AMD Navi will loosely follow the same naming schema used across the company’s Ryzen CPUs: 3, 5, and 7. Reports of further AMD Navi graphics cards have been coming in thick and fast as we approach the suspected October release window, and the latest allude to entry-level and mainstream Radeon RX 5300 and RX 5500 GPUs filling out the stack alongside the RX 5700 cards.
First launched in July, AMD has introduced the RDNA architecture into the market with its RX 5700-series GPUs. The RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 target the mid- to high-end performance bracket, and leave the grunt work of mainstream and budget gaming to the ageing Polaris 500-series.
But perhaps not for long. Recent rumours alluded to graphics cards equipped with the Navi 12 and Navi 14 GPUs following shortly behind, and brandishing the RX 5500- and RX 5300-series nomenclature. The move would see AMD matching Ryzen note-for-note with the budget 5300-series, mainstream 5500-series, and high-end 5700-series. There’s even space up top for an RX 5900-series if AMD were to somehow supercharge Navi to compete with Nvidia in the enthusiast market.
The new naming convention would also tally with Scott Herkelman’s promise of a “consistent model naming scheme for the next five to 10 years”, starting with the RX 5700-series.
The RX 5500-series was alluded to within a mass registration with the EEC by partner Sapphire. These entries ran the gamut all the way from RX 5950 XT to RX 5500, which would suggest the filing was a contingency plan or careful cover up of AMD’s intentions.
The RX 5300-series evidence is a little more concrete, however. AMD’s budget branding was spotted by ComputerBase within HP PC product specifications. The listings specify two unreleased products: the AMD RX 5300XT and the B550A chipset.
With 4GB of GDDR5 cited within the HP listing, the RX 5300 XT is suspected to be a budget GPU through and through – although likely the best of the RX 5300-series bunch courtesy of the XT branding. While we cannot confirm the exact GPU to be utilised by the card, Navi 14 is the prime suspect. This GPU is likely comprised of 24 Compute Units (CUs), and is a far cry from the 40 CUs within the Navi 10 GPU of the RX 5700 XT.
The Navi 12 GPU then looks to be headed for the sure-fire RX 5500-series cards. These will need to outmanoeuvre the RX 570 and RX 590 in the mainstream market today, which is a mighty undertaking considering these Polaris’ cards superb price/performance today. To do so, we suspect AMD will be opting for an RDNA Compute Unit count somewhere in the low 30s, roughly comparable to the 32 and 36 GCN CU counts of the RX 570 and RX 580, respectively.
AMD’s mainstream graphics cards will also need the guts to outperform Nvidia’s 16-series Turing cards, and the Super variants reportedly on the way.
Both new Navi GPUs are expected before October 15, following an urgent and telling code influx into the Mesa 3D Graphics Library.