Twitter user Greymon55, recently responsible for one or the other rumor about AMD RDNA 3 alias Radeon RX 7000 and Nvidia Lovelace alias GeForce RTX 4000, brings a refresh to the current RDNA-2 GPUs come into play as the basis for the smaller next-generation models.
Will high-end with RDNA 2 be the entry-level class in the future?
Greymon55 himself laid the basis for these rumors a few days ago by indicating that RDNA 3 will only be used in the three “large” GPUs (presumably in multi-chip design) Navi 31, 32 and 33. 3DCenter then asked what will be used in models with smaller GPUs: The current RDNA-2 GPUs Navi 21 to Navi 23 (in the future possibly also Navi 24), or their new editions, for example in 6 nm -Process? Gremony55's answer: “6 nm refresh”.
6nm refresh
& mdash; Greymon55 (@ greymon55) August 16, 2021
The Radeon RX 6000 has not yet been refreshed
However, it cannot be deduced from the current generation that there will be any new products below the RDNA-3 variants with the presumed GPUs Navi 31, 32 and 33. The Radeon RX 6000 is currently only available on the basis of the three large RDNA-2 GPUs Navi 21 to 23, among which AMD sells the old RDNA series without adding them by name – with or without adaptation – to the new series. In the past, both AMD and Nvidia have repeatedly transferred older generation models to the latest generation under new names, sometimes with and sometimes without technical adjustments.
The fact that this step has not yet been taken with the Radeon RX 6000 could also be due to the current situation: In view of the demand for high-end graphics cards, for which valuable wafer and production capacities have to be booked, it is not worthwhile for the manufacturer to reissue cheaper series with old technology. Their GPUs are tried and tested and potentially cheaper to manufacture – but this assumes that there is the necessary capacities at all or that there is no better use for them. And that's not currently the case, especially since RDNA and RDNA 2 are based on the same manufacturing. For AMD, it is therefore more worthwhile to expose a wafer with RDNA-2 GPUs and sell them as Radeon RX 6000 more expensively than to manufacture RDNA-1 GPUs and to sell the Radeon RX 6500 or 6400 as an inexpensive entry-level model.
That could change with the Radeon RX 7000 and that doesn't even mean the demand for GPUs drop significantly. The reason: RDNA 3 will most likely use a different process. Continuing to manufacture the small Radeon RX 7000 using the 7 nm process would not mean any internal competition. It remains to be seen whether the 6 nm rumor will come true.