Nvidia announced their new RTX 4070 (open in new tab) graphics card. Truly, it is exactly what we had hoped it would be. That is, a great card at an almost acceptable price. But what about competing GPUs based on the latest RDNA 3 architecture, as seen in AMD's RX 7900 XT (open in new tab) and RX 7900 XTX (open in new tab)?

Currently, Nvidia has three GPUs based on the latest Ada Lovelace architecture: the AD102 GPU in the RTX 4090 (open in new tab), the AD103 GPU in the RTX 4080 (open in new tab) and the AD104 GPU in the RTX 4070 Ti (open in new tab). But what about the latest round of AMD GPUs? It will be just one RDNA 3 GPU, the Navi 31, as seen in both the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX.

AMD is expected to introduce the Navi 32 next, which will be based on the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT. Officially, nothing is known about the Navi 32. However, there is a fair amount of rumor information available, including a new video from RedGamingTech (opens in new tab) and TechPowerUp's GPU database (opens in new tab).

There is a high level of agreement on specs and details, which is always reassuring when it comes to the reliability of rumored specs. So let's take a look. The general consensus seems to be that Navi 32 will be another chiplet design similar to Navi. In fact, the cache and memory controller chiplets will be shared with the Navi 31, but the Navi 32 will have four fewer chiplets than the 7800 XT's six.

The Navi 32's GCD (a large slab of silicon with all the functions needed for graphics processing) is expected to be smaller than the Navi 31's GDC, whereas the Navi 31 will have up to 96 computer units and 6,144 double-pump shaders, Navi 32 is expected to have 60 computer units and 3,840 double-pump shaders. [However, the Navi 32 is expected to be clocked considerably higher, peaking at 2.8 GHz versus 2.5 GHz for the Navi 31. Also, the Navi 32 is estimated to have a raw compute performance of 43TFLOPS, while the Navi 31 delivers 61TFLOPS on the 7900 XTX and 51TFLOPS on the 7900 XT.

Incidentally, the new Nvidia RTX 4070 is 29 TFLOPS and the RTX 4070 Ti is 40 TFLOPS. On paper, Navi 32 looks quite competitive, at least in terms of pure raster performance. If these specs are correct, it would be quite close to Navi 31 in terms of performance, which would explain why AMD has been slow to roll out Navi 32.

There is a common belief that AMD failed to meet its clockspeed goals with Navi 31, but will meet them with Navi 32, resulting in a relatively small real-world performance gap between the two GPUs. If so, the arrival of Navi 32 would make Navi 31 somewhat redundant, and as a result, AMD may decide to accelerate the release date of Navi 32 to give Navi 31 a little more leeway.

The Navi 31 is certainly not competitive when it comes to ray tracing performance. Nvidia's frame generation technology also complicates the comparison, but AMD is working toward an answer that may be available in time for the Navi 32's arrival.

Speaking of arrival, when will Navi 32-based GPUs, including the RX 7800 XT, arrive? Current rumor has it that they will be announced earliest at Computex, which runs from May 30 to June 2, with retail sales beginning in July.

Some sources believe that the announcement could be later than July and the actual launch could be later; rumors and leaks tend to accelerate as the GPU's launch date approaches. Currently, we do not feel that the Navi 32 is imminent.

However, the launch of the RTX 4070 will make it much harder for AMD to continue selling previous generation cards like the RX 6950 XT and 6800 XT, even with recent price cuts. Therefore, we hope that the Navi 32 cards will be available soon and that they are as good as these rumors make them out to be.