Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
It has been two weeks since NVIDIA took the wraps off its upcoming Ampere-based RTX 3000 series graphics cards during a live streaming event that saw Jensen Huang pull a graphics card out of his oven. AMD may have been cooking up their own answer to those new GPUs and chose to show off the first official image of a graphics card based on its Big Navi architecture on Twitter today. Additionally, the card made a virtual appearance in Fortnite on AMD’s Creative Island.
We first reported that AMD made plans to show off its new line of desktop CPUs and GPUs in October. The launch event for the Zen 3-based Ryzen desktop CPUs and x670 motherboard chipset is currently scheduled for October 8. 2020. The announcement declared that a reveal event for the Radeon RDNA 2 graphics architecture would be coming on October 28, 2020. RDNA 2 is based on AMD’s Navi architecture and the design will be incorporated into both the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The version of RDNA 2 in the consoles has been customized and optimized for power usage and heat output so that it can operate safely within the confines of the small console chassis. The Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards will also be based on RDNA 2, except that they use a bigger version of the chip without the same power constraints found in the cut-down console version. AMD has been referring to these upcoming desktop GPUs as Big Navi for most of 2020 and had promised its investors that such products would be available prior to the console launches. Radeon RX 6000 looks to be the official name the company is going with for Big Navi.
The card shown in the tweet above and on display in Fortnite currently is a triple-fan design that features a pair of 8-pin power plugs. Such a configuration is capable of using up to 375 watts of power, though the actual specs of the cards are still unknown. The 3D model of the card in Fortnite sports a pair of DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, a single HDMI connector, and a single USB Type-C connector. It is unknown if the Type-C connector is for VirtualLink VR support. The VirtualLink connector was dropped from NVIDIA’s RTX 3000 series cards after its failure to appear on any major VR headset.
We will surely find out more about the Radeon RX 6000 series in the coming weeks leading to the October 28 event. Keep it tuned to Shacknews for all the latest development in graphics card land. These are exciting times, folks.