AMD confirms that Zen 3 and RDNA 2 are “on track” for a late 2020 launch

During the company’s Q1 2020 earnings call, AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, confirmed that the company’s Zen 3 and RDNA 2 architectures were both due to launch in late 2020, ushering in the next generation of EPYC, Ryzen and Radeon products. 

AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA architectures have already proven to be incredibly popular additions to AMD’s product stack, and their next-generation counterparts are due to push things even further. 

The CPU and graphics markets have already been transformed by AMD’s latest products, with Zen 2 transforming the desktop, mobile and enterprise CPU markets while RDNA has delivered real competition to Nvidia for the first time in half a decade. Based on what we know so far, Zen 3 and RDNA 2 will continue AMD’s upward trend, especially within the GPU market. 

At this time, AMD’s launch plans for Zen 3/RDNA 2 remain unclear. “Late 2020” is an ambiguous phrase, and could refer to dates as early as September and as late as November or December. Right now, it looks like AMD is keeping its options open when it comes to Zen 3/RDNA 2’s release plans, which makes sense given today’s economic climate. 

Performance-wise, RDNA 2 will be a transformative architecture for team Radeon. AMD has already promised a 50% performance-per-watt advantage over RDNA 2, and those power savings can be used to achieve higher clock speeds or to power additional GPU logic. This change will also make Radeon graphics cards more viable within mobile systems, opening up a new market to Radeon graphics products. 

RDNA 2 is due to be just as transformative as AMD’s Zen 2 architecture was on desktop, offering users significant performance/ efficiency gains while also offering users new features. Full DirectX 12 Ultimate support will also place Radeon into a strong position, especially given RDNA 2’s use within both Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.