AMD’s purportedly incoming Navi 24 GPU, which is supposedly set to power the Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 desktop graphics cards, has been spotted.
The image of the Navi 24 chip (see below) was published by VideoCardz, and theoretically tells us a number of things about the spec, including that it has 16 GPU clusters with each having 64 stream processors, for a total of 1,024 shading units as the maximum configuration. This is in line with previous chattering from the rumor mill.
As you may know, this is the lowest-end Navi GPU which will power some wallet-friendly graphics cards (with both desktop and laptop solutions), and interestingly it will be the first RDNA 2 offering to be built on a 6nm process. There will supposedly be 16MB of Infinity Cache on-board.
VideoCardz has also recently heard that the RX 6500 XT is thought to be launching on January 19 – take that with a hefty pinch of condiments, naturally – and that the RX 6400 will follow at some point, although the tech site isn’t sure when (it could be March, according to previous speculation).
What VideoCardz does say is that the RX 6400 will be for OEMs, meaning that the graphics card will be present in prebuilt PCs, and you won’t be able to buy this particular budget GPU in standalone form off the shelves (at least not at launch, anyway).
We should hear more about these Navi 24 products at CES 2022, where AMD is expected to reveal some initial details on these budget offerings.
Analysis: Hopeful signs for easing pressure with budget GPUs?
We’ve already seen the 6500 XT leaked in a Lenovo gaming PC listing, where it was also shown as having 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM. Seeing the GPU appear in a product listing like this suggests that it’s imminent, so the theoretical January 19 launch date mentioned here seems like a fair bet.
This is good news, because as we’ve observed before – many times before in fact – we desperately need more options at the budget end of the GPU market, particularly with the rampant price inflation which has been ongoing in the graphics card world recently (even for older, lower-end models).
We can only keep our fingers crossed that firing up production of Navi 24 chips on 6nm enables AMD to make a decent quantity of wallet-friendly cards going forward, but we don’t hold out a whole lot of hope in that respect, sadly. The overall picture for the component shortage crisis doesn’t look like improving until the second half of 2022 (and some more pessimistic firms and analysts are saying it’ll be 2023 before the supply and demand balance fully rights itself).
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