AMD Radeon 8900 XTX rumors point to next-gen GPU after the Radeon 7900 XTX
The Radeon 7900 XTX just came out, and it looks as if we're seeing the first far off signs of AMD's Radeon 8900 XTX GPU
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: AMD’s 8900 XTX already?
🤔 New RDNA 4 GPU rumors seem to suggest an 8900 Radeon XTX is coming
📅 But we probably won’t see the GPU release date anytime soon
🧂 Take these AMD leaks with a huge grain of salt
The AMD 8900 Radeon XTX rumors seem to be staring up – even though I just wrote the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT review – meaning the next generation of graphics cards may only be a couple of years away.
New rumors point to Navi41, a next-generation GPU based on the Navi 4 graphics architecture, spotted by ExtremeTech. For reference, the just-released AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is based on the Navi 3 graphics architecture, and the Navi 2 architecture is behind that PS5 restock some of you are still waiting for.
From these early leaks, it looks like the next-generation competitors for our best GPUs list are going to be much more powerful, with Team Red supposedly offering 50% more compute units. That’s a huge increase, much larger than the difference between the 7900 XTX and the last-gen flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT.
The VRAM is also rumored to get upgraded to faster GDDR7 memory, which would make it the first graphics card to use the new memory if true. That is, of course, if Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards don’t also make the switch. After all, Team Green already uses the faster GDDR6X memory for the RTX 4080, while AMD uses GDDR6 – though AMD does back it up with InfinityCache which more than makes up the difference.
With the way these types of things go, and how early it is, I’d recommend taking this with a huge grain of salt. This graphics card, if real, likely won’t see the light of day until at least 2024. We’re just going to have to wait and see what it’ll look like. I just hope it doesn’t come with another massive price hike.
New AMD GPUs already?
It might seem really early for new AMD graphics card rumors, especially if you’re used to how slowly game consoles – like Sony’s PlayStation 5 – see new iterations (we still haven’t seen solid PS5 Pro leaks). However, I typically expect new GPUs to hit the market about every two years – and it’s been that way for a while.
A lot of the details in this 8900 XTX leak are probably going to change by the time AMD’s new graphics cards come out – if they’re even accurate in the first place. So, it’s important not to get too excited over specs and performance information here.
There are some numbers being thrown around here like a “50% jump in Compute Units”, but until we know how much each individual Compute Unit has changed gen-on-gen, it’s impossible to know how much that will impact performance. There have been graphics card generations in the past where the per-CU performance actually dropped.
It’s unlikely that will happen here, but it is important to keep in mind how much things can change. I’ll be following these cards as the rumors start piling up over the next year or so, so be sure to stay tuned to The Shortcut. And, as always, if you have any CPU, GPU and computing questions, reach out to me on Twitter or leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you have to say – we’re in the realm of pure speculation now, so discussion is definitely encouraged.