AdminAMD’s upcoming next-generation RDNA 3 graphics cards are to boast new features that will develop in high-end games – in terms of high resolution and frame rate – promised the company’s CEO in a conversation about earnings.
How Wccftech (opens in a new tab) emphasized in an interview following the disclosure of AMD’s latest fiscal results, CEO Lisa Su said: “Our high-end RDNA 3 GPUs will deliver significant gains in performance and performance per watt over our current products and will include new features to support resolution, play with high frames per second. “
The performance per watt increase is expected to be 50% (or slightly more) over what we’ve heard from AMD before, the same big leap seen with the transition from RDNA to the current generation of RDNA 2 GPUs.
All of this is ahead of the November 3rd launch of next-gen graphics cards, and high-end models are set to be the first product in the RDNA 3 lineup. These entry-level GPUs are likely to be the RX 7900 XT, possibly alongside the more potent 7900 XTX variant, or perhaps the 7800 XT, according to with the latest rumors.
Note that these graphics cards won’t go on sale for a while – possibly as late as December, according to the latest speculation.
Analysis: So FSR 3.0 is inbound?
What could these new features be? (And it’s pretty telling that the AMD boss mentions “functions” in the plural, not just one innovation). Well, the most obvious candidate for something that will bolster high-end games and propel them forward with such high framerates is FSR 3.0. It would be a confrontation with Nvidia’s DLSS 3, which itself was introduced to the new generation Lovelace Team Green (although only the expensive flagship RTX 4090 is on sale now).
We’re mainly relying on the fact that the probability fits the description Su provides – a frame rate boost and something that allows you to play games upscaled to a resolution mimicking 4K – as well as the fact that FSR 3.0 was reportedly in the process of developing RDNA 3 in June.
The theory says it will be a big step forward and it could use artificial intelligence (machine learning) to make it more efficient, as does Nvidia DLSS (and Intel XeSS in this case). This is despite Team Red claiming AI isn’t necessary for quality scaling (though we can of course get FSR 3.0 without AI – they’re all just a whisper from the grapevine after all).
What was not mentioned or mentioned is ray tracing, and rumor has it that AMD may be significantly different from Nvidia’s performance in this department. In other words, the situation will not change that much, although the gap observed with the current generation cards may be somewhat bridged.
That said, there are some exciting rumors about the rasterization performance (non-ray tracing) that AMD can achieve (and even more so, performance). So keep your fingers crossed for this event as we may see something special that will really worry Nvidia – and hopefully we’ll increase our competitiveness in the next-gen GPU arena. (Although this will obviously depend on where AMD goes with pricing, not just performance.)
