Nvidia could be in big trouble if this new AMD rumor is true

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A new rumor concerning AMD’s upcoming Big Navi graphics card could spell serious trouble for Nvidia, if it's accurate.

According to the rumor (which was posted by YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead), AMD’s Big Navi GPU will be 40% to 50% faster than the Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti. This could be bad news for Nvidia, as the RTX 2080 Ti is currently its flagship consumer graphics card – and if AMD is preparing to release a new GPU that’s up to 50% faster, it means it’s coming hard for the high-end market – which Nvidia usually dominates.

While Nvidia (at the moment, at least) is king of high-end enthusiast graphics cards, AMD has been more successful at offering budget and mid-range GPUs. If the new rumor is correct, AMD is looking to take on more of Nvidia’s market share – which could result in an aggressive shakeup of the GPU market.

As TweakTown reports, the new rumors suggest that AMD’s Big Navi GPU, which is based on its 7nm RDNA 2 architecture, will have 72 SMs (steaming multiprocessors), which will comprise of two clusters of 36 compute units, along with GDDR6 memory with a 384-bit bus. It seems the GPU could also have a clock speed of 2.05GHz and a boost of 2.15GHz.

All-in-all, if these rumors are true, it’s set to be a very powerful GPU.

Nvidia’s response

AMD muscling into the high-end market will be a big deal, but does this mean it’s game over for Nvidia? Not necessarily, as while the Big Navi leak shows a big performance increase over Nvidia’s current flagship GPU, we need to remember that Nvidia will be releasing its next-gen RTX 3000 series GPUs soon, with the RTX 3080 Ti likely to be the new flagship. 

That will hopefully bring a big improvement over the RTX 2080 Ti that it replaces, so it’s likely that Nvidia may still have the most powerful gaming GPU. 

However, with AMD looking to release high-end GPUs as well, Nvidia will likely have a fight on its hands. Either way, PC gamers will end up winning.

Matt Hanson
Managing Editor, Core Tech

Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there's no aspect of technology that Matt isn't passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. He’s personally reviewed and used most of the laptops in our best laptops guide - and since joining TechRadar in 2014, he's reviewed over 250 laptops and computing accessories personally.

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