AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 rumor: 40-50% faster than GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

The spotlight has been on NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPU architecture and the upcoming GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards for a while now... so it's now time for AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 architecture to enjoy that light.

A new rumor for Big Navi is teasing some truly huge performance, with YouTuber Moore's Law Is Dead saying that AMD's flagship RDNA 2-based graphics card will be 40-50% faster than NVIDIA's current flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.

Big Navi being 40-50% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti is a huge, huge deal.

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But it's also not the first time we've heard that Big Navi would be twice as fast as the Navi 10-powered Radeon RX 5700 XT. In those rumors, we heard about 80 compute units, 5120 stream processors, and 17.5 TFLOPs of compute performance.

The leak says that AMD will be using 72 SMs with "two clusters of 36 CUs in each", with an unknown amount of GDDR6 on a 384-bit memory bus. The GPU has a game clock of 2.05GHz and boost clock of 2.15GHz in its current form.

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Big Navi being this fast means AMD has caught up to NVIDIA in a big, big freaking way. It also means that the previous leaks of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 being about as fast as the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti that much more true.

If Big Navi is indeed this fast, it'll be the biggest shake up in the GPU industry in almost forever.

Lisa Su and the re-focused team at AMD and Radeon are ready to take this battle right to NVIDIA's door it seems, but don't think NVIDIA is going to take this lying down.

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Whatever NVIDIA has cooking with Ampere is going to be big, but from what I'm seeing we're going to see a huge shake up at the sub $600 range. If I can buy a next-gen PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X console with a 16-thread AMD processor, RDNA 2-based GPU, and super-fast GDDR6 for less than $600 -- a graphics card on its own for $600 better be freaking good.

But this means the current flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- which launched starting at $999, will be dethroned by cards that are sold for half as much.

If you've got a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, then its value is going to diminish quite quickly if these new rumors are true (and I really think we're getting very close to what we're going to see) then we're in for a wild ride at sub $600 graphics cards.

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What about above $600 and up to the $1000-$1200 mark where the current RTX 2080 Ti falls now? Well, maybe that's what all the fuss about the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3090 ULTRA or whatever-the-hell it ends up getting called is what NVIDIA has waiting in the wings.

Maybe we'll see a limited launch of some of the best cards we've ever seen, while NVIDIA prepares an even higher-end GeForce RTX 3000 series card with the return of the ULTRA moniker -- something I'm trying to turn into a thing. So, send me your positive vibes, peeps.

Moore's Law Is Dead's new video also suggests that AMD naming Navi 2X and Navi 3X was no mistake, as Lisa is pushing for a 2X upgrade in performance over the Navi 10-based Radeon RX 5700 XT. Navi 3X means we'll be seeing 3X the performance of Navi 10 which would be quite teh lofty goal for AMD.

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If you look at how they've been going from stride to stride with Zen and their phenomenally successful (game-changing and Intel crushing) Ryzen 3000 series processors... then imagine that type of success and nailing down of everything Radeon, with the next-gen RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 architectures.

Seriously, I'm nerding out at how good the next few years are going to be for the graphics card market. Literally the most exciting time in graphics card history is right in front of us.

More reading on Big Navi / RDNA 2X:

• AMD Navi 31 spotted: is this Bigger Navi? GeForce RTX 3090 destroyer?!
• AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT: Big Navi costs $999 in these leaked slides
• AMD updates the Radeon logo, prepares for launch of RDNA 2 'Big Navi'
• AMD reitrerates Big Navi is coming to PC gamers in 'late 2020'
• AMD's new 'Sienna Cichlid' GPU turns up, could be Big Navi GPU
• AMD and NVIDIA to both launch next-gen GPUs in September 2020
• AMD: no blower reference fans for next-gen Radeon graphics cards
• AMD's new RDNA 2 graphics cards should beat NVIDIA, until Ampere
• AMD Big Navi specs: 5120 cores, 24GB HBM2e at 2TB/sec memory bandwidth
• AMD's new Korean RRA certification listing: our new Big Navi tease?
• Intel Xe GPU: up to 500W teased, beats Big Navi and GeForce RTX 3080?
• AMD rumored to announce Big Navi at Financial Analyst Day on March 5
• AMD: Big Navi GPU to disrupt 4K gaming like Ryzen CPUs did to Intel
• AMD Big Navi GPU: RTX 2080 Ti killer, but will lose to RTX 3080
• AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirms we'll see 'Big Navi' in 2020
• AMD Radeon RX 5950 XT spotted, again: is this Big Navi?
• AMD Radeon GPU appears, beats GeForce RTX 2080 Ti by 17%
• AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su: high-end GPU market is 'very important to us'