[OPINION] Navi, the rumors that could end the AMD Radeon division
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Rumors about the AMD Navi play against the company and the history of the last two years is quite negative.
I'm starting to get jaded, not to mention a thicker, more foul-sounding word about AMD Navi. I respect AMD and hopefully, for the good of all, they launch a product to the market that returns the company to the fight against NVIDIA. We need AMD fighting NVIDIA for price control and when Intel comes to the graphics market, we can have a blast. But right now, all the rumors that come out, damage the image of the company.
AMD Rumors Look Like April's Fools
I go back more than two years. Specifically, I'm going to CES 2017, where for the first time we saw the RX Vega 64 from Linus Tech Tips. Then things started to look bad, with the power connectors covered. We go a little further in time to the Capsaicin & Cream event, where Vega had to perform and it wasn't. We only saw Raja Koduri present a sad t-shirt with the Vega logo. In between the famous video of the drummer with references to NVIDIA, with a sign that said 'Poor Volta'. Reference that Vega would be better than Volta.
They are a series of antecedents that over time we see that they are absurd. Vega 64 was barely between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080, in most cases. But it is also that it had an extremely high consumption, making it uninteresting.
Moreover, I remember at that time, when mining was still on everyone's lips, there was talk of mining power. TweakTown spoke that the RX Vega 64 would offer between 75-100MH / s for mining Ethereum. Then they ended up being between 30-35MH / s with disproportionate energy consumption.
Years later we are in the same whirlwind of meaningless information. What if superior to the RTX 2070, what if superior to the RTX 2080, what if RayTracing or what if donkeys fly. Right now you can say anything about Navi, but with the precedents in hand, without the slightest sense.
Radeon VII is a very bad precedent
I think Navi will be quite a departure from Vega 20 (Radeon VII GPU) and that it will be a hybrid between GCN and a new GPU design. This will provide an improvement in performance and control of consumption.
I find the Radeon VII worth mentioning. This graphic is nothing more than a Radeon Instinct MI50 reconverted to the gaming market, what's more, they have the same heatsink. Something to note is that Vega 10 of 14nm lithography consumed less than Vega 20 of 7nm lithography. A factor that has more to do with GCN than with anything else. It has been seen with Polaris that GCN no longer gave more of itself and Vega ended up confirming it.
AMD needs a reinterpretation of its silicon design to maximize performance and be competitive in the market. There must be a balance between consumption-price-performance. Radeon VII consumes more than 400W, performs like a GTX 1080 and consumes like two GTX 1080Ti. But there is also the temperature factor, which is extremely high. Already in the review we found that when you launch a game, the fans start to snort like hell.
Creating false expectations is a bad idea
What is being done, in my view, to say the benefits of a graph about which we know nothing, is not good. A third misstep on the part of AMD, launching a product far inferior to the rumored, would be damaging to its image. We must emphasize that these rumors usually come from the company itself or its close environment.
A third setback in the graphics market, right now, could be the company's fall into hell. Radeon unfortunately hangs by a very fine thread. We have seen how Raja Koduri, Chris Hook and other engineers have gone to Intel. This is also indicative of Radeon problems. Even AMD makes distinctions in the processor and graphics division. We will all remember when AMD cut Radeon's budget for Ryzen development by 60%. Bet that went well, but that of those mud, this mud
Conclusion
Step to roll up more, since I think it is well understood. And to sum it up: if AMD keeps throwing false rumors about Navi's performance and then fails to deliver, it could be the ultimate lunge at a completely deficient AMD division.