The new AMD RX 6700 graphics card may be announced at CES next week, but it won't actually be available until the end of March. However, I am not sure what "actually available" in 2021 would look like. It may simply be measured by whether Frank Azor can get himself on Twitter around the time of the launch.

The rumor comes from Cowcotland (via Sweclockers) and suggests that mainstream RDNA 2 Radeon graphics cards with the new Navi 22 GPU will be available at the end of Q1 2021. This means that by the end of March at the latest, more affordable products with AMD's latest graphics architecture will be available.

We do not know if that was always the plan or if manufacturing and shipping constraints delayed the volume segment of the AMD RX 6700 series cards; consistent with AMD's previous modus operandi, we expect the AMD RX 6800 XT and its smaller siblings as well as the AMD RX 6700 XT and a lower-spec RX 6700 version, we expect a pair of cards at this rumored March launch.

Actual specs are a bit fleeting at this point, but the Navi 22 GPU is suggested to have up to 40 CUs and up to 2,560 RDNA 2-cores. Then again, the RX 6700 is expected to be 36 CU and 2,304 RDNA 2 cores, like the RX 5700.

In terms of pure power, this new card would fall somewhere between the AMD custom GPUs packed into the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

This could be important for PC gamers if Microsoft seeks AMD's help in pushing 7nm Navi and Zen production further to bolster Xbox production.

Still, while ostensibly putting the RX 6700 XT on the same GPU level as the old RX 5700 XT, thanks to Zen's learning built into the RDNA 2 architecture, the Navi 22 is pushed far beyond the 1,980MHz boost clock of the old Navi silicon You'll notice that the 1,980MHz boost clock is much higher than the 1,980MHz of the old Navi silicon. It will also be able to take advantage of the Infinity Cache to get extremely high memory bandwidth from the 192-bit memory bus.

Also, the memory bus will reportedly have 12GB of GDDR6, which matches the specs of the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ultra that is rumored to be on the way. This is because what the world needs now is a suffix for graphics cards that have been retired for the last great victory.

Also, AMD's nominal ray tracing support will be offered starting with the RX 6700 series cards, and while we haven't had a chance to see what AMD's implementation will actually be capable of in games designed with AMD's new GPUs in mind, it is clear that next-generation console game development will no doubt be advanced.

There are also rumors that this power-efficient Navi 22 GPU will be the basis for AMD's entry into mobile discrete graphics chips this year; it is virtually certain that AMD will announce mobile CPUs at the virtual CES 2021 next week, but these Ryzen 5000 series processors will be paired with something other than the yet-to-be-announced Nvidia RTX 30 series mobile silicon.