AMD mobile partnerships bear fruit with RDNA 3.5 efficiency boost
AMD delivers impressive GPU performance gains with RDNA 3.5 and Strix Point
For many years now, AMD has been partnered with Samsung to bring their RDNA graphics architecture to their Exynos mobile SOCs. Now, that partnership appears to have had an impact on their PC-grade graphics chips. Meet RDNA 3.5, the new GPU architecture behind AMD’s “Strix Point” Ryzen AI CPUs.
What makes RDNA 3.5 special? The answer to that question is power efficiency. If you want more gaming performance from mobile devices, you need to increase the power efficiency of your GPU. If you don’t you will sacrifice battery life in the name of gaming performance. That’s why RDNA 3.5 is focused on delivering increased performance/watt above all else.
This isn’t RDNA 4, but that doesn’t mean that AMD hasn’t improved aspects of their GPU architecture. AMD are targeting higher levels of mobile performance with RDNA 3.5, and that means that they need to boost performance/watt and optimise memory performance. After all, mobile gaming performance is often limited by power and memory performance.
With RDNA 3.5, AMD has implemented a new primitive batch processing technique to reduce the number of memory accesses their GPU needs. Beyond that, better compression techniques have reduced memory bandwidth requirements. Optimisations have also been made that are specific to LPDDR5 memory access.
Other improvements with RDNA 3.5 include a double texture sampler rate, and a 2x interpolation/comparison rate. These changes accelerate specific GPU processes and help to boost performance without increasing power draw. This help to increase performance/watt.
AMD RDNA 3.5 delivers more mobile gaming performance without increased power draw
In 3DMARK Time Spy and 3DMARK Night Raid respectively, AMD has revealed 32% and 19% performance gains with their “Strix Point” processor. Both CPUs have a 15W TDP, making these gains pure performance/watt benefits.
AMD has managed to deliver higher levels of gaming performance without increasing decreasing the battery life of mobile devices. These power efficiency benefits will also apply to higher TDP Ryzen “Strix Point” processors. These architectural improvements may also benefit future RDNA 4 discrete GPUs. After all, power efficiency improvements also benefit higher-end products.
While it may be a 0.5 architecture upgrade, RDNA 3.5 is an exciting release for mobile gamers. This is especially true for low-power gaming laptops and Steam Deck/ROG Ally-like handheld PC gaming devices. Power efficiency is a vital aspect of gaming GPUs, and it is great to see AMD making strides forward in this area.
You can join the discussion on AMD’s RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture on the OC3D Forums.
