AMD might still have some next-gen GPUs left in the tank
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
AMD has said it’s done with new GPU dies, but a filing with the European Economic Commission (EEC) suggests that Team Red could still launch graphics cards in its RX 7000 range.
The filing points to AMD releasing an RX 7600 XT sometime in the future, both in 12GB and 10GB variants. AMD’s Scott Herkelman says the RDNA 3 lineup is “complete,” so what gives? It comes down to the GPU dies.
Both Nvidia and AMD repurpose their GPU dies for multiple graphics cards. For example, the new RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT both use the Navi 32 chip, just different amounts of compute units. When AMD said the lineup was complete, it specifically referred to GPU dies. But we could still see variants of graphics cards with the same die.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
And, the RX 7600 is a prime candidate. A supercharged version of the card in the form of the RX 7600 XT would make sense, especially given the large gap in AMD’s current lineup. The RX 7600 retails for $270, while the next step up, the RX 7700 XT, runs $450.
Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
The problem is that the RX 7600 already uses the full Navi 33 chip. If we do see the RX 7600 XT, it will likely be based on the Navi 32 chip. We actually haven’t seen a graphics card using the base version of this die, only the XL variant in the RX 7700 XT and the XT variant in the RX 7800 XT. This would also make sense given the filing and the 12GB of memory that’s rumored to come with the card.
Too crowded
AMD probably isn’t under a lot of pressure to release new GPUs, though. The company already has some of the best graphics cards on the market — the recent RX 7800 XT obliterates Nvidia’s RTX 4070 in a head-to-head battle.
The company doesn’t need a new graphics card, and releasing an RX 7600 XT could actually hurt the current lineup. With the RX 7800 XT, there was some backlash toward AMD given that the card performs about as well as last-gen’s RX 6800 XT. AMD is competing with itself, and that’s not a good thing when there’s a lot of last-gen stock to work through.
An RX 7600 XT would likely be caught in the same position. Last-gen’s RX 6700 XT has become the go-to graphics card at around $350, and a potential RX 7600 XT would probably come in around that price. Given what we’ve seen out of AMD this generation, it’s not hard to speculate that an RX 7600 XT would offer a similar level of performance.
But right now, all we can do is speculate. The EEC filing points to AMD potentially launching new graphics cards, but we’ve seen these filings in the past that haven’t turned into actual graphics cards you can buy. If we do see new graphics cards out of AMD, we likely won’t see them for a few months, given the recent launch of the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT.
