for a royal brawl at the AMD RDNA 3 unveiling when two Radeon GPUs compete against the RTX 4000, especially since the Nvidia RTX 4080 will be unveiled in November. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, which costs just under $700, is the most affordable graphics card ever right now if you need one for your computer.

“RDNA 3 is also the first GPU architecture that will leverage the enhanced 5nm process and advanced chip technology. Another innovation includes architected units with enhanced ray-tracing capabilities and an optimized graphics pipeline with even faster clock speeds and improved power efficiency,” said David Wang, AMD’s SVP of Engineering at Radeon Technologies Group.

Will RDNA 3 have AV1 encoding?

According to Linux driver patches supplied by AMD and found by @Kepler_L2 on Twitter, AMD’s RDNA 3-based GPUs with VCN 4.x engines support hardware AV1 encoding. It was incorrectly stated previously that AMD’s future Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs did not support AV1 encoding based on Linux patches.

In order to continue enabling AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs, the firm has provided a number of patches for Linux that offer information about the company’s forthcoming Video Codec Next version 4.x video engines.

According to the data we have, VCN 4.x supports the decoding of almost all contemporary codecs. In addition to AV1, H.264, and H.265 encoding, AMD’s VCN 4.0 engine looks to handle H.264/MPEG 4 AVC, H.265, VP9, AV1, and JPEG decoding.

VCN does not yet appear to allow decoding or encoding of H.266/VVC (versatile video coding). When the right content becomes available, VVC, a next-generation codec, will likely be necessary for 2023 or 2024, and AV1, a current-generation codec, will likely continue to grow in usage.

Although some consumers and businesses would prefer to have it now in order to encode or transcode video, later this year should be sufficient.

The only chips that currently support AV1 decoding and encoding are Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPUs. Although it hasn’t been verified yet, we anticipate Nvidia’s future Ada architecture may also enable AV1 encoding.

While AMD’s RDNA 3 won’t be available in the market until later this year, if AMD’s VCN 4.x does actually support AV1 encoding, all three leading GPU manufacturers will provide hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding and decoding.

Speaking of VCN 4.0, even the present VCN 3. x engine fully supports both H.264 and H.265 encoding and decoding for H.264/MPEG4 AVC, H.265, VP9, AV1, and JPEG. The main advancement in VCN 4.0 over 3.x will be hardware-accelerated AV1 encode/decode functionality, barring further developments.