Not much was revealed, but more than nothing
AMD revealed a lineup of new CPUs for 2025 during CES keynote, but not graphics cards. Although the new RDNA 4 graphics cards were believed to target CES reveal, the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT were not discussed. It seems out that the new cards were supposed to have just a “preview” at CES 2025. They were almost glossed over in the keynote, but outside of the video presentation, some information on the new cards was shared.
The Radeon RX 9000s were only previewed, not revealed, at CES 2025: the slides AMD gave to the media used the word “previewing” instead of “announcing”. It looks like the previous expectations counting on a full reveal now at CES and a release at the end of January were wrong, and that end-of-the-month date could only have been talking about a (paper) unveiling, while the actual availability won’t happen until some time later.
When will we see the graphics cards?
During the keynote, AMD only mentioned that more will be revealed on the RDNA 4 graphics cards sometime in the first quarter of the year (January to March). That means there will be another separate event for them outside of CES (perhaps at the end of January? There’s no official word though, just treat this as our guess). But again, this separate event for the cards doesn’t have to mean the start of store availability, so even if it is in January, it doesn’t mean that sales will start right away, it may be the usual paper unveiling before the actual release.
AMD has promised that at least two of these new graphics cards will be released (with actual availability) within the first quarter – the models explicitly mentioned in that context are the Radeon RX 9070 XT and the Radeon RX 9070. These should be cards with the Navi 48 chip with 4096 shaders and 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus (this is unofficial info). This may give the impression that the graphics cards will perhaps only come out at the end of March, and it may well end up like that, but a date sometime in February is probably not out of the question, either. Consider March to be the latest possible date, not the earliest.
These two models are supposed to replace the range of graphics card from the Radeon RX 7900 XT all the way down to the Radeon RX 7900 GRE and Radeon RX 7800 XT, which could perhaps be taken as a hint as to where their performance is supposed to be (it even matches the unofficial leaks and speculation quite well, which is kind of surprising). But we’d better wait for reviews.
It’s implied that the Radeon RX 7900 XTX will not be replaced (for now at least) and will remain on offer. This probably won’t just be about the older highend SKU having more (24GB) memory as its differentiator compared to the 16GB Radeon RX 9700 XT, it will probably also stay unsurpassed in performance. In other words, RX 9070 XT likely is under RTX 7900 XTX in total performance (so somewhere between the 7900 XT and XTX?).
The slide already shows that there will be Radeon RX 9060 series cards with a second chip, the Navi 44 with 2048 shaders (which may include two SKUs as well, a RX 9060 XT and a RX 9060 non-XT), but these cards are not promised to launch within the Q1/March timeframe. These cards should replace the Radeon RX 7800 XT (which appears to be between the 9070 and 9060 XT models positioning-wise), Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7600 XT. On the other hand, the regular Radeon RX 7600 isn’t being replaced, which means it will survive as a slower lower-end alternative to the Navi 44 – it’s still using a 6nm silicon, so it’ll probably keep being cheaper to manufacture.
RDNA 4: Better ray tracing… and AI?
While the Radeon GPUs didn’t get much of a mention in the keynote, slides and some information from another, press-only presentation were posted separately, so a sort of reveal did occur, just not live online. The use of RDNA 4 architecture in the new graphics cards is confirmed, but not much specifics have been given yet. AMD has confirmed that this generation’s chips use a 4nm process node, compared to the 5nm RDNA 3 architecture chips with 6nm MCD chiplets (the exception is the Navi 33 in the 7600 series, a monolithic 6nm die).
The architecture is supposed to have its general-purpose computing units optimized in an unspecified way and there should be improves ray tracing accelerators, which represent the third generation (RDNA 2 had the first, RDNA 3 and 3.5 the second). It is stated that the raytracing performance “per CU block” is improved, implying a higher computing capacity of the ray accelerators, which was talked about in leaked information and should already be confirmed for the PlayStation 5 Pro APU, which possibly also adopted the ray tracing acceleration from RDNA 4.
But the AI performance is also said to be improved. AMD says RDNA 4 will feature second-generation AI accelerators. This might need to be explained, as it’s usually stated that Radeons don’t have special AI acceleration as of now. This is not entirely true, as already RDNA 3 has the WMMA compute instructions that have higher performance in AI than completely normal shader computations would have (even though these operations run on standard CUs and not on separate units). And that’s why AMD lists the presence of AI accelerators in RDNA 3.
RDNA 4 should continue this and again accelerate AI operations using these WMMA instructions, but in an improved form and apparently their performance will be increased again (that’s why it’s called the second generation). There have been unofficial rumours that the theoretical compute throughput for matrix calculations could be doubled (possibly by utilising the sparsity feature) compared to RDNA 3 and RDNA 3.5, but that’s just a rumour for now, it’s not confirmed anywhere and AMD is keeping quiet about specific changes.
Some new AI features should also appear in Radeon drivers, more specifically in the AMD Software setup application, under the “Adrenaline AI” designation. Apparently it will be possible to converse with a built-in Chatbot (which will mainly answer questions about AMD products), have documents summarized, but also generate images. So it’s similar functionality to Nvidia’s Chat with RTX app. You will probably need to have relevant AI models downloaded to the PC, so this will probably cost a few gigabytes on the system SSD.
Additionally, the RDNA 4 chips are to feature improved hardware video compression – they are to include the second-generation Radiance Engine (RDNA 3 uses the first generation). This is supposed to improve the visual quality of the output. Again, there are no major details on this yet.
FSR 4: AI upscaling by AMD. Automatically usable in games with FSR 3.1?
AMD also teased FSR 4 upscaling, which will also be properly revealed later. However, it is confirmed that it will use artificial intelligence (like Nvidia DLSS and Intel XeSS). According to AMD, the FSR 4 technology is developed for GPUs with RDNA 4 architecture, so it’s uncertain whether it can be used – officially or unofficially – on older graphics cards (if so, Radeon RX 7000s with their more advanced AI acceleration have a better chance of working than older cards).
FSR 4 is supposed to provide quality upscaling to 4K resolution and include frame generation, as well as Anti-Lag 2 to compensate for the negative effect that frame generation has on latency (even with DLSS, this is an inherent problem of the concept, Nvidia merely compensates for it by using the analogous Reflex technology).
There is an interesting mention in the slide about “AMD FSR 4 upgrade”, which is supposed to be something available “for supported games with FSR 3.1 already integrated”. It could be that Radeon GPU drivers will be able to automatically add FSR 4 (via a library replacement) to games with FSR 3.1 support. In fact, FSR 3.1 was supposed to introduce an API added for easier integration that could allow something like this in theory. The notes mention that this “AMD FSR4 upgrade ” is only supposed to be supported on Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT. It’s not clear if this excludes the lower-end models of the RDNA 4 generation (Radeon RX 9060) as well, or if AMD just didn’t bother to mention those since they haven’t been officially announced yet.
Currently, the first game that will explicitly support FSR 4 is confirmed – Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Support is expected to appear sometime this year, no more has been promised yet.
What the partner and reference cards will look like
The last thing that has come out of CES 2025 so far are the upcoming cards themselves, actually (and the Navi 48 GPU, assuming the CG render seen in the slide below is realistic). AMD’s slide shows both reference and non-reference models, with the non-reference ones featuring three fans and fairly large coolers.
The reference cards using the design directly from AMD seem to be the two smallest ones. It looks like the reference “made by AMD” Radeon RX 9070 XT should have a three-fan cooler and the Radeon RX 9070 a lean two-fan only cooler.
What’s notable is that many of these cards are powered via three eight-pin connectors, which theoretically allows for power consumption over 375W (the absolute maximum of two connectors is 2×150W + just under 75W from the slot). However, this is unlikely to be the standard setup for the reference model, it’s likely that the premium highly-overclocked partner cards are presented here and the cheaper editions are missing – note that the cards usually have thick and bulky coolers. It has been fully confirmed that at least some (cheaper, non-overclocked?) cards will have just two connectors.
The GPU specs weren’t disclosed, but Asus does state one thing for its Radeon RX 9070 XT – the minimum required PSU wattage is 750 W. That’s the figure Asus lists for graphics cards like the Radeon RX 7700 XT (245W reference TDP) all the way up to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which has a reference TDP of 315 W (and a double 8-pin power delivery). But for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX (355W), Asus already prescribes a minimum of 850W. From this, we can probably assume that the default TDP of the Radeon RX 9070 XT will be below this value. However, those three-connector cards will probably mostly be overclocked, which may involve helping themselves to more juice than reference TDP value means to.
The usual partners – except MSI, which has abandoned AMD graphics cards, for whatever reason – are preparing their models. There will be RX 9070 (XT) cards from Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, Gigabyte, Asus, ASRock, but also from Acer and (for the Chinese market) Yeston and Vastarmor. The Asus and Gigabyte cards have already appeared in dedicated product renders, as you can see here.
More information on the new Radeon cards will follow later. How much later, that is still a question. Some minor details may probably leak or be officially announced during CES 2025, but AMD will probably leave the big stuff like specs, pricing and release dates for later.
Sources: AMD, techPowerUp
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
⠀
