AMD rumoured to release 12nm Polaris 30 and 7nm Vega 20 in Q4 2018/Q1 2019

AMD rumoured to release 12nm Polaris 30 and 7nm Vega 20 in Q4 2018/Q1 2019

AMD rumoured to release 12nm Polaris 30 and 7nm Vega 20 in Q4 2018/Q1 2019

AMD has been very secretive about their future GPU roadmap, leaving consumers in the dark regarding Radeon’s post-Vega GPU offerings, especially in the gaming market. 

In January, AMD reforged their Radeon Technologies Group under the leadership of Mike Rayfield as General Manager and David Wang as President of Engineering, making it understandable why AMD has not released Radeon’s future graphics plans publically. A lot will change under the leadership of Rayfield and Wang, making understandable why AMD doesn’t want their customers thinking too far ahead. Radeon is also mirroring Nvidia’s secrecy regarding their future graphics roadmap, as they likely do not want their competition to know what they have planned moving forward. 

AMD’s David Wang has reportedly committed to releasing new Radeon graphics products on a yearly basis moving forward, with plans to inject some excitement into the industry with new architectures, process node shrinks/adjustments and “maybe incremental architecture changes.”

Now rumours of RTG’s next generation of graphics cards are emerging, with a report from Chiphell user Wjm47196, who correctly predicted detail regarding both Ryzen and Threadripper in the past, claiming that AMD has plans to release a 12nm Polaris 30 graphics card in Q4 2018 and a 7nm Vega 20 gaming graphics card in Q1 2019. 

AMD is also reportedly set to release their first Navi-based graphics cards in late 2019, starting with mid-range products and higher-end products at a later date. This data should be treated as nothing more than a rumour. 

AMD rumoured to release 12nm Polaris 30 and 7nm Vega 20 in Q4 2018/Q1 2019  

Polaris 30 is a strange product, as its name seems to indicate that the product will not make use of any of Vega’s architectural enhancements like DSBR and Rapid Packed Math. Even so, the move to 12nm will reportedly give Radeon a 15% performance boost over today’s Polaris 20 offerings. 

The only reason for AMD to make a new Polaris GPU over a new Vega offering is to lower development costs, making subtle changes to their Polaris design on 12nm to deliver gains that are similar to AMD’s Ryzen 2nd Generation processors. AMD could make the same graphics card with their Vega architecture, though that would require an entirely new product design, which would be very expensive and time consuming for Radeon to produce. 

Looking at Radeon from the outside, it appears as if the group are dedicating a lot of their resources to products that are further down their graphics roadmap, which is disappointing now but will likely place Radeon in a better position moving forward. 

AMD admits they have

 

The main problem with these rumours is that they suggest that Navi isn’t coming until late 2019, or 2020 for high-end products, placing AMD’s “Next-Gen” 7nm architecture in late 2020 or even 2021 territory. This release schedule seems like very strange given AMD’s current roadmap, though that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. Radeon fans will no doubt remember how long it took for AMD’s RX Vega series to hit the market. 

You can join the discussion on AMD’s rumoured 12nm Polaris 30 graphics cards and 7nm Vega 20 gaming graphics cards on the OC3D Forums.Â