AMD's next-generation graphics card, currently codenamed Navi, is expected to be officially unveiled at Computex towards the end of this month, but when will it actually release? AMD has now confirmed it for a Q3 release, so before September and perhaps as soon as July.
The Navi graphics line has long been anticipated by AMD fans. As the successor to the somewhat lacklustre at launch, though increasingly value-for-money Vega line, AMD's Navi is expected to offer solid competition for Nvidia's mid-range cards like the GTX 16-series and the RTX 2060, at a price that's more reflective of its existing Polaris 500 GPUs. Likely set to replace the likes of the RX 580 and RX 590, Navi has some big shoes to fill, as those have been the most bang for buck cards for more than a year, despite Nvidia's dominance at the top end of the performance table.
Navi is rumored to come in two flavors, however. Navi 10 and 12 are thought to be the first-release, with mid-range performance perhaps reaching as high as an RTX 2070 — so a little more capable than a Vega 64 for just a few hundred dollars. Navi 20, however, could come in 2020, which we're told will provide RTX 2080 Ti-like performance.
It's all rumor and speculation for now, but early internal reports on Navi suggest that performance is favorable. This is also the generation of GPU that AMD long-standing Radeon Technology Group lead, Raja Koduri, is said to have worked on heavily during his time at the company, before moving on to his current position at Intel.
This summer will be big for AMD in more ways than one. Its Ryzen 3000-series CPUs are set to launch within the next month or so. If all goes to plan, AMD could have a bumper second half of the year.
