AMD's RDNA 4 'RX 8000' Series Could Be Made on 3nm, 5nm Nodes

RJ Pierce, Tech Times 21 August 2021, 10:08 am

AMD hasn't even released RDNA 3 yet, but there are already rumors about RDNA 4, it seems.

(Photo : Neil Godwin/Maximum PC Magazine/Future via Getty Images)
An AMD Radeon RX 480 PC graphics card, taken on July 6, 2016.

A prominent industry leaker named Greymon55 on Twitter said that the next-gen RDNA 4 graphics cards from AMD would also be made on two different process nodes, reports WCCFTech. These would be the 3nm and 5nm nodes, respectively.

Here is the tweet:

Next I bet 5nm refresh lmao. 😈
— rdkmy3002 (@rdkmy3002) August 17, 2021

This could mean that AMD will be building RDNA 4 almost similar to RDNA 3, which is made using MCMs (multi-chip modules) and two different process nodes. Furthermore, the RDNA 4 rumors also alleged that it will power the upcoming Navi 4X series, which has the flagship Navi 41 chip.

It could also mean that while Team Red still wants to milk their RDNA architecture for all its worth, they're not doing any refreshes of older ones such as RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. The 3nm node is expected to be used for the GCD (graphics core die), while the 5nm node is going to be for the MCD (multi-cache die). A planned launch is set sometime in 2024, though there's no confirmation yet.

This release window means that AMD's RDNA 4 will be going up against the successor to the Lovelace GPUs from NVIDIA and the ARC Battle Mage or Celestial chips from Intel.

This is still an obviously long wait for now, so fans can look forward to the impending launch of RDNA 3, which Forbes reports would be released by AMD alongside Zen 4 CPUs in late 2022.

AMD RDNA 4: What To Expect?

AMD is close to ending the current-gen RX 6000 series with the recent release of the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which did deliver on its performance promise despite its iffy price-performance balance. Team Red might even launch a lower-end card (an RX 6500 XT, perhaps, like the 5500 XT?), but as for now, there's not even a shadow of the GPU, so don't get your hopes up. This sets things up now for both RDNA 3 and RDNA 4.

(Photo : Zhu Difeng/VCG via Getty Images)
BEIJING, CHINA - DECEMBER 06: The headquarters of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is pictured on December 6, 2020 in Beijing, China.

The purported launch window for RDNA 4 is still four long years away, so it's impossible to make accurate predictions. But maybe fans could take some clues from the upcoming Radeon chips based on RDNA 3.

MCMs are the main selling proposition of these chips, according to the most recent bits of information about them. According to WCCFTech, MCMs are designed to bump up the cores (and by extension, the real-world performance) of the RX 7000 graphics cards to a massive 15,360 total cores in the flagship part: the next-gen RX 7900 XT.

There is already an insane performance jump from RX 6000 to RX 7000 simply because of AMD's new architecture, so it could be safe to assume that the jump to RX 8000 would be way more insane.

A total of five different tiers will classify the new RDNA 4 Radeon cards, with the flagship part being the Navi 41 chip, high-end being the Navi 42, mid-tier would be Navi 43, and the entry-level would be Navi 44.

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Written by RJ Pierce