AMD held its 2024 Q3 earnings call this week where the company confirmed that next-gen RDNA 4 graphics cards would launch in early 2025. AMD's CEO Dr. Lisa Su said the new GPUs would be part of the strongest PC portfolio in AMD's history.
"We are on track to launch the first RDNA 4 GPUs in early 2025,” Su said during the call, and later told PCWorld that the call was the first time AMD had announced that road map publicly.
In describing the new GPU capabilities, Su said on the call, "In addition to a strong increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities."
The reveal of next year's chip, seems to confirm a leak from this week claiming that AMD would reveal RNDA 4 graphics at CES 2025 in January alongside a number of other parts including the Ryzan AI 300 Max range, the Ryzen Z2 extreme for handheld APUs, and the Ryzen 9 CPU for desktops (via Videocardz).
During the call, AMD revealed that most of the company's revenue is based in data centers with gaming accounting for just 2% of the firm's profits. Su did note in the call that revenue has fallen in the gaming sector, which can partially be attributed to a seeming winding down of the current generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Though that could change in the next couple of years.
Su intimated that AMD is leaning into AI with her goal to "make AMD the end-to-end AI leader." This isn't really a surprise since AMD appears to be going down the same AI-focused path as rival Nvidia who has seemingly fully pivoted to artificial intelligence.
Despite a leaning away from gaming, AMD is clearly still working in the sector and CES 2025 should be exciting for PC gaming fans. Nvidia is expected to reveal the RTX 5000 series, which are sounding pretty powerful. If Intel ever figures out Arrow Lake or gets sold, their next lines should fill out the CES roster as well.
