AMD confirms higher clock speeds on its next-generation RDNA 2 graphics cards

Thanks to RDNA 2’s architectural innovations, AMD has been able to deliver Improved Performance-per-Clock (IPC), which means that AMD’s latest graphics architecture will be able to do more graphics work during each of its clock cycles. On top of that, AMD also promises an increase in clock speeds, giving AMD two methods of performance enhancement with RDNA 2. 

Sony’s PlayStation 5 console already promised GPU clock speeds as high as 2.23GHz, which are well in excess of what any of AMD’s original RDNA graphics cards. This reveal had already semi-confirmed that RDNA 2 would deliver higher clock speeds to Radeon customers, though it is encouraging to hear the same thing from AMD.

Higher clock speeds will allow AMD to get more performance out of every stream processor within its RDNA 2 architecture, a factor which is great news for AMD as a whole. When combined with RDNA 2’s enhancements in power efficiency, AMD’s next-generation graphics cards have a genuine chance of being performance leaders when they release later this year. That’s something that hadn’t been the case for team Radeon for quite some time. 

AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture also delivers more features to the red team’s graphics cards, such as DXR compliant hardware-accelerated raytracing, Variable Rate Shading (VRS) and Mesh Shader support. These features will underpin Microsoft’s next generation of console hardware, making these features very valuable to gamers who want their next-generation graphics cards to last them for a while.