AMD Navi release date, news and rumors

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Now that AMD has revealed its first 7nm consumer graphics card, the Radeon VII, it’s about time for Team Red to reveal its other 7nm GPU architecture, Navi.

We have seen rumors that suggest AMD Navi won’t immediately occupy the high end of the market – even if it may include similar variable rate shading to Nvidia Turing. Instead, AMD Navi looks like it’ll occupy the mid range at first, along with the rumor of a GPU designed for the next generation of consoles. 

So, before we start exploring all the juicy gossip, speculation and even some official information, consider that nothing is set in stone yet. Still, you should keep this page bookmarked, as we’ll update it as soon as we hear anything new.

Cut to the Chase

• What is it? AMD's next-generation 7nm GPU architecture
• When is it out? 2018
• What will it cost? Pricing remains yet to be confirmed

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Image Credit: AMD

AMD Navi release date

Right now, the only official proof that Navi will be launch anytime soon is a small statement from AMD titled “Expanding our High-Performance Leadership with Focused 7nm Development.” 

In the release, AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster states that “We have already tapped out multiple 7nm products at TSMC, including our first 7nm GPU planned to launch later this year and our first 7nm server CPU that we plan to launch in 2019.”

Unfortunately, even with that statement we don’t really have a full picture of when or how AMD Navi is going to hit the market. Especially when the only 7nm GPUs have been the Radeon Instinct cards for workstations, Vega II and the AMD Radeon VII – a high-end part tapped to compete with the RTX 2080.

A lot of the speculation right now revolves around Navi being designed to power the next generation of game consoles, with gaming graphics cards to follow later. 

This all comes from that leaked roadmap we mentioned earlier, which suggests that AMD Navi will show up in the second half of 2019. However, the entire line probably won’t make an appearance at the same time. Instead, the cards that will likely show up in 2019 will be more mid-range products for budget-minded gamers with full-fat enthusiast grade 7nm cards showing up as late as 2020. 

This all comes from a leaked benchmark, however, but it would seem to fall in line with when we can expect the next generation of consoles – late 2019/early 2020. And, recent leaks that point to AMD Navi launching in October 2019 seem to back up that speculation.

But, we’ve seen other rumors that suggest Navi will show up much earlier. We’ve seen speculation that AMD may end up launching Navi alongside Ryzen 3rd Generation processors at Computex 2019 in July. That is still technically the second half of 2019, but it does seem a bit early. We’d advise taking that with a grain of salt.

AMD Navi also may come in laptops and even the next line of MacBooks if newly found code in macOS Mojave is to be believed. These Navi-powered MacBooks are rumored to arrive in July, which would follow just a month after the  purported debut of next-gen consoles.

Either way, we know that AMD Navi is coming, we’ve even seen rumors about Navi’s follow-up, called Arcturus, according to a report from Wccftech. It seems like AMD has a lot of stuff coming out in the next few years, we just have to wait to see what happens.   

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Image Credit: TechRadar

AMD Navi price

Over the last decade or so, AMD has essentially built a name for itself in the GPU space as the budget king. And, as Nvidia gets ready to release its next generation of Turing RTX graphics cards that cost upwards of a thousand bucks, AMD will probably double down on this – just like it released Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper to counter Intel.

As for the exact pricing, we’re not entirely sure, but we expect the pricing to follow in line with the Radeon RX 500 series. Those prices are below.

• AMD Radeon RX 550 - $114 (£99, AU$104)
• AMD Radeon RX 560 - $139 (£140, AU$235)
• AMD Radeon RX 570 - $280 (£250, AU$340)
• AMD Radeon RX 580 - $289 (£289, AU$450)

We can expect the prices to go up, however, due to the likely inclusion of GDDR6 memory, which we’ll dive into later. Either way, expect to pay more for the Radeon RX 650.

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Image Credit: AMD

AMD Navi specs

Beyond the rumor that it’s going to be running on a 7nm process and GDDR6, there’s not much we know about AMD Navi. Because AMD Navi is going to be the first mainstream GPU processor to break away from the GCN architecture, we could see more shaders and and faster clock speeds, while improving efficiency substantially.

However, we don’t think AMD is going to be doing much to compete on the high-end with Nvidia this time around. AMD Vega 7nm, which would have the horsepower to compete with Nvidia Turing, won’t be coming to gamers. Instead, it will likely appeal more towards professionals and creatives – with Apple likely being a huge customer. 

In the past AMD would compete with high-end Nvidia GPUs by just shoving multiple chips into a graphics cards and passing it along as a enthusiast-grade GPU. This time around, though, AMD has made it clear that it’s not interested in making multi-GPU setups, according to a report from PCWorld. This is backed up by the fact that only two of the AMD Radeon RX 500 series cards were even compatible with Crossfire. 

So, instead of any high-end GPU, we’ll likely see a Radeon RX 600 series that’ll continue the legacy of cards like the AMD Radeon RX 580, delivering respectable performance in modern titles at 1080p while keeping prices attainable for more budget-conscious gamers. So instead of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti rival, think more Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 in terms of direct competition.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to keep waiting for concrete information on AMD Navi. But, until then, keep this page bookmarked for all the latest news, rumors and speculation.     

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