How did AMD make Zen 2 faster?

[Bofferbrauer2]

fatslob-:O said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

As for the GPU, I expect something similar to the RX 5700, although not the same chip. I'm expecting more like 44CU with 2-4 CU deactivated for enhanced yields, and clocked a bit slower than he RX 5700 (somewhere about 1400-1550 Mhz) to limit power consumption to something a console case can dissipate without overheating (which is normally around or slightly above 200 W).

I'd imagine performance closer to an ~RTX 2080 since console manufacturers will have a somewhat higher transistor budget to spend on from using TSMC's 7nm EUV logic node rather than 7nm DUV ... 

I'm personally more interested in what new hardware features they'll bring to consoles compared to first generation RDNA ... (hopefully it's more than just ray tracing)

Possible, the Navi and Zen 2 CPU chiplet would add up to about 330 mm², which to my knowledge is slightly less than the Pro and the X have (350-360 mm² for those) - though I have no idea what parts of the IO chip might be needed. Still, 7nm EUV should push the total below 300mm² if those 15-20% size reduction are to be believed, so there's definitely some more space in the budget.

The question is, what will it get filled up with? RTX 2080 performance seems certainly in the realm of possible, but let's not forget that the raytracing bloats the RTX chips a whole lot bigger than a GTX with same performance would be. I think ~2 billion tensor cores like in the RTX 2080 won't cut it if they want to make raytracing really worthwhile on consoles. I hope AMD comes up with a solution that doesn't need specific circuitry just for raytracing.