Thursday, January 2nd 2025
AMD to Launch Mid-range SKUs of the Radeon RX 9000 Series in March
AMD is expected to have a rather lean lineup of next-generation gaming GPUs powered by the RDNA 4 graphics architecture. The series is expected to debut at AMD's 2025 International CES keynote address, with product launches of the series-leading Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 performance-segment GPUs later this month. The RX 9070 should be available by late-January, although add-in board partners from China expect availability to ramp in February 2025. The series will see expansion with more announcements in March.
The RDNA 4 generation is driven mainly by two chips—the larger "Navi 48," and the smaller "Navi 44." The "Navi 48" will power the RX 9070 series, which are performance-segment and designed to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 series; but cut-down variants of the chip are also expected to power certain upper mid-range SKUs that go up against the RTX 5060 series. The "Navi 44" chip is expected to power certain high performance/price SKUs in the mid-range, which AMD will use to target price-points well under the $300-mark. This segment is expected to heat up as NVIDIA has current-generation RTX 4060 series, Intel just made a stab with the Arc B580, and is expected to launch a faster Arc B700-series SKU based on a maxed-out "BMG-G21" silicon.
Sources:
Board Channels, VideoCardz
The RDNA 4 generation is driven mainly by two chips—the larger "Navi 48," and the smaller "Navi 44." The "Navi 48" will power the RX 9070 series, which are performance-segment and designed to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 series; but cut-down variants of the chip are also expected to power certain upper mid-range SKUs that go up against the RTX 5060 series. The "Navi 44" chip is expected to power certain high performance/price SKUs in the mid-range, which AMD will use to target price-points well under the $300-mark. This segment is expected to heat up as NVIDIA has current-generation RTX 4060 series, Intel just made a stab with the Arc B580, and is expected to launch a faster Arc B700-series SKU based on a maxed-out "BMG-G21" silicon.
72 Comments on AMD to Launch Mid-range SKUs of the Radeon RX 9000 Series in March
1. Charges as much as it wants, and later exits the market forever.
2. Invests in market share by giving extremely deep discounts, and saves the situation at least for now...
I'm not saying they would lower the prices if successful, but at least offer meaningful improvements at the same price. Their 6000 series was great and competitive only because the node was miles ahead of nVidia. Yet they managed to have similar power efficiency and traditionally worse video playback or limited FPS efficiency. On equal nodes, AMD is years behind nVidia architecture since many GPU generations. Hopefully, they can invent something like X3D for CPUs because, unlike Intel, nVidia doesn't stop with progress, but raises the prices until they become so absurd that they need to rename the products to "justify" the cost.
The "drivers are shit" argument is very tiresome coming from people who haven't had a single AMD card since the 5700 XT (which was the last AMD card I had driver issues with).
Or do you mean Nvidia's obvious lack of care for Linux? If so, then yes, there really is a trench in driver quality in AMD's favour.
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Utter joke:
I mean, JFC.The 4080's AD103 is 98% enabled and other specifications are identical... thus it stands to reason the 4080S is up to 2% faster... :kookoo:
I'll just ask then: When was the last time you had an AMD card?I'm not lacking experience in that area as much as @Dr. Dro is lacking experience with modern AMD cards and drivers. But I get you, I'll play around with my Nvidia cards on Linux a bit more when time allows.
Your argument, however, is not really valid, which is why I quoted that specific part.
FTR, I have a Radeon laptop with the R5 5600H. It's not the latest architecture, but it's still pretty much the only graphics hardware I constantly have issues with.
I also love at how quick to jump you were to defend AMD on the basis of "don't listen to him, he hasn't had an RDNA card so he doesn't know!!" as if I knew absolutely nobody who has one :rolleyes: I said it before and I'll say it again... at the segment I buy, which is flagship to halo, I price NVIDIA's software support at around 25% of the price, up to $250. That's the point where I will start to consider AMD an option as long as the performance is the exact same between them. If it were to be between a 4080S and a 9070 XT... for me to tolerate the current state of the AMD drivers, it would need to be at least 25% cheaper.
If Nvidia's software support is worth that much to you because of your line of work, fair enough. But that's not a reason to criticise AMD drivers from an ordinary gamer's point of view. For installing Steam and clicking on a game without expecting any errors or bugs, AMD drivers are more than good enough.
Threads regarding upcoming RDNA 4 in the slightest: 1, individual apparently closed to any alternative
Threads regarding hardware that is older than 5 years old: 13
Threads regarding hardware that is older than 10 years old: 1
Threads requesting the miracle elixir of a VBIOS: 12
The problem you are reporting has probably more to do with others things you are running, than drivers.
Next argument, please.
2. Can you justify buying it, or is it so expensive that you'll make do with your 5-year-old GPU at reduced graphics settings.
I have a ton of disposable income and I get PC hardware for free, pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want. I still don't own a 7900XTX or 4090. Currently rocking a 7800XT because it does everything I need it to and gave me a free copy of Starfield, and it doesn't make my gaming room uncomfortably warm in summer.
I really hope the 9070XT is good. I will grab one at launch anyway, to replace the 7800XT out of sheer curiosity - but if it's offering anything less than 30% more performance/$ than Nvidia it's going to be another utterly dead generation for AMD. Let's face it, RDNA3 was 10-20% ahead of Nvidia for performance/$ and yet Nvidia's VRAMless rip-offs outsold AMD by 50-to-1.
Maybe if AMD stopped playing pricing games and focused on having a full line of competent cards for multiple generations instead of on a blue moon, they would sell. Seemed to work for the evergreen years....
6600
6800
7800XT
Other cards were good, but priced too high to be appealing for most people, and more importantly they were priced far too high at launch when the review coverage had the most impact on people. 7700XT is a great card, but it wasn't appealing at $450, and the $900 7900XT made no sense whatsoever until last summer when it dropped to a more appealing $650-700.
Decent products ruined by greed and abysmal marketing. I'd like to hope AMD have learned from this, but they've had so many opportunities to learn from this same poor pricing at launch and yet they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot like they have for at least the 6 years since the 5700-series.