AMD: Big Navi GPU to disrupt 4K gaming like Ryzen CPUs did to Intel

AMD will be making big waves in 2020 with its 'Big Navi' GPU, something that is rumored to have more power than NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card and add hardware ray tracing support, too.

But now AMD has provided some more details on Big Navi, where during the Radeon RX 5600 XT press briefing, AMD's Radeon Product Management Lead, Mithun Chandrasekhar talked about Big Navi. Chandrasekhar said: "With the Radeon 5000-series we are essentially covering 90-something-percent of the total PC gamers today".

He added: "And so that's the reason why no 4K right now, it's because the vast majority of them are at 1440p and 1080p. That doesn't mean a 4K-capable GPU isn't coming, it is coming, but for here and now we want to focus on the vast majority of gamers. Similar to Ryzen. All of us need a thriving Radeon GPU ecosystem. So, are we going after 4K, and going to similarly disrupt 4K? Absolutely, you can count on that. But that's all I can say right now".

AMD Radeon RX 5950 XT "Big Navi" Specs So Far

• Optimized 7nm+ node
• RDNA2 architecture
• 80 compute units
• 5120 stream processors
• 17.5 TFLOPs compute performance
• Hardware ray tracing support
• GDDR6 / HBM2 options

We've been hearing a bunch of rumors about AMD's upcoming Big Navi GPU, with my own industry sources saying it'll come knocking down NVIDIA's door for 4K gaming. The latest rumors on the card have Big Navi arriving as the purported Radeon RX 5950 XT graphics card as the flagship Big Navi design, but we should also see the Radeon RX 5800, Radeon RX 5800 XT, and Radeon 5950.

With 80 compute units and 5120 stream processors, that represents double the Navi goodness of the Radeon RX 5700 XT which would make for quite a monster. But what about power consumption? The Radeon RX 5700 XT has a 225W TDP, meaning the Radeon RX 5950 XT would be quite a power hungry monster.

I've talked with industry sources over the last couple of weeks and was told AMD had not squeezed as much efficiency out of the new 7nm+ node as they hoped so this will cause some issues with power consumption.

Another issue is NVIDIA is preparing its next-gen Ampere GPU architecture with the GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards, where we've already been teased with specs on the purported GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards. These cards should knock the socks off of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- and with that, even AMD's new Big Navi / Radeon RX 5950 XT graphics card.

AMD will still heavily disrupt the 4K gaming market with Big Navi enough, with NVIDIA finally getting some competition at the higher-end level of the graphics card market.