

The Radeon RX 5700 XT is the "flagship" GPU of this series, though I wouldn't be surprised to see bigger chips coming out with the RX 5800 and RX 5900 moniker in the future, but we'll have to wait and see on that one. The TU106 chip used in the RTX 2060 is 445mm squared, so AMD could still theoretically make a much, much larger chip down the road.

Thankfully, AMD lowered the price of the 5700 XT to just $399 before launch, so it's got a $100 price tag advantage over Nvidia's latest GPU.īrian Barnett + 1 moreWhat's most striking about the RX 5700 is it uses a die that's just 251mm-squared, and is going up against the TU104 chip from Nvidia (in the RTX 2070 Super), which is 545mm squared. Before we get too far along, let's have a look at the spec sheet: As you can see, AMD was specifically targeting the formerly $500 Nvidia RTX 2070 with this GPU, but it now has to contend with the RTX 2070 Super. Nvidia's GPUs are currently built on a 12nm process, so by going with a smaller node AMD can put more transistors in the same space with better efficiency. There was a 7nm GPU before, the Radeon VII, but with 16GB of HBM memory it was kind of a hybrid gaming/workstation GPU, whereas the new Radeons are pure gaming hardware, with none of that expensive high-bandwidth memory but GDDR6 instead. The biggest news with this GPU is that it's the first consumer GPU built on a 7nm process. I also covered most of this from the big reveal at E3, but I'll do it again for those who weren't following along. AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT - Design and FeaturesEverything about this GPU is new, from the blower cooler design to the silicon that rests beneath it, so let's tackle it piece by piece. We'll never know if that really was the plan all along, but either way the GPU wars are officially back on in a very big way.

The fallout from that was a last minute price drop for the Radeon cards, though the Radeon GM tweeted it was all a big setup on their part, as they inflated the prices initially and Nvidia took the bait. Though AMD announced that its new GPU was indeed faster than the RTX 2070 when it was unveiled at Computex, perennial Clever Girl Nvidia just released the RTX 2070 Super less than a week ago in order to ruin AMD's launch plans.
