AMD Navi release date, GPU specs, rumours, and performance

The next-gen AMD Navi graphics cards will deliver our first taste of a wholly new Radeon GPU design since Vega - though that is being given a fresh lick of paint with the AMD Radeon VII gaming GPU which is about to launch. The next-gen 7nm Navi GPUs will most likely be specced to dominate the mid-range market rather than try and go toe-to-toe with Nvidia's Turing GPUs at the high end.

Sadly, Dr. Su only mentioned Navi once in her CES keynote, and that was in an off-hand manner mentioning upcoming architectures in her wrapping up. Though she did confirm, both at CES and later during its Q4 earnings call, that there would indeed be next-generation Navi GPUs coming this year...

And our industry sources have suggested it’s not too far-fetched to think the red team will manage to get its long-awaited graphics architecture onto the shelves in time for a 2019 launch in the first half of this year.

But why should you wait for the next 7nm Radeon GPU? The new AMD Navi GPU architecture will most likely be the direct successor to the current mid-range Polaris 500-series graphics cards, and not the more recent, more high-end RX Vega architecture. That's being followed up by AMD's Radeon VII graphics card, recently announced by Lisa Su over in Las Vegas and promising Nvidia RTX 2080 comparable performance.