AMD lists 14 different Navi 14 GPUs… are they all RX 5500-series or RX 5300 too?

AMD has only confirmed two different GPUs in the RX 5500 series, with the RX 5500M and RX 5500 both sporting 1,408 RDNA cores in laptops and on desktop respectively. But there are, however, another 12 different device ID strings in the Navi 14 range that have yet to be given actual graphics cards.

One of them will surely be the touted RX 5500 XT card, sporting the full-fat Navi 14 GPU with 1,536 RDNA cores inside it, and there are going to be versions with different levels of memory attached to them too, but what could the other reserved designations mean and will they all refer to RX 5500-series cards?

There’s a good chance a bunch of them are going to be saved for the man-bun hipsters and walking polo necks at Apple, with assorted SKUs going into the next-gen iMacs and MacBooks, but that’s not going to take care of all 12 of the unreserved device IDs. There’s also a chance that some of the IDs will remain dormant forever and only ever referred to testing GPUs never meant for public consumption.

The full device ID listing has been collated by the ever-reliable Komachi on the ol’ twitters and shows the RX 5500M and RX 5500 taking the 7340:C1 and 7340:C7 IDs respectively. Both of these GPU strings have appeared in the CompuBench database prior to launch, with the desktop version, as expected, seeming to outperform the mobile chip.

(7340~734FまでがNavi 14のID範囲ですが、その中でも現状予約されているPCI-ID/REV-IDは、これだけだよ！みたいなメモです) https://t.co/Vgb8f4jt30

— 比屋定さんの戯れ言@Komachi (@KOMACHI_ENSAKA) October 13, 2019

Both of these codes support GPUs that only come with 4GB of GDDR6 memory, so it looks like the initial chips coming out in the RX 5500-series are going to be the ones with the lower memory spec. The info from AMD released last week points to the RX 5500-series being able to offer graphics cards with up to 8GB of GDDR6, so we’re still expecting a host of other memory configurations to pop up towards the end of the year.

The AMD 7341:00 and AMD 7340:CF strings are the only other two of the device IDs highlighted to actually appear in the CompuBench database. From the specs listed in the database it looks like everything is identical between them and the RX 5500M and RX 5500 cards, but CompuBench doesn’t seem to have a lot of specific detail about the GPUs nailed down.

For example, it lists each of the chips as having up to 12 compute units, seemingly conflating the dual-CU work group processors. The full Navi 14 GPU does have 12 work group processors and therefore 24 compute units, but the RX 5500-series GPUs that have surfaced so far only sport 22 CUs and 11 work group processors.

Where the listings do differ, however, is in their respective memory configurations, and one specifically in a very bizarre manner. The 7340:00 spec comes with 8GB GDDR6, while the 7340:CF comes with just 3GB of graphics memory. Yeah, 3GB of VRAM…

Though the CompuBench benchmark numbers are tough to parse in terms of actual in-game performance, relative to each other the metrics shown on the 4GB desktop RX 5500 card is the highest performing GPU. Both the 8GB and 3GB cards perform worse, and bookend the RX 5500M, which suggests that maybe those two device IDs relate to more mobile SKUs, despite AMD only listing 4GB versions of the RX 5500M.

Or maybe the 3GB version has a lower-spec GPU with fewer CUs and RDNA cores with the potential for it to be one of the RX 5300-series cards.

There is also an RX 5500 XT version likely to be launched too, and I’d suggest that’s likely to be the 7340:C5 version if the Navi 10 IDs are any indication. With the RX 5700-series the XT card is denoted as 731F:C1 and the standard card as 731F:C4, if the more-powerful card always gets the lower designation then the RX 5500 XT could be 7340:C5 and with the standard RX 5500 sitting at the 7340:C7 position.

With the RX 5500-series being an OEM-first proposition, with AMD eschewing the DIY enthusiast market for its first mainstream Navi GPUs, it’s potentially going to be a while before we find out how the full range lines up. There’s always the possibility that not all the Navi 14 silicon is going to end up in the RX 5500-series, with an RX 5300-series rumoured to be in the pipeline. For now then, what those other 12 device IDs represent is all up for debate.