AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs sound like they’re going to really shake up the graphics card market when they arrive – the problem is that Team Red may not want to make those waves this year.
We just saw a video full of new rumors and theories about AMD’s next-generation graphics cards from Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID), although we should note that much of the scrapped spec information has already been mentioned by the YouTube leaker.
But to recap, the speculation (from MLID and elsewhere) is that AMD will come out with RDNA 4 in the mid-range and have Navi 48 and Navi 44 chips. So there won’t be more expensive GPUs this time (like RDNA 3’s current RX 7900 XTX flagship).
The new spec information that MLID provides here is that we can expect boost clocks of around 3GHz to 3.3GHz with these RDNA 4 GPUs, and that on the memory front we won’t be getting GDDR7 – AMD will likely use 20Gbps GDDR6 for this next one- generation of graphics cards.
The most telling performance prediction is how these GPUs will stack up against Nvidia’s current Lovelace lineup and AMD’s own current-gen offerings. We’re told the heavier Navi 48 affair should be somewhere between the performance of the 7900 XT and the 7900 XTX, most likely for rasterization (non-ray tracing frame rates).
That means this GPU should be equal to the outgoing Nvidia RTX 4080, or at best could be a rival to the RTX 4080 Super (add a lot of flavor to this, of course).
With the lower end Navi 44 graphics card we’re looking at performance between an RX 7600 XT and 7800 XT (again for rasterization), so we can expect roughly the equivalent of a 7700 XT, plus or minus 10% or so (or an RTX 4060 Ti killer, as MLID puts it).
If this all sounds a bit disappointing, the real key here will obviously be the value proposition. AMD is going to make the price/performance ratio more attractive – this is the central idea with RDNA 4 – and we can expect some temptingly priced GPUs with a great chance of making it onto our list of the best graphics cards.
In fact, MLID claims that the worst-case scenario is that AMD’s Navi 48 offering will deliver the performance of an RTX 4070 Ti Super for a few hundred dollars less than what Nvidia is asking for this new GPU. As mentioned, the best-case scenario could be an RTX 4080 Super equivalent, theoretically for around half the price.
However, the likelihood is somewhere in between, but the bottom line is that these RDNA 4 graphics cards will really punch above their weight in terms of value for money in the mid-range. MLID summarizes it as a 30% price/performance improvement across the board for AMD’s next-generation GPUs.
Note that we’re talking purely about rasterization performance here, and MLID doesn’t have any specific ray tracing chops. MLID says we can expect some improvement over RDNA 3 with ray tracing – that obviously has to be the case – but AMD won’t match Nvidia just yet. It will only be in RDNA 5 that Team Red will apparently really start working hard with ray tracing.
What could be the real disappointment here, however, is that we could be waiting longer than expected for this next generation of GPUs from AMD. Let’s dig into that a little more in the next section.
Analysis: Forget that rumored 2024 launch?
MLID has used some of its best sources for information on RDNA 4’s release date, and in many ways those insiders have different stories to tell. One source says that progress on driver development is going very well and a launch is expected in the third quarter of 2024, as previously rumored.
The other sources indicate that it is possible that AMD could launch RDNA 4 this year, perhaps in the third quarter, or perhaps in the fourth quarter, but that Team Red could wait until early 2025. Why? For two main reasons…
Firstly, Nvidia would not release the RTX 5090 until the end of 2024, and no other Blackwell graphics cards until 2025. So there will be no rival to Navi 48 until next year, and there is no need to comment on the 5090, That Good outside the class of RDNA 4.
The other reason is that AMD’s current generation of RDNA 3 graphics cards are selling well, and releasing RDNA 4 this year could cannabilize those sales. So if AMD can get more returns from selling RX 7900, 7800, and 7700 series graphics cards, why wouldn’t it do so, without pressure from Nvidia?
As long as RDNA 3 sales remain strong for AMD through mid-year and beyond – and price cuts seem to keep the unit shift momentum going nicely – we can’t see any reason why Team Red wouldn’t prefer that. keep RDNA 4 in the wings, given the general state of the GPU market and Nvidia’s likely launch timings.
This is just a theory, mind you, and AMD could still go for a launch later in 2024 – especially if Nvidia’s launch plans change or the balance of GPU power shifts in other ways. But based on the picture currently being painted, we’re thinking more about Q4 than Q3 right now: if RDNA 4 shows up this year, and maybe it doesn’t, reading between the lines…