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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neblogai - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Only for the hardware- because with the prices of games and services they more than recoupe it over their life time. That is why consoles are succesful only in richest countries, not in poor ones, where people count their money hard.Gigaplex - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
I don't see that happening. When big console changes came about (vastly different architectures, eg PS2->PS3->PS4) the porting requirements changed which lead to poorly optimised code. The current leading consoles are pretty close to PC architectures, and the next generation will be largely the same but with higher specs - but still lower than high end PCs.azazel1024 - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Many older games I can play at 1080p with my i3570 and GTX750. Not even a GTX750ti. Newer ones, especially with the various feature knobs turned up...not a chance.As GPUs are able to handle the demands, and especially as consoles improve, you'll find what games demand at 1080p continuing to increase.
Spunjji - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
What's with the 30W limitation? The 1650 can do everything you asked, but at 75W. That's seriously impressive from any perspective besides "it arbitrarily has to be 30W".The 1030 was impressive in that regard when it was new, but time moves on, and neither AMD nor Nvidia have any pressing drive to replace their bottom-of-the-range GPU on a regular basis.
Hul8 - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
One consideration would be that if you try to dissipate that 75W with a single slot cooler, the GPU will either be unbearably loud, be clocked really low, or throttle (or multiple of them). And even worse clocks if you want a card with a passive cooler.Hul8 - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
Single slot *was* one of @PeachNCream's requirements.SirPerro - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
I find interesting the "can handle 1080p" mentality. As if games 4 years from now will be the same as current ones.One must be ready to accept the fact that a card which runs current games in ultra at 60fps will not run future games in ultra.
And it's perfectly fine and normal. This is not the console world. There's no "GPU power freeze" here. Small steps in the market every few months.
flyingpants265 - Saturday, January 11, 2020 - link
IMO the time for 1080p is completely over. Games should be targetting either 1440p@240hz, or 75-90hz.Screw 60hz honestly, I have a Samsung 19" 75hz from like 2006 or something and it works great.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
I mean ASIDE from the fact that 30W half height single slot graphics cards are in such HIGH demand from desktop gamers (nearly .00001% of users want one!)… why stop there? I think while you're asking for something that doesn't exist, you really need to lean into it. Sleep until they can do 16K full raycasting in a 5W power envelope...flyingpants265 - Saturday, January 11, 2020 - link
Well, 1050ti/1650 is pretty good at 75 watts. No power connector needed!Not sure why you care about single-slot coolers, maybe you have a personal reason for doing so.
If anything, GPU coolers should be a lot bigger. GPUs are 300W+. Dual 140mm towers on both CPU/GPU. Linus has a recent video about this, and he (somewhat bizarrely) underreacts to the tremendous overwhelming improvement in heat dissipation, but it's just the obvious thing to do, both for temps/boost and the longevity of the card.
Also, video cards should be mounted parallel to an ITX motherboard on a 90degree PCIe slot, it's not 1999 anymore. It's somewhat rare to see systems with more than one PCIe card in the wild.