AMD RDNA 4 architecture rumor: 3nm and 5nm nodes for next-gen GPUs

AMD might have its next-gen RDNA 3 graphics architecture in the oven right now and preparing to offer up some delicious new graphics cards in 2022 -- but the RDNA 4 architecture is right behind it, with some juicy new rumors today.

According to leaker Greymon55 on Twitter, the next-gen RDNA 4 architecture -- which should arrive in the form of AMD's new Radeon RX 8000 series graphics cards -- will be made on 3nm and 5nm nodes. The new Navi 4X MCM chips will be made on 3nm graphics tiles and 5nm I/O tiles, meanwhile the RDNA 3 MCM GPUs will use both the 5nm and 6nm nodes.

The new MCM design -- or multi-chip module -- will be a very large part of GPUs moving forward. AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA will use the MCM or MCD (multi-chip module or multi-chip die) on their next-generation GPU architectures in 2022 and beyond.

We don't know much about the RDNA 4 architecture itself, but we should expect some gigantic performance improvements between the GPU generations. RDNA 3 will have huge performance gains over RDNA 2, and those same (and probably more) performance gains from RDNA 4 over RDNA 3 will make RDNA 2 look like an AGP card.