To compete with NVIDIA, AMD is taking a "break" with RDNA 4 and will relaunch the machine with RDNA 5.
Let's be honest: for all the qualities of the Radeon RX 8000 series, AMD has lacked the arguments to stand up to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series, despite a price advantage on most ranges. In rasterization, too, the performance achieved by AMD's cards is no match for NVIDIA's models, so it's mainly on the ecosystem and associated technologies that Jensen Huang's company has managed to widen the gap. That said, AMD is also handicapped by the fact that it has no ultra-high-end card to drive the market, and even the Radeon RX 7900XTX is no match for the GeForce RTX 4090.
Assumptions about the RDNA 4 and RDNA 5 generations © VideoCardz
This is a situation that is likely to continue for the next generation, but one that AMD seems to be embracing with renewed vigor. Indeed, the company has already confirmed that it will be focusing on the mid-range, prioritizing energy efficiency over performance. The latest rumors indicate that this future RDNA 4 generation will not have a very high-end model to put up against the future - and still hypothetical - GeForce RTX 5090. On the other hand, AMD wants the performance/price and performance/power consumption ratios to be to the advantage of its products. To be verified when the time comes, of course.
However, to say that AMD is giving up on the high-end would be going too far: AMD seems to be taking a break. The RDNA 4 generation is seen more as an optimization of the current RDNA 3 to improve the ratios we've just mentioned, while RDNA 5 would be an opportunity to start afresh, to make a clean sweep of the past to go " faster, higher, stronger "... while there's a lot of talk about the Olympic Games, here's a motto that seems to be AMD's watchword! Of course, we'll have to check all this out when the time comes, but RDNA 5 is not - at best - expected before late-2025/current-2026.
