AMD Announces Radeon RX 5600 Series: A Lighter Navi To Rule 1080p Gaming
by Ryan Smith on January 6, 2020 5:46 PM ESTRadeon RX 5600 For OEMs, & Radeon RX5600M For Mobile
While the biggest part of today’s Radeon RX 5600 series launch is the retail desktop for obvious reasons, this is not the only market AMD will be addressing. The company believes they have a winning part in the works, and to that end they are going to extend the Radeon RX 5600 series over the entire market, covering OEM desktop and mobile as well.
Starting things off for the OEM desktop side, AMD will also be releasing the Radeon RX 5600 for that market. Similar to what we saw with the OEM-only Radeon RX 5500, the Radeon RX 5600 is a similar, but slightly slower part. The big difference here is that while clockspeeds and TBPs remain unchanged, these OEM parts will only ship with 32 CUs enabled instead of 36 CUs enabled.
| AMD Radeon RX OEM Specification Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon RX 5600 (OEM) | AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT | AMD Radeon RX 5500 (OEM) | AMD Radeon RX 5700 | |||
| CUs | 32 (2048 SPs) |
36 (2304 SPs) |
22 (1408 SPs) |
36 (2304 SPs) |
||
| Texture Units | 128 | 144 | 88 | 144 | ||
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 32 | 64 | ||
| Base Clock | 1265MHz? | 1265MHz? | ? | 1465MHz | ||
| Game Clock | 1375MHz | 1375MHz | <=1670MHz | 1625MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1560MHz | 1560MHz | <=1845MHz | 1725MHz | ||
| Throughput (FP32) | 6.4 TFLOPs | 7.2 TFLOPs | <=5.2 TFLOPs | 7.95 TFLOPs | ||
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps GDDR6 | 12 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 192-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit | ||
| VRAM | 6GB | 6GB | 4GB/8GB | 8GB | ||
| Transistor Count | 10.3B | 10.3B | 6.4B | 10.3B | ||
| Typical Board Power | 150W | 150W | 150W | 180W | ||
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | ||
| Architecture | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | ||
| GPU | Navi 10 | Navi 10 | Navi 14 | Navi 10 | ||
| Launch Date | 01/21/2020 | 01/21/2020 | Q4 2019 | 07/07/2019 | ||
| Launch Price | N/A | $279 | N/A | $349 | ||
On paper, this gives the Radeon RX 5600 somewhere around 90% of the retail Radeon RX 5600 XT’s performance. The precise performance gap will vary with games and whether they’re compute/shader bound or pixel/bandwidth bound, but again, it’s a ballpark figure.
Meanwhile in the mobile space, the 5600 series will be rounded out by the Radeon RX 5600M. Unlike the OEM desktop card, AMD isn’t holding back any punches here, and the 5600M will ship with the same 36 CUs as the retail card.
| AMD Radeon RX Series Mobile Specification Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon RX 5600M | AMD Radeon RX 5500M | AMD Radeon Vega Pro 20 | AMD Radeon RX 560X | |||
| CUs | 36 | 22 | 20 | 14/16 | ||
| Texture Units | 144 | 88 | 80 | 64 | ||
| ROPs | 64 | 32 | 32 | 16 | ||
| Game Clock | <=1375MHz | <=1448MHz | N/A | N/A | ||
| Boost Clock | <=1560MHz | <=1645MHz | 1300MHz | 1275MHz | ||
| Throughput (FP32) | <= 7.2 TFLOPs | <=4.6 TFLOPs | 3.3 TFLOPs | 2.6 TFLOPs | ||
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | 1.5 Gbps HBM2 | 7 Gbps GDDR5 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 192-bit | 128-bit | 1024-bit | 128-bit | ||
| Max VRAM | 6GB | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB | ||
| Typical Board Power | N/A (Min: 60W) | 85W | ? | ? | ||
| Architecture | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | Vega (GCN 5) |
GCN 4 | ||
| GPU | Navi 10 | Navi 14 | Vega 12 | Polaris 11 | ||
| Launch Date | 01/21/2020 | 10/2019 | 10/2018 | 04/2018 | ||
But, like AMDs other Navi mobile parts, the clockspeeds and TDPs are up to the OEMs. So OEMs will be free to dial them up and down (to a degree) to hit the specific performance/power consumption they’re looking for in a laptop. Consequently, AMD doesn’t have a maximum TBP here, but they have set a minimum: 60 Watts. Radeon RX 5600M will not be a light chip.
It won’t be a small chip either, which is what makes this announcement particularly interesting. Since this is all based on Navi 10, any OEM using the RX 5600M will have to accommodate the moderately sized chip and its accompanying 6 GDDR6 chips. This shouldn’t be a challenge for OEMs, who already regularly include NVIDIA’s even larger chips, but to date AMD’s laptop wins have almost exclusively been their mobile-focused GPUs like Polaris 11 and Navi 14, which are available in low z-height packages. So the RX 5600M will require a greater commitment from laptop partners than what we’ve seen in the past, both with respect to power/cooling as well as sheer board space.
The OEM Radeon RX 5600 and the Radeon RX 5600M should be available soon. And with CES in full swing, there shouldn’t be any shortage of partners announcing systems with the new video cards over the next couple of days.
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Kangal - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
Maybe not.The price will likely be dropped slightly or remain the same, but the performance is expected to increase substantially. This means "performance:price" factor will go up, ie, better value for consumers. I don't expect many improvements on the architecture, it will mostly come from the lithography improvements, but they'll definitely be tweaking their Extra Cores (Ray-Tracing, NPU, etc).
Here's why the price won't be a factor:
History! AMD really dropped the ball with the RX 480 launch, which initially wasn't competitive (enough) against the GTX 1060. They were floundering since the launch of the R9 290, so there was big expectations which they could not fulfil. And since then the Vega cards and Polaris refresh have really hurt them and the industry. The Radeon division was basically saved by the cryptocurrency boom from a few years ago. Yet, it gave Nvidia basically several generations of cards with practically no competition. And Nvidia was wise to capitalise on that opportunity by sidelining AMD from the race by using "Ray Tracing" to differentiate themselves. Of course this was a risk, and it didn't entirely pan out.
Despite that, the gamble Nvidia took didn't really hurt them. However, they did suffer lower revenue and profits since the release of RTX cards. So they slightly came back to value with the "Super Turing" variants. Honestly, I think this is where Nvidia will stay since testing the market. And their only reason to reduce pricing would be competition. The only reason for increasing price would be Time and Inflation.
Firstly, I don't think Intel is going to make anything substantial in the GPU market. It's a tough market and they aren't prepared for it. And they're too pre-occupied doing damage control on their reputation, and trying to fix their fab process.
Secondly, I don't think AMD will do "Proper Ray Tracing" soon. At best they'll nearly catch up to the RTX 2060, and at worst Nvidia will actually mature their technology in both hardware and software, and have it out in actual games, and ALL their cards will support it.
Thirdly, AMD is now always behind in hardware and software, compared to Nvidia. Sometimes it is a little, but sometimes it is by a lot. It all comes down to Nvidia having more workers and better workers, basically flexing their R&D division. AMD cannot match them yet, but they will catch up in two years time, as their success from Ryzen and Consoles pay dividends. So we can expect Navi+ to be mostly a dud, but their follow-up (or the one after) should actually be a substantial improvement even if it's not too impressive on a 5nm lithography. They'll do it by sheer increased R&D and development into software and architecture. Not sure what they'll call it: Alpha, Taurus, Orion, Sirius, Antares, Rigel, Canopus....? But I've no doubt it's coming, this isn't the ancient Radeon company, nor is it the olde AMD company, this is the new "Lisa Su" AMD company.
Korguz - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
Kangal for the most part.. nvidia priced them selves out of reach for most people with the 20 series cards.. most of the people i know.. wont even look at those cards cause of the prices.. they cant justify the prices compared to what they have.. to what they would need to spend.. and.. paying their bills.. feeding their families is more important.. but the common thing seems to be.. i dont have any games that support ray tracing or will be getting any that do.. so.. ill skip this round.. for me.. my strix 1060 is fine for what i play.. so unless nvidia drops their prices or amd releases something that is as fast for less.. meh...Spunjji - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
I'm genuinely excited (from a tech perspective) to see what Nvidia do at 7nm.I'm also painfully aware that it'll be entirely theoretical for me, as Nvidia haven't given a rat's ass about value for money since Maxwell. As a result, I'm still running a GTX 980M...
maroon1 - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
my old laptop has 970M and the new one is RTX 2060 (not QMAX)Day and night difference between the two
I don't now know how much upgrade you get from 980M, but from 970M and lower, Turing is huge upgrade
sing_electric - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Even if they did, chances are overwhelming it'll be PCIe 4.0 - same as the 5500 - so if/when you get a compatible platform, it'll have the same bandwidth as a x16 PCIe 3.0 slot. (Though I doubt they'd do that - the 5600 looks different enough from the 5700 that I don't think they need to be OVERLY worried about people stepping back.)Spunjji - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
The RX 5500 isn't "gimped" by that interface. You'd get no more performance from more lanes.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Ahem.https://www.neowin.net/news/pcie-30-could-be-cripp...
oin bandwidth heavy games, that x8 interface makes a very big differnece. The 5500 line is gimped on non AMD platforms.
Korguz - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
um.... try non pcie 4 platforms...PVG - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
How well does the 12Gbps GDDR6 overclock?If it can reach ~14Gbps easily enough, this card can become a little monster...
neblogai - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Probably depends on the VRAM chips, but for nVidia cards like the 1660S- I've seen memory to overclock that much and more, and not be limited to 12Gbps.