RDNA 4 Revealed: AMD Radeon RX 8000 Series Launching at CES 2025

During AMD’s June 2022 Financial Analyst Day, the company unveiled an updated roadmap for its RDNA/CDNA GPU architecture series, revealing that the RDNA 4 architecture would correspond to the Navi 4x series chipsets. AMD will reportedly forego high-end models, limiting the RDNA 4 architecture to two chipsets: Navi 48 and Navi 44. These chipsets will introduce a novel ray tracing hardware module design, but the launch has been postponed from 2024 to 2025.

Recent online speculation suggests that AMD is preparing to launch the RDNA 4 architecture GPUs at CES 2025 in early January, with the Navi 48 chipset leading the charge for the Radeon RX 8000 series graphics cards. The Navi 44 chipset is expected to follow a quarter later, targeting a Q2 2025 release.

Previous reports indicated that RDNA 4 is a refined iteration of RDNA 3, primarily focused on enhancing ray tracing performance, improving energy efficiency, and offering lower pricing for comparable performance. The most optimistic projections for the Navi 48 suggest it may match the performance of the Radeon RX 7900 XT, while the Navi 44 is intended to replace the Radeon RX 7600 series. Xilinx may begin to participate in AI software development, as AMD prioritizes building the ROCm ecosystem to capitalize on the lucrative artificial intelligence market.

Rumors suggest the Navi 48 will be equipped with 32 WGPs, totaling 64 CUs, a 256-bit memory interface, a memory bandwidth of 693GB/s, an effective bandwidth of 2770GB/s, and a GPU chip area of 240mm². The lower-spec Navi 44, targeting the mid-to-low-end market, will feature 16 WGPs, 32 CUs, a 128-bit memory interface, a memory bandwidth of 288GB/s, an effective bandwidth of 515GB/s, and a GPU chip area of 130mm². The Navi 4x series chipsets will reportedly transition to a 4nm manufacturing process to further enhance energy efficiency.