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Rumor | AMD Navi 23 poised to be the much anticipated 'NVIDIA Killer', being readied for a mid-2020 launch to take on the RTX 2080 Ti

AMD is apparently referring to Navi 23 as the 'NVIDIA Killer'. (Source: Hot Hardware)
AMD is apparently referring to Navi 23 as the 'NVIDIA Killer'. (Source: Hot Hardware)
AMD is reportedly prepping Navi 23 to be a flagship GPU and is internally referring to it as the 'NVIDIA Killer' according to RedGamingTech's source. The specifications of Navi 23 are still unclear, but the source claims that AMD plans to release the new cards, which are likely to be based on RDNA 2.0 with ray tracing support, sometime in the mid-2020.

News about AMD prepping an RTX 2080/Ti competitor is not really new. We've seen indications pointing to AMD's plans of offering a viable RTX 2080 competitor before even the Navi 10 GPUs — the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT — were official. Recently, we've also reported about Navi 12 being the purported flagship offering from Team Red. Now, RedGamingTech quotes an AMD source who apparently has reliable information about the company's upcoming GPU plans. The below information is still a rumor so do take it with a pinch of salt.

RedGamingTech's source claims that there are two GPUs in development — Navi 21 and Navi 23 — slated for launch sometime in the middle of next year. Navi 23 is being internally referred to as the 'NVIDIA Killer'. We do not know what kind of a 'Killer' this would be — it could be a performance killer or a better price to performance one. The codename seems to be reflective of AMD's new-found confidence derived from the latest Navi launch, which was beset with many delays and uncertainties. 

Navi 23 will likely be based on RDNA 2.0 (or whatever it'll be called) with a very high probability of having ray tracing functionality built-in. Both the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Scarlett run on semi-custom AMD silicon and are touted to feature hardware-accelerated ray tracing support so it only makes sense for upcoming Navi GPUs to offer the same. 

So, does this mean Navi 12 will be a low-end part and not the RTX 2080 competitor as was thought? Your guess is as good as ours at this point. AMD is working hard to offer a competitor to a two-year old flagship GPU. By the time Navi 23 becomes available, there is every possibility that we will also be seeing a Turing successor (7nm Ampere?) in the works. 

At the moment, we are not really sure how GPU competition will shape up in the coming year. Adding complexity to the equation is the launch of the first Intel Xe GPUs around the same time. With all these developments, 2020 could turn out to be very interesting for gamers. 

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2019 08 > AMD Navi 23 poised to be the much anticipated 'NVIDIA Killer', being readied for a mid-2020 launch to take on the RTX 2080 Ti
Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 2019-08-11 (Update: 2019-08-11)