For months now, various leakers have indicated that AMD is stepping back from the high-end GPU competition in this generation, giving Nvidia a clear path to dominate the market. A recent discovery seems to confirm this, as the first RDNA 4 GPU to surface is the much-speculated Navi48.
Following AMD’s naming convention, the flagship RDNA 4 GPU should have been called Navi41. However, reports suggest that Navi41 will not be part of this generation, leading to the designation of Navi48 as the new flagship. A recent finding by Kepler_L2 on X seems to support this claim.
AMD has recently implemented the first patch that includes references to the Navi48 GPU, indicating active development and testing. This update can be seen in the merge commits to the ROCm Validation Suite on GitHub.
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Navi 48 https://t.co/Jfif1aVWLV
— Kepler (@Kepler_L2) April 5, 2024
Although this official sighting of the Navi48 GPU signifies progress, it is still in the early testing phase, as indicated by the preliminary configuration files. There is no mention yet of the Navi44, the smaller and less powerful counterpart in the RDNA 4 lineup, further suggesting that Navi48 may be the superior option.
Rumors suggest that RDNA 4 graphics cards are set to launch later this year, with potential features including GDDR6 memory, clock speeds up to 3.3GHz, a 256-bit bus width, and 32 work group processors (WGP) for the Navi48 chip. While the Navi48 may not outperform the top GPU from the RDNA 3 series, leaks hint at a performance level comparable to the recent RX 7900 GRE model but at a lower price point.
While official details are still pending, the emergence of the Navi48 GPU from AMD aligns with the rumored specifications, indicating a lack of competition for Nvidia’s high-end RTX 50-series graphics cards.
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