AMD to Launch New Enthusiast-Class Gaming Graphics Cards in Q3-2023

During the Q2-2023 Financial Results call, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed that the company will be releasing new "enthusiast-class" gaming graphics cards sometime in Q3-2023, which is before October. Dr Su stated, "In gaming graphics, we expanded our Radeon 7000 GPU series in the second quarter with the launch of our mainstream RX 7600 cards for 1080p gaming. We are on track to further expand our RDNA 3 GPU offerings with the launch of new, enthusiast-class Radeon 7000 series cards in the third quarter."

There are two possibilities for what "enthusiast class" could mean. The first possibility is the introduction of the RX 7800 series, including the RX 7800 XT, which is expected to have similar specifications to the limited-edition RX 7900 GRE. Another possibility is the RX 7950 series. Testing has shown that the RX 7900 GRE offers comparable raster 3D performance to the previous-generation RX 6950 XT, but with improved ray tracing performance due to better Ray Accelerators. However, it falls behind the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti that AMD is competing with. To create a compelling "RX 7800 XT" product, AMD would need to ensure it performs better than the RX 7900 GRE, which could be achieved through higher clock speeds or additional CU. The Radeon RX 7950 series aims to significantly improve performance over the RX 7900 series by increasing clock speeds and power limits. AMD may be hoping that the RX 7950 XTX will challenge the performance crown held by the RTX 4090, while the RX 7950 XT could come closer to the performance of the RTX 4080. The current RX 7900 XT already outperforms the RTX 4070 Ti.

The announcement could also suggest the possibility of mobile versions of the RX 7900 series. AMD has already developed a mobile-friendly package for the desktop RX 7900 GRE, which is physically smaller than the regular "Navi 31" and optimized for notebooks. The lower pin-count of this package may indicate a narrower 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory bus and fewer power pins to accommodate lower power limits.