due to this news:
Microsoft proudly boasts that its Xbox Series S and X are the only next-generation consoles featuring the full AMD RDNA 2 architecture.
wccftech.com
After a lot of time i understand:
What I thought was complete RDNA2 should include all the hardware, not just the functions to be developed:
Next AMD presents what are the characteristics that have led it to achieve a 54% improvement compared to RDNA1. Broken down:
The first corresponds to the increase in frequency which does not seem to be very present on Xbox.
The second Improvement Holisty Design that corresponds to the following slide:
Variable clocks per CU (there is no such thing in SX)
Restructuring of the pipeline (as we can see in the 80 CU GPU in the photo it only has Shaders Arrays of 10 CU maximum) There is no such thing in Xbox either
And greater efficiency of data movement. (Who knows).
The last point is that RDNA2 has Infinity cache (the brilliance of the photo):
And yet I'm still trying to find it here:
In which it is neither mentioned nor appears.
And last and foremost is dedicated RT Hardware without using TMUs as calculation units:
In front of this:
Where can you see that if you activate the RT a TMU (there are 2 actually and I hope because as it has 2 TMUs per RDNACU they are managed) to become an RT accelerator.
So what have we been discussing? If RDNA2 architecture is not hardware because it is clear that it is not, then what is RDNA2?
VRS, Mesh Shaders and Direct RT ??? So what have we been discussing all this time for software functions compatible with hardware?
I just know one thing, I think no console can afford all that hardware on the GPU for 500 Euros (~ $ 500). And that of course I think that the word RDNA2 architecture simply refers to VRS, Mesh Shaders AND directX RT. I think we are getting a ton of weird marketing that is not letting us see with our eyes the hardware that we are buying which is really important.
VRS, Mesh Shaders or DXRT are functions that other companies without RDNA2 have, for example Nvidia. So we can assure that they are not exclusive to RDNA2 but rather that it is a way of using hardware that will have to be compatible.
Conclusion:
That certifies you as RDNA2.0 full: it is a set of API characteristics that must be compatible with your system. But it is not tied to hardware development.
I think we've gotten a ton of unnecessary marketing and swallowed it. RDNA2 has nothing to do with concrete hardware architecture.
But I finally understood.
The RDNAX word is just marketing and does not assure you of hardware. So from my Geek point of view it is a word that is worthless.