AMD Reaffirms 7nm Navi, Ryzen 3000 And 2nd Gen EPYC For Q3 2019 Launch
AMD has not been secretive of its plans to launch third generation Ryzen CPUs for the desktop, including 12-core and 16-core processors, and debut its Navi GPU architecture, both before the end of the year. Nevertheless, pending launches this summer can now be considered confirmed—during its annual meeting with shareholders, AMD revealed that both Zen 2 and Navi will be available in the third quarter.
"In gaming, we successfully returned to the high-end market with the launch of our Radeon™ VII GPU in February 2019 and we are on track to introduce our next-generation “Navi” GPUs for the mainstream market later this year," AMD states on its 10-K filing.
In addition to that comment, AMD shared a slide outlining its upcoming product portfolio. The full deck is not yet available on the company's investor relations website, but the folks at Videocardz managed to grab a screenshot, presumably during the company's webcast last night. Have a look...
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As is clearly stated, third generation Ryzen CPUs and second generation EPYC server chips, both based on AMD's Zen 2 CPU architecture, are bound for the third quarter. Same goes for AMD's Navi GPU architecture that we have heard so much about over the past year.
What's missing from all of this are exact release dates. We know that AMD will be holding a keynote at Computex later this month, followed by a Next Horizon Gaming event at E3 in June where it will discuss "upcoming products and technologies that will power gaming from PC to console to cloud for years to come."
The expectation at this point is that AMD will introduce and possibly even demo new Zen 2 CPUs at Computex and Navi at E3, followed by availability of these new products (along with second-gen EPYC) in July or August. AMD could also ship any of its new stuff in September and still be within the third quarter, though it seems unlikely that the company will wait that long.
Related to all this, it's worth noting that AMD's hardware partners have been teasing new X570 motherboards. That would be unusual if availability of Zen 2 CPUs was not imminent, versus still being four months out.
It's also interesting that AMD plopped Navi next to its existing Radeon VII graphics card on its slide. The Radeon VII is also based on a 7-nanometer GPU (just as both Zen 2 and Navi are 7nm architectures), though it's a Vega part. The pairing of the two on the slide hints that the first-generation of Navi will not necessarily compete at the high-end of the graphics spectrum, instead conceding that position to the Radeon VII. That is certainly not confirmed, though.
In any event, the third quarter is when the magic will happen.
