4nm Revolution: RDNA 4 Delivers Twice the Performance, Half the Cost

During AMD’s Financial Analyst Day event in June 2022, the company updated its GPU architectural roadmap for the RDNA/CDNA series, highlighting that the RDNA 4 architecture GPUs will correspond to the Navi 4x series chips. These chips, set to be manufactured using an advanced process, are slated for release in 2024. However, reports from the previous summer indicated significant “random issues” encountered during the development process, and due to production capacity allocation decisions, the next generation of Radeon RX 8000 series graphics cards will lack high-end models.

According to a report by Moore’s Law is Dead, the next-generation models built on the top-tier RDNA 4 architecture GPUs are expected to offer performance comparable to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but potentially at less than half the price. AMD aims to achieve this performance target with smaller, simpler chips, while significantly reducing the cost of PCBs. Additionally, the switch to a 4nm manufacturing process will lower power consumption and further enhance energy efficiency.

Current indications suggest that AMD’s Radeon RX 8000 series will not directly compete with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series based on the Blackwell architecture. Gamers might see a product line similar to the Radeon RX 5000 series, where the highest-end model offers a competitive price-performance ratio, tentatively priced around $400 (approximately 2872.52 Chinese Yuan), likely to be released before Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series.

According to previous statements, AMD is balancing the ongoing development of its existing RDNA 4 architecture with allocating more resources to accelerate the development of the RDNA 5 architecture. This strategy aims to quickly compensate for potential gaps in the product line caused by the cancellation of high-end models in the Navi 4x range.