While many wishful gamers are still waiting to knab a current generation graphics card, there may be a silver lining to the ongoing shortages. Details about the next generation of graphics cards from AMD are beginning to emerge, and the performance outlook is promising. Just recently, VideoCardz published a screenshot of an AMD engineer’s LinkedIn profile that mentions alleged specs on next-gen AMD RDNA 3 GPU designs, and it hints that large generational performance gains are coming. Again.
There have been rumors circulating for a while now about AMD introducing multi-chip module (MCM) designs for its RDNA 3-based GPU designs. The project listing on the AMD engineer’s profile seems to confirm the tech will indeed be ready. For those unfamiliar, MCM GPUs have huge potential, as the tech will allow chip designers to piece together multiple chiplets for a packaged product with significantly better specs than would be possible on a traditional monolithic (single chip) GPU. One of the holdbacks for many years has been with figuring out a way for multiple chips to communicate without introducing significant amounts of latency, among other issues.
As you can imagine, this made multi-die GPUs impractical for gaming applications for years. It’s no secret that gamers prefer minimal latency.
Perhaps that’s about to change
While AMD hasn’t committed to anything official yet, previous leaks in combination with this project listing make it possible to draw some conclusions about what’s coming. According to the information, the Navi31 and Navi32 GPU designs will feature both 5nm and 6nm design aspects. A die featuring two separate manufacturing nodes is connotative of an MCM design. And there are additional chip size, power efficiency, and performance benefits to using the more advanced 5nm node for part of the GPU.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the information on this engineers project profile has since been removed.
With MCM designs powering RDNA 3 GPU products, AMD would pose a serious threat to Nvidia’s market share next generation in the high end. Nvidia is expected to use the TSMC 5nm node for its GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs as well, but we still know very little about how Team Green plans to achieve better gaming performance for its next generation products. Rumors suggest the node shrink will couple with far more CUDA cores and higher TDPs to drive performance, but only time will tell.
It would be great to see AMD oust Nvidia in gaming performance next generation for the sake of bringing some much needed competition to the GPU market. That, and it would further incentivize Nvidia and Intel to release MCM-based GPU products in order to compete. It will certainly be an interesting next few years once supply improves and next generation products release.
