First image of the Navi 21 GPU, the heart of the Radeon RX 6900 XT

AMD will produce a high-end Radeon graphics card called the RX 6900 XT . The announcement is scheduled for October 28th. In the meantime, a photo of the GPU has surfaced online. The launch of AMD's next-generation video cards based on the RDNA2 architecture is now a matter of weeks. AMD will officially present these new solutions at the end of this month. The market launch should therefore follow shortly thereafter, or at most a few days later.

Meanwhile, the Twitter account Coreteks has posted the first image of the Navi 21 GPU . This has sparked much discussion online as users analyze its specifications. The GPU appears quite robust, according to the available image. It will be the central component of AMD's new Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card.

Analysis of its characteristics

It's apparently a 536 mm² chip with 23 billion transistors, built using 7-nanometer manufacturing technology by the Taiwanese firm TSMC. This confirms previous rumors that estimated the size of this new GPU at over 500 mm². From the image, we can draw some conclusions: HBM2 memory combined with the GPU is ruled out. The Navi 21 GPU is therefore likely paired with GDDR6 memory. The memory bus specifications have not yet been revealed by AMD. However, we estimate 16 GB of video memory and a 256- or 512-bit bus. This type of bus hasn't been widely used on consumer video cards due to its structural complexity, but it has been used by AMD for cards in the Radeon family. This Navi 21 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (Feature Level 12.2). It supports Ray Tracing, VRS (Variable Rate Shading), and many other features used in the latest video games. A less powerful version with 12 GB of memory may also be released and will be called the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT.

Generally, AMD uses GDDR6 memory for gaming graphics cards. This is a solution offered for cards intended for the general public because it is easy to implement. HBM2 is more suited to professionals and data centers.

We're already eagerly awaiting October 28th to confirm or refute our analyses. Just a few weeks to wait, and AMD will announce the technical specifications of its new family of video cards. We estimate its cost to be between €500 and €650. On the same day, the commercial launch of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 video cards is also expected. These are next-generation graphics cards from the Ampere family, positioned in the mid-to-high-end category for gamers.