AMD’s success with Ryzen has been unprecedented, but can the company replicate that magic in the GPU sector? That’s a firm “yes,” according to Mithun Chandrasekhar, who serves as product lead for the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG).
Speaking at a recent RX 5600 XT briefing, Chandrasekhar suggested that AMD had something big in the works for Radeon devotees who are salivating at the prospect of a GPU that can take on NVIDIA’s reigning GeForce cards, such as the RTX 2080 Ti. While he declined to give specifics, Chandrasekhar did imply that his team was making headway on products that could tackle 4K gaming.
“Similar to Ryzen,” he says, “all of us need a thriving Radeon GPU ecosystem. So, are we going after 4K, and going to similarly disrupt 4K? Absolutely, you can count on that. But that’s all I can say right now.”
That’s a pretty confident statement. It suggests that AMD has a secret ace up its sleeve, but assuming that’s the case, why has the company been mostly mum on its high-performance GPU prospects aside from nascent references to “Big Navi”?
As Chandrasekhar explains, that’s because the low- and mid-tier is where the majority of the business is. RTG’s first and primary concern was delivering a great product for the Full HD and WQHD audience.
“With the Radeon 5000-series we are essentially covering 90-something-percent of the total PC gamers today. And so that’s the reason why no 4K right now, it’s because the vast majority of them are at 1440p and 1080p.”
We may learn a lot more about AMD’s plans for a 4K GPU this summer. New rumors claim “Big Navi” will be unveiled during Computex, which starts on June 2.