AMD says its next GPU will have more than just blazing speed

By Alan Truly September 20, 2022

A recent blog post from AMD was a reminder that speed isn’t the only consideration when building a gaming PC or graphics workstation. Power requirements for computers have increased significantly over the last few years, with both CPUs and GPUs drawing more to keep up with the demands of fast-paced and graphically-rich, modern games. As video quality and photo sizes increase, editing puts a heavier load on the system as well.

AMD’s top competitor, Nvidia, tends to make GPUs with greater power demands. AMD’s blog makes the case that speed doesn’t have to come at the expense of efficiency. Its current GPUs use RDNA 2, which features an improved performance-per-watt that’s 50% better than that of GCN, the previous architecture.

AMD Radeon RX 6900 graphics card hovers over an AMD red and black background. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

This is clearly important for gaming laptops that have a limited amount of battery power and reduced cooling capacity. You might be wondering why efficiency matters when you’re plugged into power and using a tower with plenty of room for ventilation. AMD points out that computers with higher power requirements place a burden on cooling, adding extra cost to the build, using more energy at a time when electricity costs are rising, and resulting in noisier computers that rely on multiple high-speed fans.

AMD’s RNDA 2 helped with those issues and RDNA 3 pushes efficiency even further. The next generation of chips will be the first AMD chip to be built with a 5nm process. As chip density increases, both performance and efficiency show improvements. AMD’s next-generation RDNA 3 GPUs are estimated to deliver another breakthrough in performance per watt, a 50% improvement over RDNA 2.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

That means your next AMD-based gaming PC could score a triple win, running cooler and quieter, while boosting performance to new levels.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Computing Writer

Alan is a Computing Writer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. A tech-enthusiast since his youth, Alan stays current on what is…

Computing

AMD just announced the graphics card everyone has been waiting for

AMD announces RX 7600 XT at CES 2024.

AMD just launched the RX 7600 XT at CES 2024. It's a graphics card that makes sense, and one that AMD fans have been waiting on ever since the launch of the original RX 7600. It might not do enough in the hotly contested market of graphics cards around $300, however.

Between the RX 7600 and the RX 7600 XT, not much has changed. These two graphics cards are based on the same GPU, and they come with the same number of cores. The XT model, however, boosts the clock speed by up to 10%, and it comes with a higher power draw at up to 190 watts.

Computing

Please, don’t buy an AMD GPU right now

RX 7900 XTX slotted into a test bench.

It's basically a foregone conclusion that Nvidia is launching new Super GPUs next week at CES. We have no official announcement from Nvidia, outside of a keynote presentation at the event, but a mountain of evidence shows that Team Green may be gearing up to launch three new graphics cards. But what about Team Red?

We have heard murmurs that AMD is set to launch a budget-focused RX 7600 XT soon, but the rumor mill has been quiet about a slate of new graphics cards. Even with a pile of graphics cards in stock at reasonable prices and few indications that AMD is going to upend its GPU lineup, it's best to wait a couple of weeks before picking up a new AMD GPU.
Super AMD GPUs? Unlikely

Computing

AMD might have a new graphics card next month, too

AMD RX 7600 on a pink background.

We weren't expecting to hear much about AMD's graphics cards in January, but a new rumor suggests we'll see a new GPU in just a few weeks. AMD is prepping the RX 7600 XT, according to Benchlife's sources (via VideoCardz). It's apparently an updated version of AMD's budget-focused RX 7600, sporting more VRAM and perhaps a better die.

To understand the rumored card, we have to look at the RX 7600 we already have. It's an 8GB graphics card based on the Navi 33 GPU. The card already maxes out the capabilities of the GPU with 32 Compute Units (CUs), equaling 2,048 cores. If AMD is preparing an RX 7600 XT, there are two possibilities. Either it will use the same maxed-out Navi 33 GPU or a stripped-down version of the Navi 32 GPU we see in cards like the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT. Hopefully, the latter is true. Although the RX 7600 is a solid 1080p graphics card, it remains about 30% slower than the next step up in AMD's lineup.