RDNA 5 could be Radeon's Zen moment with brand new architecture as RDNA 4 is reportedly a bug fixing affair

It is no secret that RDNA 3 GPUs didn’t meet expectations. Before the Radeon RX 7000 cards officially launched, multiple reports presented RDNA 3 as a big step forward for AMD in both performance and efficiency. But the actual RX 7000 GPUs didn’t deliver on the promises made in leaks. However, according to a new rumor posted on Chiphell by wjm47196, AMD is planning to right the wrongs of RDNA 3 with RDNA 4.

The leaker suggests that RDNA 4 is just a bug fix for RDNA 3 which didn’t turn out as AMD expected it to due to factors like “sharing of R&D cost”. The leaker also gives power consumption and cost as the reasons for RDNA 3 not including 192 MB of Infinity Cache, leaving the top RDNA 3 offering, the RX 7900 XTX, with only 96 MB of Infinity Cache (Buy the RX 7900 XTX on Amazon).

However, even with fixes, RDNA 4 isn’t likely to bring revolutionary gains to the table, as the leaker claims RX 7900 XT levels of performance with better ray tracing. RDNA 4 bringing better RT performance seems to be a given at this point as multiple reports claim as such.

After the low to mid-range efforts with RDNA 4, AMD is expected to return to the flagship playing arena with the RDNA 5 GPUs. And the company might do so in a spectacular fashion. 

Wjm47196 asserts that the RDNA 5 is a brand-new architecture with a “clean sheet design similar to the Zen series”. To that end, the leaker calls the lack of RDNA 4 flagships a necessary gap for R&D purposes. This is in line with a past report from Moore’s Law Is Dead which stated that the cancellation of the high-end RDNA 4 cards was to focus on RDNA 5 development.

All in all, while RDNA 4 will give the high-end market to NVIDIA on a platter, RDNA 5 could be the GeForce challenger AMD fans have been waiting for.