AMD has been talking about ‘Big Navi’ for quite some time now and despite assurances from CEO Dr. Lisa Su that it will arrive before the end of this year, we’ve still yet to see much indication of that actually happening. In a report via TechSpot, however, it has been suggested that samples are currently with AIB partners which is at least some indication that a release may be (relatively speaking) just on the horizon.
The news, however, does go much further than that! Internal (and undisclosed) sources from these partner manufacturers are suggesting that in terms of performance, it may (just about) have the beating of the current Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti.
AMD ‘Big Navi’ Graphics Card
Now, had this graphics card released a year ago, this news clearly would’ve been a lot more impressive news. It is, however, hard to overlook the fact that when this does release, it should be (presumably) around the same time that Nvidia will launch their new 30XX GPUs. As such ‘beating the 2080 Ti’ will, in comparison, be not quite so impressive.
The plot does, however, thicken a little more. It has also been suggested that Big Navi is only capable of truly ‘beating’ the Nvidia 2080 Ti on games optimized for the AMD platform. In other cases, it’s suggested that they are roughly on par.
Is this all disappointing news though? Well, perhaps not. It seems that AMD may address this situation with a rather aggressive pricing strategy!
Price War
With the highest-end Nvidia 30XX series almost certainly having the beating of the 2080 Ti (and, by proxy, ‘Big Navi’) it has been suggested that AMD has decided to change the battleground a little. Specifically, (and if the rumors are true) they’re setting their sights on Big Navi being as good as the ‘standard’ 3080, but coming in at a significantly lower cost.
With it being suggested that the pricing will be ‘aggressive’, this could prove to be a big winner with consumers. Particularly since the Nvidia 30XX series is expected to arrive with notably higher (when compared to the 20XX range) prices. Put simply, while we’d all like an exceptionally powerful graphics card, we can’t all afford to throw £700+ at one and this may make ‘Big Navi’ a truly excellent alternative.
We should end though by again noting that this is all unconfirmed. If true, however, while ‘Big Navi’ may not be able to beat Nvidia on outright performance, it may end up being a huge winner at the checkout!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
