If you’re weighing whether to upgrade to AMD’s latest graphics cards, consider waiting. The company has confirmed it will launch next-generation RDNA GPUs later this year.
AMD mentioned the Radeon cards when discussing its 2022 plans during an earnings call. "We look forward to another year of significant growth and share gains as we ramp our current products and launch our next wave of Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs," said CEO Lisa Su.
There’s not a lot known about RDNA 3. But the GPUs are expected to offer even more processing power by using a 5-nanometer manufacturing process, an upgrade from the 7nm technology used in most of the current RDNA 2 Radeon 6000 series.
AMD offered no specific time frame on the RDNA 3 GPU launch. But the products will probably arrive this fall, two years after the Radeon 6000 series initially launched.
However, the main problem facing today’s graphics cards is their limited supply. The ongoing semiconductor shortage has prevented both AMD and Nvidia from shipping out enough graphics cards to meet high customer demand.
In Tuesday’s earnings call, AMD’s CEO said the company made “a lot of progress” improving supplies last year, although the demand continues to outweigh supply. “And I expect to make more progress,” Su added. “Really, incremental capacity will come online through 2022, especially in the second half.”
AMD rival Nvidia has also said its own GPU supplies should improve during the second half of 2022, citing new investments in chip production. Still, increasing the manufacturing capacity may not provide enough relief. Other factors stopping GPUs from getting into consumers' hands include rampant scalping and cryptocurrency miners buying up all the supplies. So customers may still face hurdles when trying to snag an RDNA 3 graphics card later this year.