After the best part of two decades, AMD is reportedly considering dropping the AMD Radeon brand in favor of a new naming scheme for its next-gen GPUs. According to the latest gossip on the tech grapevine, AMD’s RDNA 5 GPU architecture will be a “clean sheet” design, much like the company’s Zen CPU architecture back in 2017, and graphics cards based on it could be given a new name.
The AMD RDNA 5 GPU architecture isn’t expected to be released for a while yet, especially as RDNA 4 isn’t even out. However, AMD’s RDNA 4 graphics cards aren’t expected to compete with Nvidia for the best graphics card title at the high end, with current rumors pointing to the top RDNA 4 GPUs offering RTX 4080 performance for half the price, and leaving the top end of the market to Nvidia.
That could apparently all change when AMD releases RDNA 5. These latest rumors come from Chiphell forum user wjm47196, who has form when it comes to previous GPU leaks. Back in January 2022, wjm47196 correctly leaked that AMD was planning to release 50XT-series GPUs with 18Gbps memory, based on the Navi 21 and Navi 22 GPUs, which later did indeed turn out to be the Radeon RX 6950 XT and 6750 XT.
This time, a post by wjm47196 (spotted by Wccftech) says that RDNA 5 “will be a clean sheet design similar to the Zen series,” referring to the moment when AMD dropped its FX branding and Bulldozer architecture in favor of its far superior Zen architecture, complete with its highly successful Ryzen brand.
The post then suggests AMD could “even change the name” of these new graphics cards, which wjm47196 follows up with “not sure.” If I were in AMD’s shoes, though, and I had a brand new “clean sheet” GPU architecture in the works, I would absolutely give it a new name.
As I’ve argued before, AMD should drop the Radeon brand, as I think it’s become tarnished by several generations of GPUs that couldn’t keep up with Nvidia’s competition. The company has admitted that Radeon GPU sales have nosedived over the last year, despite aggressive pricing.
Of course, this is all still very much in the rumor phase right now, and it’s important to stress that AMD has made no official announcements about either its RDNA 5 architecture or its Radeon brand. We do really need strong competition in the GPU market, though, and a Zen moment in AMD’s GPU division would be great for gamers.
In the meantime, if you’re looking to buy a new AMD graphics card, we currently recommend the Radeon RX 7800 XT, which offers fantastic performance for its $499 asking price, and has 16GB of memory at its disposal too.