In the corner of rumors concerning AMD, we have one that deals with a possible refresh of the RX 6000 series. Indeed, Greymon55 (Twitter) indicates that AMD is working on a new version of its cards.
RX 6000: a revision with faster VRAM?
Until now, the cards with the fastest VRAM at AMD are the RX 6900 XT LC and RX 6500 XT. The latter have GDDR6 clocked at 18 Gbps when most other cards have memory at 16 Gbps.
According to the rumor, the brand is in the process of obtaining samples of faster GDDR6 chips. Apparently, later this year, we could see VRAM clocked at more than 20 Gbps and conforming to the Jedec standard arrive en masse. We can imagine that AMD does not want to miss this niche.
As an example, let’s take an RX 6800 XT equipped with 16 Gpbs memory. By switching to 20 Gbps memory, the latter would go from 512 GB/s to 640 GB/s, an increase of 25% in memory bandwidth. In the case where AMD would opt for GDDR6 at 20 Gbps. Currently, it would be rather an upgrade to 18 Gbps (+12.5% bandwidth).
In a similar vein, the RDNA2 cards (RX 6000) could also benefit from a thinner 6 nm etching. This would allow AMD to increase the operating frequencies of its cards. Beware also of the power consumption which could also increase.
In short, it remains to be seen what will be done in the future concerning these cards. Nevertheless, we can’t imagine AMD letting NVIDIA do its little refreshes alone in its corner.
