AMD confirms the launch date of its next graphics cards, with two big improvements

AMD has so far been very discreet about its next generation of graphics cards, while Nvidia’s RTX 50s are already the subject of numerous leaks and rumors.

Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, took advantage of the announcement of the third quarter 2024 results to finally discuss the RDNA 4 graphics architecture in a short press release:

Gaming Graphics revenue decreased year-over-year as we prepare to transition to our next-generation Radeon GPUs, based on the RDNA 4 architecture. In addition to a sharp increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities. We are on track to launch the first RDNA 4 GPUs in early 2025.

Lisa Su, CEO AMD

Unsurprisingly laconic in detail, this statement however confirms the rumors of recent months about Radeon RX 8000 graphics cards.

Radeon RX 8000: priority to ray tracing and AI

We already know that AMD does not intend to compete with Nvidia in the high-end segment to focus on more affordable, but also less powerful, GPUs.

According to a leak from last spring, AMD would have put all its energy into completely reviewing its ray tracing architecture, progress which can already be measured on the future PS5 Pro. In this little game, it is still significantly behind Nvidia, so all this progress is worth taking.

The other area cited by Lisa Su is obviously artificial intelligence. RDNA4 graphics cards could thus be more robust to handle demanding AI workloads.

This would also be an opportunity to launch the next major update of its FSR4 upscaling technology which, we hope, will exploit machine learning for its image reconstruction and generation algorithms.

A launch in early 2025 would share the same agenda as Nvidia, but with a very different pricing positioning. Can we expect announcements at CES which will begin on January 7, 2025 in Las Vegas? We will have to wait for AMD to confirm its presence there to be sure.