We recently reported the new generations of GPUs from Nvidia (GeForce RTX 6000 / Rubin) and AMD (RDNA 5) will not arrive until 2028. There was supposed to be one exception, however—AMD could reportedly release one of the new-generation cards in 2027. The information at the time did not say when exactly in that year this might happen. Now we have clarification, and it seems it will not be anytime soon either—as might have been expected.
While the other Radeon graphics cards with the RDNA 5 architecture are not due until 2028, according to the leaker going by the handle Kepler_L2, one of the chips could arrive as early as next year: a 3nm GPU designated AT2 (in a separate article, we discussed its specifications and where it might fall in performance). Now the same source has clarified that this will not mean a release anytime at the beginning of the year, as happened with the Radeon RX 9000 (which launched at the turn of February and March). According to him, these cards will definitely not launch in the next 3–5 months. This is also consistent with the fact that there have so far been no leaks of photos or other evidence, although some hints have already appeared in drivers.
Kepler_L2 then added that the earliest date when cards with the AT2 chip could be expected is the time of the Computex trade show in Taiwan, which takes place at the turn of May and June (although if the new graphics cards were unveiled there, sales would most likely begin only a few weeks later). However, it is not the case that Computex 2027 is a likely date for the launch of these graphics cards; if anything, quite the opposite. According to Kepler_L2, cards with the AT2 chip will most likely arrive only later in 2027—that is, in the summer or perhaps even more likely in the fall, which used to be the timeframe for new Radeon generation introductions (in both the RX 6000 and RX 7000 generations, although in the case of the Radeon RX 5000 and, before it, the Polaris and Vega generation GPUs, the debuts happened mid-year).
A release in the second half of the year—possibly even late in the fall—would also make sense given that the other GPUs of the same generation will not make it out before the end of the year and will slip into 2028. That would be fairly natural if only a few months separated them—as, for example, in the RX 6000 generation, where just the models with the Navi 21 chip launched before Christmas 2020, and the Radeon RX 6700 XT with Navi 22 joined in March 2021. It could be similar with the RDNA 5 generation chips.
This proposed timeline represent a shift, because last December Kepler_L2 was more optimistic and expected that the new-generation Radeon graphics cards could debut sometime in mid-2027. However, that may have been more of an estimate than information drawn from an actual AMD plan existing at the time.
The new Radeon graphics cards with the AT2 chip (whether they will be called RX 10000 or something else is not yet known) may therefore still be a whole year away at this point, even though we are slowly approaching the second anniversary of the release of the current GeForce RTX 5000 and Radeon RX 9000 generation of graphics cards. The possibility that AMD might manage to release AT2 before Nvidia has their new generation out raised heightened expectations, but the smaller competitor’s lead may not ultimately be that large.
Sources: VideoCardz, AnandTech Forum
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
