ASRock, the leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, today launched the new AQUA, Taichi and Phantom Gaming series graphics cards based on AMD Radeon RX 7900 Series GPUs.

The new graphics cards are built on the groundbreaking AMD RDNA 3 architecture with chiplet technology. AMD RDNA 3 architecture delivers up to 54% more performance per watt than AMD RDNA 2, features the world's fastest interconnect linking the graphics and memory system chiplets at up to 5.3 TB/s, and offers up to 96 new unified compute units and second-generation AMD Infinity Cache technology. It also delivers increased AI throughput that provides up to 2.7X higher AI performance, and rearchitected compute units with second-generation ray tracing technology that provides up to 1.8X higher ray tracing architectural performance in select titles versus AMD RDNA 2 architecture.

AMD's next-generation Radeon RX 7900 high-end graphics cards are set to arrive next week and bring the new RDNA3 GPU architecture to the masses. However, it seems like the customers will have to fight for their purchase as the availability could be scarce at launch, leading to potentially increased prices with low stocks. According to Igor's Lab report, Germany will receive only 3,000 reference MBA (Made By AMD) units of Radeon RX 7900 series cards. In contrast, the rest of the EMEA region will receive only 7,000 MBA units. These numbers are lower than expected, so AIB partners may improve the supply once their designs hit shelves.

On the other hand, mainland China will not receive any MBA units of the new cards as a sign of increasing tension with Taiwan. Of course, AMD's board partners will supply their designs to China, and they are allowed to; however, it seems that only AMD is making a statement here. In addition to supply issues, the launch is rumored to be covered in BIOS issues such as memory leaks and the COVID-19 outbreak affecting production in closed factories. Of course, all of this information should be taken with a grain of salt, and we must wait for the official launch before making any further assumptions.

It's hardly a secret that AMD will announce its first RDNA 3 based GPUs on the 3rd of November and the company has now officially announced that that it'll hold a livestream that starts 1:00 pm (13:00) Pacific Daylight Time. The event goes under the name "together we advance_gaming". AMD didn't share much in terms of details about the event, all we know is that "AMD executives will provide details on the new high-performance, energy-efficient AMD RDNA 3 architecture that will deliver new levels of performance, efficiency and functionality to gamers and content creators."

AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series of graphics cards based on the RDNA 3 architecture are supposed to feature next-generation protocols all over the board. Today, according to a patch committed to the Linux kernel, we have information about display output choices AMD will present to consumers in the upcoming products. According to a Twitter user @Kepler_L2, who discovered this patch, we know that AMD will bundle DisplayPort 2.0 technology with UHBR 20 transmission mode. The UHBR 20 standard can provide a maximum of 80 Gbps bi-directional bandwidth, representing the highest bandwidth in a display output connector currently available. With this technology, a sample RDNA 3 GPU could display 16K resolution with Display Stream Compression, 10K without compression, or two 8K HDR screens running at 120 Hz refresh rate. All of this will be handled by Display Controller Next (DCN) engine for media.

The availability of DisplayPort 2.0 capable monitors is a story of its own. VESA noted that they should come at the end of 2021; however, they got delayed due to the lack of devices supporting this output. Having AMD's RDNA 3 cards as the newest product to support these monitors, we would likely see the market adapt to demand and few available products as the transition to the latest standard is in the process.

AMD's RDNA 2 architecture provided a significant performance increase for the company and allowed them to re-enter the high-end GPU market. AMD hopes to keep this momentum up with the launch of its RX 7900 XT card featuring the RDNA 3 architecture which will reportedly bring a further performance increase of at least 40% over the RX 6900 XT with internal projections as high as 60% - 80%. The RDNA 3 architecture is expected to feature a chiplet-based design with discrete I/O and compute dies similar to Ryzen processors. AMD has officially said they are targetting a 50% performance/watt increase over RDNA 2 with the new architecture which lends weight to this rumor. The RX 7900 XT is not expected to launch in the foreseeable future so take these rumors with a healthy dose of skepticism but if these performance improvements are anything close to accurate AMD could have a winner with RDNA 3.