We’ve been seeing rumors for a while now saying that RDNA 4 will be a transitional architecture minor changes compared to RDNA 3. The reasons why AMD was going to make a move of this type were not clear, but as I told you at the time, we already have a precedent that helped us better understand where the shots are going. That precedent was the RDNA architecture.

When AMD launched RDNA, we found a graphics generation that was quite limited in terms of models, consisting only of Radeon RX 5500 XT, Radeon RX 5600 XT, Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700. AMD covered the most important and popular lines, but did not present a high-end model, and compared to the GeForce RTX 20, it had important shortcomings, such as the absence of hardware specialized in AI and ray tracing.

This allowed him to have more space to shape the RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000, one of AMD’s best graphics generations thanks to its excellent price-performance ratio. So, Something similar could happen with RDNA 4 and RDNA 5. The first will be a generation with a similar approach to what we saw with RDNA, and the second will be a big leap, as was the case with RDNA 2 at the time.

RDNA 4 polishes some things from RDNA 3

And with that we’ll find improvements in performance and efficiency, but generally it’s going to be a transitional generation that It won’t have a true high-end model, at least according to the latest information I’ve had a chance to see. The most relevant improvement in terms of performance is rumored to come in ray tracing performance, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

RDNA 4 will therefore be a minor evolution based on the RDNA 3 architecture. The big leap comes with RDNA 5a completely new architecture that will developed from scratchand this will theoretically bring about radical changes from that which will allow for improved performance on all fronts as well as efficiency.

It will be interesting to see if with RDNA 5 AMD finally decides to jump to a GPU with an MCM (multi-chip module) design, or if on the contrary it decides to keep a monolithic core design with L3 cache externalized in chiplets, as we have already seen with RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. It is important to remember that the introduction of the first graphics cards based on RDNA 5 will not take place before late 2025 or mid-2026.

AI generated images.