A prominent hardware leaker has uncovered new patch notes showing that the now reportedly canceled AMD Navi 4X/4C graphics cards would have been significantly more powerful than the current AMD flagship RX 7900 XTX.
Discovered by Kepler_L2 (through Tweaktown)new patch notes for AMD GFX12 are said to showcase Navi 4X die models, the newer equivalent of the Radeon RX 7900 are as advertised here.
Specifically, the patch notes reveal that the Navi 4X/4C GPUs would have had nine shadow engines, which is a significant upgrade over the six available from Navi 31, for a significant boost. RNDA 4 appears to be aimed at the higher-end crowd, so while the technology could technically have competed with Intel’s leading models, it’s likely that the top end was reduced as prices wanted to remain competitive.
It refers to a previous leak late last year, as the supposed RX 8900 XTX design had reportedly leaked. Documentation of Moore’s law is dead showed the Navi 4C configuration overview with an alleged patent for complex GPU architecture, revealing up to 12 chips in parallel without a central or master chip.
According to Video cardz, AMD decided to cancel the top-of-the-line RDNA 4 GPU, but no reason was given. To speculate, this could all have to do with prices. We’ve seen Nvidia’s mid-range and top-end cards explode in MSRP in the generation gap between Ampere and Ada, so it’s possible that Team Red wanted to prevent this.
Cost is king in the new GPU market
While we’re advocates of high-end hardware, it’s important to remember that the top end will always be a luxury that few can afford. There’s no doubt that the RTX 4090 is the best graphics card from a raw technical perspective, but it’s almost $600 more expensive than the RX 7900 XTX in terms of MSRP.
If AMD wanted to compete at the top, as it sounds like the 4C GPU could have done, we probably would have seen prices rise past the $1,000 mark, which the RX 7900 XTX avoided. Until the release of the RTX 4080 Super, AMD had the mid-range market cornered with its line of 1440p and 4K graphics cards for gamers, and losing that edge to compete on a power front would likely have done more harm than good .