We may be waiting longer than expected for the AMD Radeon RX 8000 series, according to the latest leak about the next-gen graphics cards.
As spotted by Tom's Hardware, prominent hardware leaker Kepler has claimed in a post on X that Team Red won't be revealing its RDNA 4 GPUs until CES 2025 at the earliest.
Oh CES is for N48. N44 is probably Q2.July 5, 2024
We're told that the Navi 48 flagship is coming first at CES in January 2025, with Navi 44 following "probably" in Q2 of next year, so April 2025 at the earliest - if this is correct, of course.
This latest rumor very much contradicts previous reports which have claimed that Navi 48 cards could be out by the end of the year (save for the odd exception, mind, but even that prediction wasn't as pessimistic as Kepler's).
Both Navi 44 and 48 are mid-range graphics cards, as you'll likely recall, and we've heard claims that the latter flagship could come close to matching the current RX 7900 XTX, just at a much cheaper price point. That's the hope anyway, but take all of this with a whole lot of seasoning, naturally.
All signs point to RDNA 4 not making any major leaps
All signs we've seen for the RX 8000 series hint at little more than minor improvements. Indeed, to the point that RDNA 4 has been described as more of a "bug fix" for RX 7000 graphics cards than anything else.
In the past, Kepler broke the news about the now canceled Navi 4X / 4C die (which was rumored to have up to a 50% performance boost over the 7900 XTX) because it cost too much. This goes back to information from the same leaker last year claiming that RDNA 4 "will not have any high-end GPUs" as the red corner looks to be aiming at the mid-range market, as we already noted.
So, AMD's plan appears to be an attack on the mid-range and lower-tier segments of the GPU market, where hopefully some compelling value propositions can give these RDNA 4 graphics cards a shot at winning the hearts and minds of gamers away from Nvidia products.
