AMD Navi has been out for nearly a year, but what about the 4K-ready Big Navi? Here’s everything we know about RDNA 2.
AMD Big Navi is out and unveiled in all its glory. Nvidia’s RTX 3000 GPUs deliver impressive performance, so graphics card enthusiasts have high expectations of AMD’s long-rumored Nvidia killer. Luckily, Team Red is now in the perfect position to take on Nvidia’s RTX 3080, RTX 3090 and RTX 3070 GPUs. With the AMD Big Navi, which runs RDNA 2 tech, AMD is coming out of its budget and mid-range shell and returning to the high end – something that CEO Lisa Su hinted herself in October 2020. And, offerings like the Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6800 and the mighty Radeon RX 6900 XT, are certainly surpassing expectations – even if they’re a little pricier than AMD’s normal price point. RDNA 2 is also the graphics architecture behind the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, so they’re giving us a good idea of what kind of performance those next-gen consoles will bring. That isn’t to say that AMD is now only focusing on the high-end market with its Big Navi cards. There are other more affordable options in the series as well, which could include the new Radeon RX 6000 GPU it’s getting ready to launch tomorrow. So, whether you’re looking for a big-budget purchase in the GPU market or need something more affordably priced, there’s certainly something for you in the AMD Big Navi series. It seems like AMD Big Navi release date rumors have been everywhere since the very beginning of time – or at least since Navi rumors first started appearing in late 2018. Initially, we had heard that Big Navi would be launching at Computex – but Computex didn’t even happen. Days after Nvidia’s announcement of the RTX 3080 however, AMD teased the launch of both its Zen 3 desktop processors and RDNA 2 graphics cards, with the latter expected to come in right before Halloween on October 28 at 12pm EST – just a couple weeks before the November 10 launch of the Xbox Series X that the graphics architecture will be powering. On the day, AMD announced that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT will launch on November 18. Meanwhile, the Radeon RX 6900 XT will arrive a little later on December 8. AMD has traditionally enjoyed a reputation for providing more affordable products than their competition. And to back this up, we’d like to point to the AMD Radeon VII. With this graphics card, AMD genuinely provided performance that was pretty close to what the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 provided at the time, while sitting with a price tag of $679 (about £540, AU$970), which was very close to the RTX 2080’s $699 (£649, AU$1,119) price tag at the time. Now, since launching its Navi lineup, AMD has put some price pressure on Nvidia’s mid-range lineup, most notably baiting Nvidia into lowering its prices on its Super cards at the last minute.
