If you've been waiting to upgrade your graphics card to see what AMD has to offer to replace its aging RX 500 series, then you're in luck, as mid-range RX 5000-series graphics cards based on its Navi architecture are expected to debut in the coming weeks, likely before the middle of October.
We don't have firm details about the specifications of these cards as of yet, but the Navi 12 and 14-based graphics cards are expected to replace the likes of the RX 580 and RX 590, potentially offering performance comparable to the RX Vega 56, which itself has come down to around $300 in recent months and offers fantastic mid-range performance. If AMD can offer that kind of power at a lower price with a better TDP, it could be on to a real winner against Nvidia's GTX 16-series cards.
The rumors about the launch of these new cards come from PCGamesn which highlights a recent Mesa commit discussing the streamlined Navi 14 and 12 GPU cores. They are expected to debut with fewer stream processors than the RX 5700 and 5700 XT, though with potentially higher clock speeds to make up for that shortfall. Memory may be reduced too, though we wouldn't expect many cards below 8GB these days, as that's become a mainstream option, even among the RX 500 series cards.
These cards are expected to be called the RX 5600 and 5600 XT, or perhaps the 5500.
The big question is pricing. The RX 570 is an amazing entry-level gaming graphics card, offering stiff competition for even the GTX 1660, which is far more expensive. Can AMD offer greater performance than that at around the $140 mark? It remains to be seen.
