AMD Radeon RX 6000 series has AV1 decoding support

Microsoft just confirmed that AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series supports the AV1 video codec. This means the big three all have new platforms with AV1 support, as we already knew that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series and Intel's processors with Xe-based integrated graphics support this video codec. AV1 will help to save bandwidth as it promises 50 percent better compression than H.264 and 20 better than VP9.

This fall, Microsoft’s hardware partners are rolling out hardware accelerated AV1 video support on new Windows 10 systems with the latest GPUs. With video consuming an ever-increasing portion of the world's internet traffic, better compression technology helps to improve video image quality while also reducing bandwidth consumption. AV1, which is developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), can reach 50% better compression than H.264 and 20% better than VP9 for the same video content. Enabling hardware support for AV1 allows users to get the benefits of this improved video codec, and shifting decode work from software to hardware typically reduces power consumption and increases battery life on mobile devices.