AMD: RDNA 3 offers 50 percent improvement in performance per watt versus RDNA 2

AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture will appear this year with the arrival of Navi 3 GPUs and will offer a 50 percent improvement in performance per watt over RDNA 2, according to the company. RDNA 4 then appears in 2024.

AMD cites the 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement of RDNA 3 on a slide it presented during its annual Analyst Day, but the manufacturer gave no further details. According to AMD, these are ‘preliminary estimates’ based on engineering samples. In practice, the improvement will strongly depend on the chosen scenarios. AMD also promised a 50 percent improvement in performance per watt with RDNA 2.

The chip designer has the GPUs produced at 5nm based on the upcoming architecture, probably by TSMC. AMD builds the GPUs around chiplets, which probably gives the company the necessary flexibility to market GPUs for different target groups. AMD also speaks of a new generation Infinity Cache for RDNA 3, but it is not yet clear whether it is simply a larger memory buffer or whether other improvements have been made. As far as the compute units are concerned, AMD claims to have optimized the architecture.

According to the company, RDNA 3 will come with Navi 3 graphics later this year. The roadmap also includes RDNA 4 with Navi 4 GPUs. They should then appear in 2024. AMD has these produced on an ‘advanced node’, which can then be a 3nm process.