Stefan Mileschin

Possible Q2 launch as a mid-range card

During the earnings call, AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, confirmed that Navi GPU will launch this year, with launches in Q2 2019.

AMD announced a great Q4 2018 and FY 2018 report earlier, showing that the company has started to gain ground and reap the benefits of its strong Ryzen lineup. While client GPU side of the business has been suffering, its Ryzen sales, datacenter GPU sales, as well as the strong roadmap, is showing that the company is definitely on the right track.

While it has just launched the Radeon VII, based on 7nm Vega GPU and HBM2 memory, AMD big GPU break could be the upcoming Navi GPU architecture, with promises of scalability and next-gen memory, the only thing that we got from AMD's official roadmap.

Back in October, we already wrote that AMD has 7nm Navi-based graphics card running in its lab and while it was too early to get any precise details, the rumor was that the 7nm GPU looks better than expected, whether in terms of 7nm yields or the actual performance/power is still left to be seen.

We already wrote that the upcoming 7nm Navi architecture could first target the mid-range graphics market, becoming a successor to the Polaris GPU, as that is where the bread and butter is. High-end graphics cards are great for marketing but mid-range is what mostly matters.

Replying to a question from Deutsche Bank's Ross Seymore, Lisa Su said that the company expects a Q1 2019 drop in GPU sales, but things should get better in Q2 when the company is expecting the retail channel to improve. Lisa Su was keen to note that the gaming growth in 2019 will be driven by Radeon VII but did also threw a curve ball by mentioning Navi launches on the gaming side.

https://fudzilla.com/news/graphics/4...-navi-for-2019