AMD launched the Navi 10 graphics cards earlier this year based on the new RDNA architecture, marking a departure from the compute-efficient GCN design. With RDNA and Navi, team RTG is focusing on sheer gaming performance. That means low latencies and high core clocks coupled with fast but affordable GDDR6 memory. HBM was a disaster for AMD and most of the Vega cards largely flopped due to the high BOM and lukewarm sales. Navi is team red’s solution to reconquering its lost fortunes in the GPU space. Navi 10 (RX 5700 series) and Navi 14 (RX 5500 series) are already out and about challenging the GeForce cards at aggressive price points. But what is next for Navi?
We’ve been hearing rumors of a Big Navi based on RDNA 1 as well as Navi 20 which will support hardware-level ray-tracing and be built atop the 7nm+ RDNA 2 design. But when will it be released and what will the pricing be like? Let’s dig in.
The latest bit of info comes from KOMACHI_ESAKA (via Twitter) according to whom Navi 21 will be the next graphics card lineup from AMD. It will be based on the newer and improved RDNA 2 architecture and will also support hardware-level ray-tracing. As for the release date, we’ll probably see an announcement around CES with a hard launch at Computex 2020, right alongside Intel’s Xe and NVIDIA’s Ampere cards.
Where will Navi 21 fit? If we go by the present nomenclature, then it should be the flagship card competing with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, however, it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing Big Navi before the upper-midrange and midrange parts are launched. So I’m guessing Navi 21 will compete with the RTX 2080 & 2070 or the RTX 3080/3070 while Navi 22 will be Big Navi challenging the likes of the $1,000 2080 Ti Turing flagship.
Then there’s the question of the pricing. Expect Navi 20 to be priced the same as the Navi 10 cards at launch while Navi 22 will cost around $699 (same as the Radeon VII). There’s also mention of Navi 23 and Arcturus. The former most likely refers to the low-end Navi cards. As for the latter, that’s the successor to GCN in the Workstation space.
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