AMD leak provides a glimpse of other incoming RDNA 3 GPUs – but don’t get carried away
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AMD’s incoming Navi 32 and 33 graphics cards have spilled some specs, but as always with the rumor mill, take these claims with a whole heap of salt.
Navi 31 is the flagship GPU that the RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX will be built around – the first RDNA 3 graphics cards to hit shelves next month – and Navi 32 and 33 will be the two GPUs below that, although we don’t I don’t yet know what models they’ll power (or when they’ll launch).
What we do know now, according to leaker @Kepler_L2 on Twitter as Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab) reports, the supposed core counts of these GPUs are as discovered through AMD’s ROCm software (on Github).
Based on these findings, Navi 32 will have 60 compute units (CUs), equating to 3,840 stream processors (cores), while Navi 33 will have 32 CUs or 2,048 stream processors (that is the maximum configuration – there will also be variants with cut – down amounts of cores, as always).
Of course, it’s helpful to put that in perspective, and we can do that by comparing to the full-fledged RDNA 3 flagship GPU, where Navi 31 offers 96 CUs or 6,144 stream processors.
Analysis: Let’s be careful here
At this point, it’s tempting to compare those core numbers and roughly work out how relatively powerful AMD’s second and third-tier GPUs will compare to the top-of-the-range Navi 31. And a quick bit of math indicates that Navi 32 is just under two-thirds of the number of cores as the flagship GPU, but relative performance is much more than that sheer number of cores.
It all depends on the other specs AMD is working with for Navi 32 (and 33), such as clock speeds (base and boost), as well as considerations such as memory speed and bandwidth. All of these factors come together in a complex equation when it comes to the kind of relative frame rates you can expect from the different RDNA 3 models.
All this is to say that we certainly can’t yet draw any conclusions about how this might reflect on the performance levels of Navi 32 and 33, and what’s more, we don’t even know how powerful Navi 31 is yet. (All we have to do is AMD’s handpicked launch benchmarks which will of course show it in the best light – all hardware makers do this, of course).
Overall, there’s a hint of disappointment in terms of the online response to this leak, but we’ll really have to wait and see how these GPUs develop – or at least until we get more spills and rumors that don’t just support the alleged core count , but also gives more information about other specifications. Of course, as always, pricing will also be a key factor.