HardwareGraphics CardsAMD says ‘the performance data out there for RDNA 4 is completely inaccurate’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareGraphics CardsAMD says ‘the performance data out there for RDNA 4 is completely inaccurate’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: AMD)
In a cosy backstage chat, post-AMD CES keynote, David McAfee told us that everything you’ve heard about RDNA 4 performance is “completely inaccurate”. McAfee and fellow AMD exec, Frank Azor were explaining the absence of either newRX 9070 or RX 9070 XT graphics cardsfrom the keynote, fielding our questions about the new GPUs, new naming scheme, and AMD’s priorities for this “gamer-first” new Navi 4 architecture.
“The performance data that’s out there for RDNA 4 is completely inaccurate,” says McAfee, before Azor chimes in: “The other thing I would tell you is nobody,nobodyhas the final drivers, so how can the data be accurate? Not even the card manufacturers have it.”
So, as McAfee says, “don’t trust everything you read on the internet.” Except this. Cos, y’know, youcantrust me.
“We absolutely love the gaming community,” says Huynh, “and we look forward to telling you more about RDNA 4 and FSR 4 later this quarter. Now let’s shift gears to AI PCs…”
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The first thing to say is that AMD is keen to point out this is nothing to do with any manufacturing or development slip.
“RDNA 4 is absolutely on track from a development standpoint,” McAfee tells us. “What we are seeing in the lab is right where we want it to be, hitting all of our performance and power expectations.
“This has nothing to do with bumps in the road and the development of this product, it’s simply product timing and readiness to deliver the strongest performance punch that we can as we bring the product to market.”
(Image credit: AMD)
So, was it because of Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang taking to the CES stage later tonight to presumably unveil the new RTX 50-series Blackwell GPUs?
Azor fields this one: “There isn’t any one single thing. ‘Oh, we didn’t bring RDNA 4 to the show because of the comp[etition].’ it’s a multitude of different things. Did that weigh into our decision? Yeah, of course it went into our decision. But it isn’t any one thing. It’s giving it the proper stage.
CES 2025(Image credit: Future)Catch up with CES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
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(Image credit: Future)Catch up with CES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
(Image credit: Future)
Catch up with CES 2025:We’re on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
“It takes a long time to explain graphics properly. You have all the software elements, you have the ISV elements, you have the upscaling elements.We have to introduce you to the machine learning capabilities that RDNA 4 is going to have, which is going to take a little bit more time.
“So it’s a lot of different factors, but I’m not going to tell you that that wasn’t a factor that didn’t weigh into our decision, of course, it did.”
The new Navi 4 cards, the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, are different kinds of GPU to what Nvidia is expected to drop today, and AMD inevitably isn’t going to want them swallowed up in all the hype surrounding new mega-powerful, mega-expensive GeForce cards, or compared with them.
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