AMD: Ray-Tracing Enabled GPUs and Zen 3 Processors Coming 2020, High-End Navi in the Works

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image: AMD

In a roundtable Q&A at CES 2020, AnandTech, PC World, and VentureBeat was able to squeeze some information out of CEO Dr. Lisa Su in regards to AMD’s future plans for its processors and graphics cards.

One significant revelation is that Radeon fans should expect a GPU with ray-tracing capabilities some time this year. Despite NVIDIA’s head start, Su suggests that RTG is exactly where it wants to be.

LS: I’ve said in the past that ray tracing is important, and I still believe that, but if you look at where we are today it is still very early. We are investing heavily in ray tracing and investing heavily in the ecosystem around it – both of our console partners have also said that they are using ray tracing. You should expect that our discrete graphics as we go through 2020 will also have ray tracing. I do believe though it is still very early, and the ecosystem needs to develop. We need more games and more software and more applications to take advantage of it. At AMD, we feel very good about our position on ray tracing.

That question was followed by an inquiry into a potential RTX 2080 Ti competitor. Sadly, Su didn’t have much to say but promised that a high-performance Radeon GPU is in the pipeline.

LS: [laughs] I know those on Reddit want a high end Navi! You should expect that we will have a high-end Navi, and that it is important to have it. The discrete graphics market, especially at the high end, is very important to us. So you should expect that we will have a high-end Navi, although I don’t usually comment on unannounced products.

Su also confirmed that Zen 3 will debut this year. That isn’t exactly a surprise (based on AMD’s heavily publicized x86 roadmap), but Ryzen fans can rest assured that the upgrade tick will bite again in 2020.

LS: You should expect that we’re going to be very aggressive with the CPU roadmap. We think Zen 2 is the best CPU core out there today, and we’re very proud of it. We’ve completed the family and Zen 3 is doing really well, we’re very pleased about it and you’ll hear more about it in 2020. Rather than ask me the question three times Ian [laughs], let me clear: you will see Zen 3 in 2020!

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Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

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