AMD's Flagship RDNA 5 GPU Rumored For A Big Specs Overhaul To Challenge GeForce
It's been a long while since AMD truly challenged NVIDIA at the top end of the GPU market, and to be fair, it's a place where a relatively small number of gamers hang out. Be that as it may, rumor has that AMD's next-generation flagship graphics card based on its upcoming RDNA 5 GPU architecture will have the specs to truly be considered an ultra-enthusiast part.
The rumor comes by way of Kepler_L2, a reliable leaker with a positive track record. In a post on Anandtech's forums, Kepler_L2 throws it out there that AMD's top RDNA 5 part for gamers could feature 96 compute units and a 384-bit memory bus. Assuming we're also looking at GDDR7 memory, the upgrade could provide a big performance uplift compared to the current-generation flagship, the Radeon RX 9070 XT.
One thing to note is that Kepler_L2 is speculating rather than sharing leaked information. It's not clear what the presumption is based on, but it's certainly possible that it's an educated guess on whatever early information he's been able to obtain. It could also be a shot in the dark.
Let's assume his guess is accurate, though. What would that mean for AMD's next flagship GPU? To put in context, the Radeon RX 9070 XT is AMD's fastest consumer graphics card for gaming and it features 64 compute units and a 16GB of GDDR6 memory (20.1Gbps) tied to a 256-bit bus, giving it around 644GB/s of memory bandwidth.
If we completely ignore any underlying architectural improvements, Kepler_L2's presumed specs represent a rather big 50% increase in the number of compute units, and also a 50% wider memory bus.
Let's say that AMD's next flagship employs the same 28Gbps GDDR7 memory chips as found on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090. If that's the case, a 384-bit bus would work out to a little over 1.3TB/s for memory bandwidth. That would still put it behind the GeForce RTX 5090, which links the VRAM to a fat 512-bit bus for around 1.79TB/s of memory bandwidth. But it's a lot closer than the Radeon RX 9070 XT.
Whether or not the architectural changes would be enough to push AMD's next flagship GPU past NVIDIA's current top offering remains to be seen, but if nothing else, it'd be nice to see AMD target the ultra-enthusiast segment again.
