One more desktop graphics with Navi 24 chip in the pipeline
The cheapest graphics card segment has been pretty dry in recent years, typically offering ancient GPUs like GeForce GT 1030 or Radeon RX 550 (2016 architectures) or even GeForce GT 710 (a decade old Kepler architecture). A more modern, 7nm chip could now be dropped into the pool of affordable or at least affordablish cards by AMD. It is reportedly preparing a Radeon RX 6300 model that would have the RDNA 2 architecture.
The information that this card will come out and join the existing low-end cards with RDNA 2 architecture, i.e. the Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400, was apparently leaked directly by AMD who failed to keep it under wraps. Support for “AMD Radeon RX 6300, 6400 and 6500 series graphics” appeared in support tools (GPU Performance API) released by the company, and the mention in the documentation was spotted by Twitter user Komachi Ensaka.
The “RX 6300 series” label could cover models labelled RX 6300 or theoretically RX 6300 XT, though that’s probably less likely. In any case, it should be a desktop graphics – AMD did recently release a mobile Radeon RX 6300M, but that’s not what the notes should refer to. AMD includes the M in the “series” card descriptions in such cases.
Thus, there will apparently be a desktop Radeon RX 6300, which will most likely use the same 6nm Navi 24 GPU as the Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400. It will probably be cut down – either to 768 shaders (12 CUs) like the RX 6400 has, or to an even smaller number.
VideoCardz estimates that the main difference against the Radeon RX 6400 will probably be that this cheaper version, the RX 6300 will only get a meager 2GB of memory. So the prospects for gaming use will probably be very minimal (unless we’re talking about just playing old games). This is a very likely scenario, as 2GB memory is what the mobile RX 6300M has. Also, the oddity with that model is that it has the Infinity Cache halved to just 8MB – so this is also something that could happen with the low-end desktop RX 6300.
We will find out the clock speeds, TDP and similar specifications later. Since the Navi 24 chip is probably used, the disadvantages widely discussed with the RX 6500 XT card will also apply here as well. That is, the interface is only PCIe 4.0 ×4, the card has no hardware video encoder and it also lacks a hardware AV1 video decoder (it can only do H.264, VP9 and HEVC). It also supports only two video outputs.
It’s hard to say how much this graphics card will help with the problem cited at the beginning – that in the low end, users are forced to buy relatively historic GPUs. AMD may not bewilling to go nearly as as low in price as they need to. So it is possible that instead of this card eliminating the Radeon RX 550 and/or GeForce GTX 1030 out of the market, this card may simply slot in above them. What happens remains to be seen, though.
However, there is also the question of whether this card will be generally available in store. AMD could probably make it OEM-only which would make it a hardware component only available as part of complete PC systems and not offered for sale separately.
Sources: VideoCardz, @KOMACHI_ENSAKA
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš, original text by Jan Olšan, editor for Cnews.cz
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