RDNA 4 architecture will introduce a new ray tracing hardware design

At the Financial Analyst Day event in June 2022, AMD updated its GPU architecture roadmap for the RDNA/CDNA series, indicating that the RDNA 4 architecture will correspond to the Navi 4x series chips, slated for release in 2024. It is rumored that there will be only two RDNA 4 architecture chips, namely Navi 48 and Navi 44, with preliminary specifications having been previously leaked.

Recent discussions among enthusiasts suggest that the RDNA 4 architecture will introduce a completely new design for its ray tracing hardware module, diverging significantly from the RDNA 3 architecture’s approach. By comparison, RDNA 3’s advancements in ray tracing were merely architectural modifications built upon the RDNA 2 framework. It has also been reaffirmed that the RDNA 4 architecture’s Radeon RX 8000 series will not include high-end models, leaving Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture-based GeForce RTX 5080/5090 without a direct competitor.

Rumors state that Navi 48 is equipped with 32 Work Group Processors (WGP) comprising 64 Compute Units (CU), with a 256-bit memory interface and a memory bandwidth of 693GB/s, and an effective bandwidth of 2770GB/s. The chip size is projected to be 240mm². Conversely, the lower-spec Navi 44, aimed at the mid to low-end market, features 16 WGP and 32 CU, with a 128-bit memory interface, a memory bandwidth of 288GB/s, and an effective bandwidth of 515GB/s, with a chip size of 130mm². The Navi 4x series chips will transition to a 4nm manufacturing process to enhance energy efficiency further.

It is claimed that Navi 48 can deliver 50 TFLOPs of computational performance at 215 watts, while the Radeon RX 7800 XT offers 37 TFLOPs at 263 watts, compared to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, which provides 40 TFLOPs at 285 watts.