AMD Announces Radeon RX 5600 Series: A Lighter Navi To Rule 1080p Gaming
by Ryan Smith on January 6, 2020 5:46 PM ESTRadeon RX 5600 For OEMs, & Radeon RX5600M For Mobile
While the biggest part of today’s Radeon RX 5600 series launch is the retail desktop for obvious reasons, this is not the only market AMD will be addressing. The company believes they have a winning part in the works, and to that end they are going to extend the Radeon RX 5600 series over the entire market, covering OEM desktop and mobile as well.
Starting things off for the OEM desktop side, AMD will also be releasing the Radeon RX 5600 for that market. Similar to what we saw with the OEM-only Radeon RX 5500, the Radeon RX 5600 is a similar, but slightly slower part. The big difference here is that while clockspeeds and TBPs remain unchanged, these OEM parts will only ship with 32 CUs enabled instead of 36 CUs enabled.
| AMD Radeon RX OEM Specification Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon RX 5600 (OEM) | AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT | AMD Radeon RX 5500 (OEM) | AMD Radeon RX 5700 | |||
| CUs | 32 (2048 SPs) |
36 (2304 SPs) |
22 (1408 SPs) |
36 (2304 SPs) |
||
| Texture Units | 128 | 144 | 88 | 144 | ||
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 32 | 64 | ||
| Base Clock | 1265MHz? | 1265MHz? | ? | 1465MHz | ||
| Game Clock | 1375MHz | 1375MHz | <=1670MHz | 1625MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1560MHz | 1560MHz | <=1845MHz | 1725MHz | ||
| Throughput (FP32) | 6.4 TFLOPs | 7.2 TFLOPs | <=5.2 TFLOPs | 7.95 TFLOPs | ||
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps GDDR6 | 12 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 192-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit | ||
| VRAM | 6GB | 6GB | 4GB/8GB | 8GB | ||
| Transistor Count | 10.3B | 10.3B | 6.4B | 10.3B | ||
| Typical Board Power | 150W | 150W | 150W | 180W | ||
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | ||
| Architecture | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | ||
| GPU | Navi 10 | Navi 10 | Navi 14 | Navi 10 | ||
| Launch Date | 01/21/2020 | 01/21/2020 | Q4 2019 | 07/07/2019 | ||
| Launch Price | N/A | $279 | N/A | $349 | ||
On paper, this gives the Radeon RX 5600 somewhere around 90% of the retail Radeon RX 5600 XT’s performance. The precise performance gap will vary with games and whether they’re compute/shader bound or pixel/bandwidth bound, but again, it’s a ballpark figure.
Meanwhile in the mobile space, the 5600 series will be rounded out by the Radeon RX 5600M. Unlike the OEM desktop card, AMD isn’t holding back any punches here, and the 5600M will ship with the same 36 CUs as the retail card.
| AMD Radeon RX Series Mobile Specification Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon RX 5600M | AMD Radeon RX 5500M | AMD Radeon Vega Pro 20 | AMD Radeon RX 560X | |||
| CUs | 36 | 22 | 20 | 14/16 | ||
| Texture Units | 144 | 88 | 80 | 64 | ||
| ROPs | 64 | 32 | 32 | 16 | ||
| Game Clock | <=1375MHz | <=1448MHz | N/A | N/A | ||
| Boost Clock | <=1560MHz | <=1645MHz | 1300MHz | 1275MHz | ||
| Throughput (FP32) | <= 7.2 TFLOPs | <=4.6 TFLOPs | 3.3 TFLOPs | 2.6 TFLOPs | ||
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | 1.5 Gbps HBM2 | 7 Gbps GDDR5 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 192-bit | 128-bit | 1024-bit | 128-bit | ||
| Max VRAM | 6GB | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB | ||
| Typical Board Power | N/A (Min: 60W) | 85W | ? | ? | ||
| Architecture | RDNA (1) | RDNA (1) | Vega (GCN 5) |
GCN 4 | ||
| GPU | Navi 10 | Navi 14 | Vega 12 | Polaris 11 | ||
| Launch Date | 01/21/2020 | 10/2019 | 10/2018 | 04/2018 | ||
But, like AMDs other Navi mobile parts, the clockspeeds and TDPs are up to the OEMs. So OEMs will be free to dial them up and down (to a degree) to hit the specific performance/power consumption they’re looking for in a laptop. Consequently, AMD doesn’t have a maximum TBP here, but they have set a minimum: 60 Watts. Radeon RX 5600M will not be a light chip.
It won’t be a small chip either, which is what makes this announcement particularly interesting. Since this is all based on Navi 10, any OEM using the RX 5600M will have to accommodate the moderately sized chip and its accompanying 6 GDDR6 chips. This shouldn’t be a challenge for OEMs, who already regularly include NVIDIA’s even larger chips, but to date AMD’s laptop wins have almost exclusively been their mobile-focused GPUs like Polaris 11 and Navi 14, which are available in low z-height packages. So the RX 5600M will require a greater commitment from laptop partners than what we’ve seen in the past, both with respect to power/cooling as well as sheer board space.
The OEM Radeon RX 5600 and the Radeon RX 5600M should be available soon. And with CES in full swing, there shouldn’t be any shortage of partners announcing systems with the new video cards over the next couple of days.
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Spunjji - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
14's already used in two products - the 5300M and the 5500M (plus all their wacky variants).Best guess on "why not sooner" - they've probably been waiting for enough dies with the right kind of defects, just like they did with the Instinct MI60 to make Radeon VII.
Incidentally, their strategy for Vega 20 (R VII / MI60/50) makes more sense if you consider it a way to test a new process with a known design and guarantee profits from the results, no matter how bad the yields. That might be why we haven't seen a big Navi - it's not as good for GPGPU as Vega, so if yields on a die that big are still sub-par then they wouldn't even have the option to sell the few fully-working dies as accelerator cards to boost margins.
Fataliity - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Navi had a compute issue. It's finally fixed for RDNA+, but current gen Navi has compute errors. I don't know the specifics but you can look it up. I dont think it can be used for Datacenter uses because of this.Fataliity - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
I think they cut down the bus width not due to yields, but to prevent flashing to a 5700. Same with the RAM. Because even if you flash it, the bandwidth should be a limiting factor.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Disappointed. Why no 8 Gb version now? I agree with Ryan and many here that any card with less than 8 GB RAM is simply not future-proof. AMD has the chance to make some serious inroads while NVIDIA is still selling off their Turing chips, of which they apparently have a lot of left over (still post-cryptomining, I guess). @Ryan: have you heard anything more about the supposed launch date for NVIDIA's Ampere GPU line? They must have started fabbing those at Samsung for a while now. AMD better gets their act together before then, or Team Red will again play catch-up.maroon1 - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
What make you think that 6GB won't be future proof ??? YOu can always drop the setting at littleNone of today games need more than 6GB when running the game on playable setting
For example, Red Dead 2 does not need more than 6GB for 1440p max setting but even 8GB card can not handle it with constant 60fps because they lack the GPU power.
I'm pretty sure that 6Gb card will not have any problem with 1080p medium-high setting for next 5 years, and you will probably run out of GPU power before memory
eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
In that case, and having in mind that AMD cards aren't typically as efficient in using compression as NVIDIA cards are, why then have a version of the lesser 5500 card with 8 Gb? And, when I play, I quite like my details on "high"; why else would one pay for a game with good-looking scenery?jabber - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
That's not the point. You are asking customers and enthusiasts to take a backwards step from the 8GB cards they bought 3 years ago.Imagine if 10 years ago Nvidia or AMD were suggesting users bought a new 512MB card over the 1GB card they had before. Not quite the same ratio of ram but the principle is the same.
I've got 8GB now so I'm only going forward.
jabber - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
Oh yes and some of us here do not change our graphics cards like some change their underpants. I expect 3+ years out of a card so thinking ahead is kind of important.maroon1 - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
I read online than nivdia planning to drop the price of RTX 2060 6Gb to 299 dollarseastcoast_pete - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
That would be a. Interesting and b. Make sense. NVIDIA is supposedly launching Ampere (Turing replacement) in June, so clearing out the warehouse now makes sense for them. Regarding Navi cards and pricing, if a 2060 is within $20 of these 5600 cards, AMD will hopefully lower prices and card makers push for 8 Gb cards to stay competitive.