AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs rumored for 2025 debut: Navi 48 at CES, Navi 44 in Q2

AMD is reportedly gearing up to unveil its next-generation Radeon RX 8000 series "RDNA 4" GPUs in 2025, with new leaks suggesting the higher-end Navi 48 GPU will be unveiled at CES 2025 in January, while the entry-level Navi 44 GPU will be unleashed in Q2 2025.

We have been hearing all about NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" GPUs for months and months now, but it seems that AMD won't have anything to fight Blackwell in 2024, and we'll be waiting until 2025, which lines up with previous leaks. In a new post on X, leaker "Kepler_L2" said that "CES is for N48. N44 is probably Q2".

AMD's next-gen Navi 48 GPU should offer performance close to what we already have with the Navi 31 GPU that powers the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards, but with upgrades like improved ray tracing (RT) performance and more.

We've been hearing that the updated RDNA 4 GPU will be inside of Sony's upcoming beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console, with 45% faster rendering over the stock PS5 and 2-3x faster RT performance. Let's hope for those types of performance improvements from RDNA 4 on desktop Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs.

• Read more: PlayStation 5 Pro features next-gen RDNA 4-based ray tracing engine, allows 2-3x faster RT
• Read more: AMD's cancelled high-end Radeon RX 8900 XTX had 50% more shader engines than 7900 XTX

AMD will NOT be competing with the ultra-high-end GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards with RDNA 4, which is where we'll be waiting for the Radeon RX 9000 series "RDNA 5" graphics cards in 2026. We don't know what exactly to expect, but RDNA 5 is expected to be a complete redesign, a "clean sheet" and "Zen moment" for the Radeon GPU department.

• Read more: AMD's RDNA 5 will be a complete re-design, a 'clean sheet,' and a 'Zen moment' for Radeon
• Read more: AMD's next-gen RDNA 5 could feature unique 'multi-chiplet' GPU, with three dedicated dies

How will AMD compete against Blackwell with its next-gen RDNA 4: We can expect the higher-end Navi 48-based Radeon 8000 series GPU -- probably the Radeon RX 8900 XTX -- to feature more performance (not much more) but increased power efficiency, and much lower pricing. That's where AMD can win against NVIDIA in the sub $1000 market, but NVIDIA will have its GeForce RTX 40 series "Ada Lovelace" GPUs still flooding the market, so AMD will have to have something real special (price, power consumption, etc) to win gamers over.

In another post from Kepler, we're hearing that AMD's next-gen Navi 44 GPU will only have 8GB of VRAM, which is going to be a gigantic, massive marketing problem for AMD releasing next-gen RDNA 4-based GPUs in 2025 (and into 2026) with just 8GB of VRAM. This gives NVIDIA the chance to bump VRAM amounts on Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 series graphics card in the mid-range price segment with 12GB or even 16GB of VRAM.

AMD will be using GDDR7 memory from Micron, something the company recently stated in Micron's press release teasing GDDR7 memory, saying it would help make gaming "responsive and lifelike" so we could expect some nice tweaks to Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs using GDDR7 memory. AMD hasn't said much about RDNA 4 just yet, but we should expect tickets to the hype train to begin going on sale as we lead into the New Year.