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QuestionSpeculation: RDNA2 + CDNA Architectures thread

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uzzi38

Platinum Member
Oct 16, 2019
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All die sizes are within 5mm^2. The poster here has been right on some things in the past afaik, and to his credit was the first to saying 505mm^2 for Navi21, which other people have backed up. Even still though, take the following with a pich of salt.

Navi21 - 505mm^2

Navi22 - 340mm^2

Navi23 - 240mm^2

Source is the following post: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/PC_Shopping/M.1588075782.A.C1E.html

Vikv1918

Member
Mar 12, 2025
60
170
66
A six year cadence means a potential customer should be wary of even rdna4 cards. Now I am glad I didn't splurge and go for a 6800xt 2.5 years ago. I guess we are back to a 2-3 year upgrade cadence for any of the brands despite the price increases.
Just because you dont get regular driver updates doesnt mean your GPUs become unusable. Here's a video of a 16 year old HD 5970 playing modern games -
GPU owners are having the same paranoia that Android owners used to have back when companies only offered 2 annual Android updates. People pretended that this meant their phone became unusable. Meanwhile here I am with my 6 year old Android phone with a 4 year old OS and everything still works perfectly fine.
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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
7,427
17,650
136
GPU owners are having the same paranoia that Android owners used to have back when companies only offered 2 annual Android updates. People pretended that this meant their phone became unusable. Meanwhile here I am with my 6 year old Android phone with a 4 year old OS and everything still works perfectly fine.
Again this argument. It's not about games not working, it about present and future purchase decisions. In other words it's not about your particular needs and perception, it's about the needs and perception of people around you. This will influence sale numbers and ultimately change what is available for you as well.

I'm getting more annoyed by the tone deaf reaction in the forums than AMDs clumsy handling of the situation. AMD is selling newly branded Z2 APUs with RDNA2 IP, they were launched this year. The Z2 Go was released in January 2025 and the Z2 A was announced in June 2025, just a few months ago.

1762328507459.png

Moving on to your Android analogy, people wanted more guaranteed Android upgrades because they demanded more value for their money, especially as the price for flagship smartphones kept creeping up. A higher security update coverage was also mandatory and expected given how many companies aimed to make mobile phones the go-to device for payments and bank interaction. In the past we had less Android updates because it made financial sense, and then we got more guaranteed updates because the market changed and it made financial sense.

The GPU market is also undergoing drastic change, prices are going up each year and upgrade cycles are slowing down. AMD thought they could ride the wave of change and utilize old IP in newly released hardware to cut costs, but they also wanted to stick to the old support model based on IP age. You can't have it both ways.

ToTTenTranz

Senior member
Feb 4, 2021
783
1,278
136
GPU owners are having the same paranoia that Android owners used to have back when companies only offered 2 annual Android updates.

The lack of commitment to regular software updates is what killed almost all the brands that had promising hardware a dozen years ago. At that time the smartphone market in the west had HTC, LG, Dell, Gigabyte, Alcatel, Philips, Lenovo, BlackBerry, and many others. Nowadays Android is mostly reduced to Samsung, Motorola (after getting bought by Lenovo so it's actually a Chiene brand now) and Chinese brands. The only thing that really set Samsung apart from all the others was their regular flow of Android updates, whereas all the others kept witholding those as means of planned obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence through lack of longer-term software support is what killed most Android makers.
That's the future that awaits AMD's consumer GPU division if they're going to follow the same path.

GaiaHunter

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2008
3,731
427
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Android is an OS, like windows.

Windows 11 requires DX12 and WDDM 2.0 GPU to support a GPU.

In the mobile phone world, the hardware maker doesn't provide OS support. In the PC world the OS maker doesn't provide support for the hardware.

Additionally what is the reason to buy a new phone these days? Slightly faster cpu? 😆
I can think of battery wear.

And what is the reason to get the new Android OS, other than security fixes? Like windows, android keeps changing stuff for no reason.

A mature GPU architecture doesn't need the newest driver to play a new game. I'm pretty sure the average profile for GPU driver updates is "update regularly when the new card came out, update once in a while after the first 12 months (if at all) or if they encounter a problem.

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,320
1,768
136
Meanwhile here I am with my 6 year old Android phone with a 4 year old OS and everything still works perfectly fine.
It does. until you get hacked by a 0-day exploit stealing all your money. I would not do anything financial on an old Android. Pretty sure the bank will then claim "neglect" and not make you whole again either.
So I want 5 year long security updates so I don't have to buy a new phone so often and go through all the setup pain.

The issue worth RDNA2 is that they just launched new products containing this IP. And honestly I still think they won't invest a lot of time in these for game optimizations. Who could even tell if they do so?
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luro

Member
Dec 11, 2022
77
115
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All this unecessary fuzz. To me it looks like AMD is just doing the same as Nvidia (which is normal). Drivers for many Nvidia GPUs are already in maintenance mode, the only difference here is they don't tell you that but you aren't getting any updates specific to the older series of cards. No new code is being written for the 20 or 30 series cards for example. New features that work on them, a bonus, but no work is being done to make that happen. They didn't even let them use frame gen. Those cards are already in maintenance mode.

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
16,905
7,326
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Again this argument. It's not about games not working, it about present and future purchase decisions. In other words it's not about your particular needs and perception, it's about the needs and perception of people around you. This will influence sale numbers and ultimately change what is available for you as well.

I'm getting more annoyed by the tone deaf reaction in the forums than AMDs clumsy handling of the situation. AMD is selling newly branded Z2 APUs with RDNA2 IP, they were launched this year. The Z2 Go was released in January 2025 and the Z2 A was announced in June 2025, just a few months ago.

Those aren't going to be able to run 2026 AAA games at a proper enough framerate anyway.

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
16,905
7,326
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There are many laptop models in some markets launched as brand-new 2025 models, yet equipped with RTX 3050 or even RTX 2050 GPUs (e.g: Lenovo LOQ-e laptops).

You know, despite the name, the 2050 laptop is Ampere (and not Turing)

Does nVidia still optimize for Ampere? I would say... maybe?

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
7,427
17,650
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Is it preferable to have a product that needs driver updates to work properly rather than a product with years of bug fixes and mature drivers?
From the latest AMD driver notes:
Fixed Issues: Texture flickering or corruption may appear while playing Serious Sam 4 on RadeonTM RX 6000 series graphics products.

5 year old architecture, 5 year old game. Still gets a fix. Get serious.

GaiaHunter

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2008
3,731
427
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So if RDNA4 driver support ended tomorrow, you would be okay with it?

They are not ending driver support for RDNA2.

But anyway one expects the drivers to focus on the newest architecture until the next architecture is released.

It is no coincidence that at release the newest gen and the current gen will be the closest in performance they will ever be and as newer games replace old games in reviews and benchmarks, the gap increases
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GaiaHunter

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2008
3,731
427
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From the latest AMD driver notes:


5 year old architecture, 5 year old game. Still gets a fix. Get serious.

Bug fixes, security patches.
Game optimizations (performance), day one driver (game engine use gpu properly).
Apple.
Oranges.

Also, did that problem in Serious Sam 4 been there for the last 5 years or did it jus pop up?

If it just pop up, what was the cause?
Did a recent driver caused it?
People are treating drivers as always net positive, but in some cases new drivers cause some problems to appear.
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GaiaHunter

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2008
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427
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You're the one who initiated the discussion about bug fixes:
AMD said they were putting RDNA1/2 in the maintenance mode branch - bug and security fixes.

Then people keep saying that because AMD moves the driver in to the maintenance mode, those GPUs basically have no support, which is false.

What RDNA1/2 won't have is game ready drivers, that they don't need because new games will work on them since developers were aware of these GPUs existing. They also won't have features developed for them, although it is possiblw some trickle down hardware permitting.

If a new game releases tomorrow and it doesn't run on a 6800xt even though it has all the hardware features required, it is a bug and falls into the bug fixes portion of maintenance mode.

A 9070XT might actually need a driver to tell the game engine that it is a card that exist and it is capable of running it and in fact you should run it this way for optimal performance.
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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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Then people keep saying that because AMD moves the driver in to the maintenance mode, those GPUs basically have no support, which is false.
People understood they would still receive security and bug fixes. AMD managed to say as much. People instead asked to continue receiving game ready drivers.

We can go back to the RDNA3 analogy if you want: 3+ year old architecture, the drivers are 101% mature by now. Developers are well aware of them by now. Why continue with game ready drivers?

I understand you don't care for this (continued form of support). Personally I don't care much either, I rarely play new titles on release. That being said, please look at this this from an average consumer perspective. Average Joes just want to play games, and when the moment comes to spend a ridiculous sum of money to get a discrete GPU or some PC console, they will likely choose based on market sentiment. If that market sentiment is AMD is skimping on drivers... money goes elsewhere. I believe @DAPUNISHER already explained how this works, and how it might affect even people in the know who would like to resell their "mature" cards.

Anyway, I did my best to explain my stance, I don't think I can do a better job repeating things. We probably have a wildly different view on the market reaction and possible effects on Radeon from this, so we might as well agree to disagree. I'll stop ranting on this subject in the AMD threads.

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