AMD Radeon GPUs based on RDNA5 architecture might feature new naming scheme

First rumors on RDNA5.

Hardware leaker ‘wjm47196’, who has not been very active recently, has shared some new details on the next-gen AMD graphics architecture. The last time we heard from ‘wjm’ was during the Radeon RX 6×50 XT refresh , which turned out to be true. Later, AMD launched its Radeon RX 7000 series based on RDNA3 architecture, now spanning across several SKUs and seemingly not expected to get any major updates in the near future.

The next update was supposed to be RDNA4, powering the rumored Radeon RX 8000 series, but it seems AMD has changed its plans entirely, and the new architecture is said to be ‘merely a bug fix for RDNA3’, with higher performance comparable to Radeon RX 7900 XT and faster ray tracing, which will also be used by Sony PlayStation 5 Pro .

What RDNA4 will lack, however, are high-end GPUs, which were supposedly canceled (Navi 41). Instead, AMD is now putting their efforts into a successor called RDNA5, which could be a clean sheet design similar to what Zen brought when it first came out in 2017. The RDNA5 or Navi 5 has already appeared in leaks, namely it was mentioned in Microsoft documents for the XBOX console expected to hit the market in the fiscal year 2028.

[…] RDNA3 actually didn’t meet its performance expectations, resulting in the big core frequency power curve going out of control. This includes, but is not limited to, conducting on-chip interconnect verification for the MI series and sharing R&D costs. The originally planned double 192m IF cache was also canceled due to cost and power consumption issues.

RDNA5 will be a clean sheet design similar to the Zen series (it might even get a name change, though this isn’t certain yet). Hence, there’s a need to widen the gap from RDNA4 to thoroughly conduct case studies and R&D. RDNA4 is merely a bug fix for RDNA3, so its performance is still as expected, at best comparable to the 79XT. However, there’s still an improvement in ray tracing.

— wjm47196 (translation)

The desktop and mobile discrete GPUs powered by RDNA5 do not have a release date, nor are there any leaks claiming the names of new GPUs. However, those shouldn’t be expected sooner than late 2025 or early 2026. What is on the table is the Radeon RX name change, with rumors suggesting AMD might follow the path of Ryzen AI 100 series , expected to debut alongside Strix Point APU series next month.

The rumor further alleges that a former team from Xilinx, a company that AMD acquired, are working on new AI software for ROCm (Radeon Open Compute Platform) software. Interestingly, one of the RDNA4 GPUs, the Navi 48 had already appeared in a leak for ROCm updates.

Source: Wjm47196 @ Chiphell via Wccftech