If you thought the graphics card rumor mill had calmed down now that the AMD Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT were out, well, we have news for you: it looks like both AMD and Nvidia may be planning to release new graphics cards in the near future.
Nvidia already has a seemingly full lineup of graphics cards, bookended with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and the GTX 1650 at the high and low ends, respectively, but we might see even more GPUs anyway.
As for AMD, which only has two current-generation RDNA-based cards right now, we keep seeing rumors of a 'Navi 14' GPU, the latest of which have appeared on German site 3dCenter.
- Here's everything you need to know about the AMD Navi
- These are our top picks for the best processors
- Check out the best gaming PCs
Right now, all the rumors are pointing to these new graphics cards competing with each other at the budget end of the market, probably targeting the 1080p market. And, according to the latest Steam hardware survey, this is the most popular display resolution, accounting for 62.98% of all gaming systems - though that figure is starting to go down.
However, according to that latest leak from German site 3dcenter and spotted by TechPowerUp, the Navi 12, which has been wrapped in a veil of secrecy, might end up taking on the RTX 2080. But, we have no way to know for sure.
It's all in the numbers
Unlike a lot of the other leaks in the past few months, we're starting to see rumored specifications for both AMD and Nvidia's next graphics cards.
From Team Green, word on the street is that we're going to see an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super (sigh) and a GTX 1650 Ti, according to Wccftech. Note that these aren't ray tracing GPUs, and will not be super-ultra-powerhouses.
Right now, the main difference between the rumored specs of the GTX 1660 Super and the regular GTX 1660 is the VRAM - it will apparently be GDDR6, rather than GDDR5. We don't know why Nvidia didn't include GDDR6 with the GTX 1660 to begin with, but that's neither here nor there.
As for the alleged GTX 1650 Ti, according to the rumors it will pack the same TU117 GPU that the GTX 1650 will, but with more CUDA cores and Texture units, although not much else.
Moving on to AMD, the rumored Navi 14 chip will be a 'Mainstream' chip, which we assume means entry-level. According to the rumors, this Navi 14 graphics processor will feature 24 shader clusters with 1,536 shader units, and feature GDDR6 VRAM. We haven't seen any information about how these shader clusters will be clocked, but we could see this give the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 a serious walloping if it is indeed real.
We're also starting to see whispers about the Navi 12, and it looks like it will be the AMD Navi graphics card to take on the RTX 2080 Super, with 52-64 shader clusters. Now, we would take this Navi 12 rumor with a massive grain of salt, just because of how, well, numbers work.
The already-released AMD Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT are based on the Navi 10 GPU, and the rumored Navi 14 is going to take on the mid-range, so you would think that the Navi 12 would sit somewhere in between them. We've seen weirder things in the PC components landscape, but something just doesn't add up here.
Still, even if this Navi 12 GPU isn't real, we do still think AMD will eventually compete at the high end once again – we just might have to wait until RDNA2 next year to see it. Either way, because all of this is just rumor and speculation, we won't actually know what AMD and Nvidia are planning until they're ready to lift the veil.
Whatever ends up happening though, it's starting to look like the Nvidia vs AMD GPU war is about to light up in the next month or so - and bear in mind that Black Friday is beginning to appear on the horizon.
Our advice: don't buy a new graphics card until you see whether or not these new cards are real, what they can do, and how much they cost.
- Did you know it's PC Gaming Week here at TechRadar?
