Rumour has it that AMD’s “Big Navi” GPU isn’t as powerful as expected

We should all know by now that AMD plans to release its first RDNA 2 graphics cards before the end of the year, offering customers next-generation Radeon performance and the same feature set as both next-generation consoles. Early rumours regarding AMD’s RDNA 2 “Big Navi” graphics card was that it would be an “Nvidia Killer”, but new reports suggest that this will not be the case. 

As we approach launch, AMD will be sharing more and more information with their Add-in-Board partners, such as ASUS, Sapphire, Gigabyte, MSI and XFX. As these discussions take place, more avenues for data leaks will appear, allowing more and more information to leak onto the web. 

CoreTeks has reported that AMD has started to share information with “sources in Asia”, who have claimed that “Big Navi” isn’t as powerful as expected. Coreteks reports that AMD’s next-generation flagship will only be 15% more powerful than Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti, and that is in “optimised” titles. 

With this in mind, AMD’s next-generation flagship is expected to be an RTX 3080 competitor. That’s a far cry from the reports that AMD’s RDNA 2 flagship would deliver a 50% performance lead over Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti. 

AMD is reportedly planning to price their RDNA 2 flagship to undercut Nvidia’s RTX 3080, offering consumers more value than their opponent within the high-end market. Lower-end Navi SKUs will be competitive with Nvidia’s other RTX 30 offerings, though this leaves Nvidia’s hypothetical RTX 3080 Ti with no competition.