If recent leaks are to be believed, AMD’s RDNA 2 based graphics cards will be packing up to 16GB of VRAM out of the gate. But when it comes to graphics cards, the amount of VRAM is far from everything. Speed also matters and that’s where AMD might be falling short.
A fairly reputable leaker, _rogame, recently dropped some information on AMD’s upcoming graphics cards via Twitter. In their post, they claim to have confirmation that AMD’s Big Navi (Navi 21) will be running 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM while the lesser Navi 22 will be running 12GB.
These levels of VRAM do technically put Navi ahead of Nvidia’s Ampere-based RTX 3080 which has 10GB, but there’s one major difference. Ampere is running the faster GDDR6X whereas Navi is running GDDR6 – the X makes a pretty big difference.
So while AMD might have more, Nvidia’s is potentially faster. As Wccftech pointed out from a previous leak, Big Navi’s 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM will be running on a 256-bit bus and Navi 22’s 12GB is assumedly going to be 192-bit. In comparison, Nvidia’s RTX 3080 runs off a 320-bit bus and their RTX 3070 runs a 256-bit bus.
What this all means for real-world performance, however, is still up for debate. As there haven’t been any leaked benchmarks or even much in the way of specs (outside of VRAM) yet, it’s hard to say exactly how well the Navis are going to stack up. The extra VRAM might help, or the fact that it’s potentially slower might hinder AMD’s pursuit of Nvidia’s crown.
With AMD’s GPU reveal scheduled for October 28th, there’s still a little over a month left to wait. That’s a lot of time for more information, more leaks, and hopefully more confirmation of exactly what we’re getting with the RDNA 2 based 6000-series cards.
