AMD: RDNA 3 offers a 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, offering a 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement over RDNA 2, according to the company. RDNA 4 will then appear in 2024.

AMD cites RDNA 3’s 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement 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 will have the GPUs produced on 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 with 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 compute units are concerned, AMD claims to have optimized the architecture.

According to the company, RDNA 3 with Navi 3 graphics will arrive 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.