AMD Nashira Summit GPU Spotted, Possibly RDNA3 with a Multi-Chip Design
A new AMD GPU codenamed Nashira Summit has just been spotted and benchmarked in Ashes of the Singularity. Not much is known about Nashira Summit, but we suspect it could be a mid-range RDNA2 product, or quite possibly RDNA3.
At the moment, there is very little detail about Nashira Summit – most of the information we have on this codenamed GPU is in the Ashes benchmark, meaning there is precious little info to go on. This also coincides with another just-as-mysterious codename, Nashira Point, that we also don't know much about.
There are currently two theories as to what Nashira Summit could potentially be: The first is that this is a Navi 22 or Navi 23 product. Since the RX 6800 launch, AMD has been very quiet on future RDNA2 products to combat Nvidia's mid-range Ampere GPUs. But we do know Navi 22/23 GPUs exist, it's just a matter of time before they get released, and AMD gives each one a codename.
However, the second theory is much more intriguing; leaker "wjm47196" from Chip Hell believes Nashira Summit could be based on the RDNA3 architecture and feature a multi-chip module design. The poster thinks that a recent AMD patent for a multi-chiplet design backs up the theory. Additionally, in the Ashes benchmark, we see two Nashira Summit GPUs being used in tandem. Because there are no multi-chiplet GPUs on the market today, Ashes of the Singularity could be seeing both chiplets as fully separate graphical devices by accident.
However, before you get your hopes up, be aware that Ashes of the Singularity is one of the only DX12 titles to fully support multi-GPU configurations that don't rely on Crossfire or SLI. So we could, legitimately, be seeing two regular GPUs (perhaps Navi 22/23) being used together. However, it would be strange for AMD (or whoever tested these GPUs) to benchmark two GPUs at once if they weren't designed to run together in the first place.
Looking at the benchmark itself, we can see the two Nashira Summit GPUs used to run the game, a Ryzen 5 3600X Hexa-core CPU with SMT disabled (strangely), and 32GB of RAM. The system scored a 49.5 frame rate average and a CPU frame rate average of 64. Unfortunately, the system uses custom graphical settings, so we can't directly compare these results to other benchmark results. Feel free to come to your own conclusions.
For now, we'll have to wait and see what Nashira Summit actually is. If this is legitimately RDNA3 and it's a multi-chip design, it could mark the first step towards multi-chip GPUs for enthusiasts.
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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.