AMD is not done with RDNA 2: New budget GPUs are coming

After the recent launch of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, AMD seems to be preparing additional budget-friendly graphics cards. Rumors have emerged pointing to a 2022 release of a Radeon RX 6000 XT refresh and a new RX 6500 non-XT. If the rumors prove to be true, these new GPUs would hit the market shortly before the release of next-generation RDNA 3 graphics cards.

As AMD prepares for the big year ahead, the company also talked about the previous year’s successes and the adjustments its making to satisfy the growing demand for its products.

RX 6500 is around $130.

— Greymon55 (@greymon55) February 2, 2022

The new rumors of a possible launch of entry-level AMD graphics cards come from Greymon55, a reliable leaker who often shares information about upcoming GPUs. According to Greymon’s tweet, AMD is allegedly preparing a refresh of its Radeon RX 6000 series with the “RX 6X50XT” naming convention.

According to what we know so far, the new RDNA 2 RX 6X50 XT lineup will feature only XT cards based on the Navi 21 and Navi 22 GPUs. Both of these GPUs are currently in use in some of the best graphics cards AMD has to offer, including the RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and others. Based on Greymon’s tweet, it seems safe to assume that the refreshed cards will be named RX 6950 XT, RX 6850 XT, and so forth.

The specs of these new cards are still a subject of speculation, but Wccftech shares that we may expect them to have 18Gbps GDDR6 memory dies. The leaker speculates that these cards may be released this summer, either in June or July 2022.

Although AMD’s latest entry-level offering, the RX 6500 XT, did not get too many good reviews (and was allegedly meant to be a laptop GPU), the company may also have a new RX 6500 non-XT graphics card in the works. Greymon55 suggests that the card will be really cheap, priced at just $130, which is $70 less than the XT version. This is also an RDNA 2 graphics card, this time based on the 6nm Navi 24 GPU core.

The RX 6500 non-XT is supposed to have specifications similar to those found in the RX 6400, a card that hasn’t been released on the consumer market. The RX 6400 has 768 cores, 4GB of GDDR6 memory, a 64-bit bus interface, 14Gbps of bandwidth, and 16MB of infinity cache. The card will reportedly be released in May of this year.

As AMD continues introducing new and refreshed products into the RDNA 2 family, it also plans to release new RDNA 3 graphics cards this year. The company once again confirmed the release of RX 7000 series graphics cards in 2022 during its recent 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. We have also made significant investments to secure the capacity needed to support our growth in 2022 and beyond,” said Lisa Su, CEO of AMD.

The share gains Su talks about in AMD’s earnings call are very substantial. Despite the ongoing chip shortage, the company has posted a 68% rise in overall revenue in 2021 when compared to 2020. AMD seems to want to continue in that direction, and according to Su, the company has made significant investments in order to improve the current wafer situation and perhaps inch closer toward satisfying the growing demand.

With releases rumored to arrive throughout 2022, there is no doubt that this will be a strong year for AMD. Between the new RDNA 3 GPUs, Zen 4 processors, and the rumored RDNA 2 cards, AMD enthusiasts will have a lot to look forward to.

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