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[EricHiggin]

Pemalite said:

EricHiggin said:

I remember reading somewhere that initially Navi was going to be the last of GCN and then Next Gen would be a completely new arch, but a decision was made to turn Navi into a hybrid between GCN and next gen to ease the transition process, which is also why Navi seems to be so far behind. It would help explain some of the rumors and leaks if true.

I doubt that is the case.
It takes allot of work (And cash) to do such a degree of re-engineering, especially for a single product lineup, AMD isn't exactly rolling in cash.

I would be surprised if it was anything other than another iterative update to Graphics Core Next.

I mean... Back in the Terascale days, AMD did modify VLIW5 and came up with VLIW4 as an interim release, but it was still very much Terascale with all it's caveats.

I mean... At this point I would be very happy to be incorrect, AMD's GPU's right now are pretty terrible in the high-end. (But not bad in the low-end.)

I would mostly agree. I don't think it would be a true hybrid as you say, since the cost and engineering would be significant, and Radeon is already way behind GeForce, so more delays don't seem like a good idea at this point in time. Another step like Vega was would make more sense. AMD doesn't want to disappoint gamers again though, since they way over hyped Vega and didn't deliver, especially at launch, so another situation like that would just hurt them even worse. With the RTX 2000 series not exactly setting the market on fire, now may be the perfect time for a delayed and improved GPU from AMD.

Now what about if the PS5 rumors are true? If PS is working directly with AMD on Navi, that could explain the delay and investment necessary. If PS5 is using Navi, they may very well want some Next Gen Radeon features baked in, much like how when they used Polaris in Pro with some Vega baked in. Based on the launches of Pro and XB1X, the odds are that PS5 should launch before, or at the same time as Scarlet, depending on how long MS waits. PS may be locked into using Navi, whether they launch on schedule or not, and they very well may want as many of those Next Gen Radeon features built in as possible, if they assume that Scarlet will be using Next Gen Radeon tech. Navi with some Next Gen Radeon features built in, will probably allow PS to save on time and cost vs using the full blown new arch, and would allow AMD a better product but with a delayed launch. This would also have to be under the assumption that PS isn't getting it's own distinct version of Navi, and that all Navi silicon will come with the same features PS5 has, otherwise this wouldn't really explain why Navi is behind schedule. If the recent rumors of chiplet APU's has any truth to it, this would make sense if the next gen consoles aren't integrated on die APU's like in the past.