AMD RDNA 4 GPU rumors: enhanced ray tracing, more perf on Radeon RX 8000, PS5 Pro console

AMD's next-generation RDNA 4 GPU architecture is still in the ovens, but we're hearing rumors of RDNA 4's new and enhanced Ray Tracing engine for Radeon RX 8000 series graphics cards, and Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console.

In a new post on X, leaker "Kepler" said that some of the new RT features coming with RDNA 4 will "most if not all" be found inside of the PS5 Pro console, not just RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs. Kepler shared some details of the ray tracing enhancements expected with RDNA 4:

• Double Ray Tracing Intersect Engine
• RT Instance Node Transform
• 64B RT Node
• Ray Tracing Tri-Pair Optimization
• Change flags encoded in barycentric to simplify the detection of procedural nodes
• BVH Footprint Improvement
• RT support for OBB and Instance Node Intersection

AMD will not be beating NVIDIA's next-gen Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs with the likes of the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 to be next-gen performance powerhouses. AMD will compete under those GPU power levels with its RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs, with enhanced ray tracing (RT) performance and power efficiency being the key features included with RDNA 4.

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Sony is taking advantage of the RDNA 4-based RT improvements for its upcoming PS5 Pro console, which will offer a great deal of performance over the standard PS5; thanks to the upgraded RDNA 4 GPU and the new features and RT improvements, the PS5 Pro will enjoy because of them.

When will we see RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs? We should expect them to debut in early 2025, with the flagship Navi 48 GPU rumored to debut in CES 2025 in January 2025, with the Navi 44 GPU rumored for Q2 2025. NVIDIA is expected to have its GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards debut later this year, flooding the market in 2025 with more models and more stock.