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AMD's high-end Navi GPU allegedly pops up in OpenVR benchmark, outperforms Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti

AMD is expected to launch the high-end Navi GPU around the time Nvidia plans to release the Ampere GPUs. (Source: HotHardware)
AMD is expected to launch the high-end Navi GPU around the time Nvidia plans to release the Ampere GPUs. (Source: HotHardware)
Even though the high-end Navi GPU is supposed to launch this summer, engineering samples appear to already be tested in the wild. The alleged high-end Navi model that popped in cyubeVR OpenVR benchmark, for example, is 17% faster than Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti, and performance could slightly improve for the commercial version.

AMD’s 7 nm Navi GPUs can be considered a success, judging by how well the RX 5700/XT , 5600/XT and 5500/XT models perform compared to Nvidia’s direct competitors. Still, the red team fans were hoping for a high-end model to take on the RTX 2080 Ti, but this one was never supposed to hit the market in 2019. AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that the flagship Navi GPU should be released this year, and the wait is supposed to be worth it as the high-end chip is based on the second gen RDNA architecture. Hardly 3 days have passed from the official confirmation, and an unnamed AMD GPU that appears to be the RTX 2080 Ti competitor pops on the cyubeVR OpenVR benchmark, seemingly wiping the floor with the Nvidia counterpart.

Interestingly enough, the unnamed GPU appears to be coupled with the freshly announced Ryzen 7 4800H CPU designed for laptops, while the RTX GPUs all run on desktop-grade CPUs like the Core i7-8700K and the i9-9900K. Since the high-end Navi is expected to be launched this summer, the tested model is probably an engineering sample, so there is still room for improvement, but even at these early stages, the AMD GPU managed to render 103.32 fps compared to the 88.1 fps rendered by the RTX 2080 Ti in the 1,512 x 1,680 test ran on the HTC Vive MV headset. This would roughly translate to around 17% increased performance.

VR benchmarks are not really that popular when comparing raw performance for gaming GPUs, but Nvidia natively has the upper hand in this sector. It looks like AMD has at least stepped up its VR game and it would be interesting to see if this performance edge is maintained in synthetic gaming benchmarks and AAA games. Also, the timing for the high-end Navi GPU might be a little off, as Nvidia is also planning to release the Ampere GPUs this summer, and these are expected to bring performance gains of around 50% over the Turing models.

Thus, the high-end Navi could end up 30% slower than the Ampere GPUs, but this does not mean that AMD's flagship would end up DOA, as price points are another important factor to consider.

Comparison of the high-end Navi GPU and Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti featured in the cyubeVR OpenVR benchmark (Source: AMD subreddit)
Comparison of the high-end Navi GPU and Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti featured in the cyubeVR OpenVR benchmark (Source: AMD subreddit)
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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2020 01 > AMD's high-end Navi GPU allegedly pops up in OpenVR benchmark, outperforms Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti
Bogdan Solca, 2020-01-10 (Update: 2020-01-10)