AMD is planning to upgrade its RX 6000 series

Feb 5, 2022 - 16:08
 19
AMD is planning to upgrade its RX 6000 series

According to numerous reports, including Videocardz.com, AMD is planning to upgrade its RX 6000 graphics card series this summer, just a few months before the arrival of the all-new generation GPU RX 7000.

At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive; GDDR6 memory (18GB/s instead of 16GB/s). This is a little improvement that AMD could easily overlook, so what could be the reasons for it?

The first guide focuses on the freshly released GPU RX 6500 XT.

Although it is a low-end model, AMD has already outfitted it with faster 18Gb / s memory, whilst higher models rely on 16Gb / s modules. This appears to be counterproductive since AMD could save money on this component as well, but the option implies that faster memory is currently more affordable or cheaper than slower modules.

Memory producers are accustomed to steadily improving their products, bringing speedier items to market, and withdrawing older ones from the market. Alternatively, as production capacities increase, quicker memory becomes more affordable.

AMD can also look forward.

It is customary for chip manufacturers like AMD or Nvidia to purchase GDDR memories for their partners and offer them all together as a package. AMD may be concerned about the decreasing supply of 16Gb / s processors, but it does not want to risk the manufacture of RX 6000 Series GPUs.

This is because it will be incredibly beneficial for the corporation, particularly in today's availability situation, to maintain the old generation of cards in production at the 7nm production process while also producing the RX 7000 series at the 5nm (or 6nm) production process.

As a result, production capacity for the two generations will not be lost, and AMD will make more chips.

If the RX 6000 series is just refreshed with new memories (and renamed RX 6X50), the new graphics should be available around June or July. Unfortunately, if nothing changes on the chips themselves, which are the main source of the scarcity, a refresh will not enhance supply considerably.

It will also most likely not provide a big gain in performance, which will occur in the autumn with the RDNA 3 chip architecture, and Nvidia will also bring its trump cards.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 graphics card 

Radeon RX 6400Radeon RX 6500 XTRadeon RX 6600Radeon RX 6600 XTRadeon RX 6700 XT
Chip, architectureNavi 24 XL, RDNA 2Navi 24 XT, RDNA 2Navi 23 XL, RDNA 2Navi 23 XT, RDNA 2Navi 22 XT, RDNA 2
Number of transistors?5.4 billion11.1 billion11.1 billion17.2 billion
Production6 nm6 nm7 nm7 nm7 nm
Stream processors76810241 7922 0482 560
Compute Unit (CU)1216283240
ROPs?32646464
Game frequency?2 685 MHz2,044 MHz2 359 MHz2 424 MHz
Boost frequency?2 825 MHz2 491 MHz2 589 MHz2 581 MHz
Capacity and memory4 GB GDDR64 GB GDDR68 GB GDDR68 GB GDDR612 GB GDDR6
Memory bus width64bit64bit128bit128bit192bit
infinity Cache16 MB16 MB32 MB32 MB96 MB
Computing power (FP32)?5.79 TFLOPS7.3 TFLOPS8
TFLOPS
11.8
TFLOPS
TDP53 W107/120 W132 W160 W230 W