What went wrong with RDNA 3...?

Much has been made about the performance, or lack thereof, in the RDNA 3 architecture. Before launch, rumours persisted of 3+ GHz core clocks, and I had tried to make sense of them at the time - to no avail, leading to predictions that were around 2x the performance of the RX 6900 XT. 

Additionally, people (aka leakers) were really misunderstanding the doubling of FP32 units in each workgroup processor and so were counting more than actually existed in terms of real throughput performance and, I think it's safe to say that this decision from AMD was a disaster from a consumer standpoint. 

But is that really the reason RDNA 3 has been less performant than expected? Let's take a look!

Let's Talk about System Requirements...

Everyone and their mother, cousin, friend, associate, partner, and long-lost relation has had strong opinions on System Requirements.. Hell, I'm right there with them! We all want detailed listings of settings combined with PC hardware... However, as a group, I think we are a bit too happy when developers give us more than nothing to work with.

So, I want to set the record straight on what are good system requirements for games... and I hope that some developers see this and take the advice on board.

The Performance uplift of Ada Lovelace over Ampere...

 

One thing i feel like I may have been known for is being one of the first people to comment on the fact that there was no "IPC" uplift for AMD's RDNA 2 over RDNA architecture. Well, I never had an RX 5000 series card to check with but Hardware Unboxed confirmed this in practice. So, it was nice to feel validated. 

Now, I am aware that RDNA 3 is nothng more than a frequency adjusted RDNA2 (because their extra FP32 configurations do not appear to be easily used in existing programmes), but the question still burns within me: have Nvidia been able to increase the performance of their architecture from Ampere to Lovelace?

Let's find out...

June Roundup... Software highs and hardware lows...

I don't have much time for technical analysis over this coming period though I have a few ideas to explore in the coming months. So, I thought I'd have a bit of a round-up of my thoughts that, more often than not, end up in YouTube video comments and Twitter discussions - especially when I don't see these points replicated anywhere else...

So, let's summarize!

Analyse This: What would a mid-gen console refresh look like...?

There have been a lot of rumours and meanderings surrounding a potential mid-gen "pro" console for both Sony and Microsoft's current consoles. However, I've not really seen much analysis for what  form such a device would take or why such a device might exist. 

For this post, I'm going to delve back into my hardware speculation territory to see if we can't imagine some devices for both companies that might make some sense in the market.