Something to look forward to: With the RDNA 3 generation of graphics cards, AMD essentially left the battle for high-end performance to Nvidia. New information suggests that Team Red also wants to dominate the upcoming round in Nvidia’s enthusiast sector. This decision may be related to AI hardware increasingly competing with gaming GPUs for semiconductor resources.
Numerous leakers recently claimed that AMD had canceled the upcoming Navi 41 and Navi 42 GPUs. If these rumors prove true, AMD’s RDNA 4 generation of graphics cards will not offer high-end models and will instead focus on the mid-range market.
Three sources told Kepler_L2 that the Navi 4 based maps will have a similar selection to RDNA 1 and Polaris. The most powerful consumer RDNA 1 GPU is the Radeon RX 5700 XT, while the following two generations included higher tier products such as the 6800, 6900, 6950, 7800 and 7900. Furthermore, All The Watts reported that the upcoming Navi chips only include Navi 43 and Navi 44. The GPUs could be included in future products such as the RX 8700, 8600 and 8500.
Bits And Chips claims AMD is focusing its limited allocation of TSMC semiconductors on building more FPGA and GPGPU chips, suggesting the company is sacrificing gaming products for AI. The AI boom brought Nvidia sales of over $10 billion in the last quarter. As a result, the company has redirected some of its production allocation from the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 cards to the highly profitable H100 AI GPUs.
AMD will sacrifice the performance of the next Radeon gaming GPUs (RX8000) at TSMC to boost FPGA and GPGPU production.
– Bits And Chips – Eng (@BitsAndChipsEng) September 8, 2023
Recently, technology companies have warned that increasing demand for AI server hardware could lead to renewed GPU shortages. Nvidia and TSMC attribute the problem to a shortage of chip-on-wafer-on-substrate packages – an important but costly component in the AI hardware manufacturing process.
The Radeon RX 8000 series is intended to compete with Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 5000 series. Both are expected to launch in 2024, but the Nvidia cards’ release could be delayed until 2025. Performance information is limited, but the GeForce RTX 5000, which uses TSMC’s 3nm process node, could offer significant improvements over current Ada Lovelace GPUs.
If AMD can’t keep up with Nvidia’s high-end next-gen offerings, the mid-range segment will likely become even more important for sales. Eight of the ten most popular GPUs in the August 2023 Steam Hardware Survey are mid-range GPUs and all have been on the market for over two years.