by The next-gen graphics card war is heating up between AMD and Nvidia, and both have been putting out powerful GPUs over the past few months, but a new regulatory filing suggests a new AMD Radeon RX GPU could be launching soon, and it could be a big winner for AMD if it beats Team Green to market with a mid-range or budget offering.
The best graphics card in AMD’s range, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, is definitely a beastly GPU with a lot going for it, but the price is not one of them. Yes, it’s a flagship-class graphics card under a grand, but only by the tiniest of margins.
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s cheapest Lovelace offering, the RTX 4070 Ti, isn’t much cheaper, meaning there’s still a whole market of mid-range graphics cards that haven’t really been able to upgrade their cards in years thanks to cryptominers like soak up a large number of cards during the recent crypto bubble.
For those gamers, a filing with the South Korean National Radio Research Agency showing a new AMD GPU motherboard registration is a glimmer of hope. Twitter hardware leak harukaze5719 (opens in a new tab) dug into the new archives and discovered an entry for the D707 board model (opens in a new tab) which should indicate that a major component of an AMD graphics card is ready for certification.
AMD(ATI TECHNOLOGIES ULC) VIDEO CARDD70701D70702D70703D70704D70705D70706D70707https://t.co/73YhscuSir17 February 2023
As VideoCardz notes, the RX 7900 XTX uses GPU card model D702, while the RX 7900 XT uses board D704, so the D707 can be paired with a Navi 33 GPU, which will be used in both RX 7700 and RX 7600 cards, both XT and non -XT variants. It’s pretty speculative at this point though, as it’s not that easy to deduce which board will be paired with which GPU by looking at a model number. It is also important to note that a board being registered does not mean that the card itself is about to be released.
Still, the thought of an RX 7600 hitting the scene very soon has me unexpectedly excited, and the more I think about it, the more it looks like the smartest move AMD could make right now.
AMD’s high-end GPUs are great, but the midrange is where most gamers have always been
When it comes to gaming, the Steam Hardware Survey (opens in a new tab) is a fascinating look at a very diverse community of gamers out there, at least when it comes to the hardware we use to play the best PC games.
One thing that certainly stands out is how few gamers have been able to upgrade from desktop graphics cards to the latest generation GPUs from the Radeon RX 6000 series and Nvidia RTX 3000 series. More than 40% of gamers play with desktop graphics cards that are at least two generations old, and they will almost certainly upgrade to a new GPU if the cost is affordable and a next-generation card is available to them, especially if they’ve been trying for more than two years only to be bought out by a shopper bot.
The RX 7600 may not be the most powerful card on the market when it lands, but it’s light years ahead of the older GTX and RX 500 series with new features like ray tracing and Radeon Super Resolution. For many gamers who are hungry for features and performance, buying an RX 7600 will be easy, especially if it comes in at a very good price.
Breaking with the standard graphics card release cycle has many advantages
Usually, when a new generation of graphics card is launched, it follows a fairly common pattern, with high-end cards launching first to get all the good press (normally), followed by mid-range cards like the RX 6600 XT or RTX 3060 Nvidia is currently working on launching RTX 4070 and may not release the RTX 4060 with it, which really gives AMD an opening to release a cheaper mid-range card that many gamers will buy, especially since the overwhelming majority still game at 1080p.
While many of these gamers will still go for a higher-end card eventually, picking up an RX 7600 in the meantime to tide them over until they can afford an RTX 4070 or similar isn’t out of the question.
Offering a more budget-friendly GPU right now will also catch Nvidia on the back foot, as it will almost certainly stick to the expected clock rate of RTX 4070 to RTX 4060 to RTX 4050, with a sprinkling of Ti variants thrown in for good measure. If many gamers already have an RX 7600, they may be far less likely to jump to the RTX 4060 when it finally drops, even if it ends up being the best cheap graphics card of this generation.
It’s probably not so much better than the RX 7600 that it’s worth paying more for marginally better performance, and it could seriously eat into Nvidia’s midrange install base, which is a major source of Team Green’s market power. Nothing like a friendly black-eye to the old balance between competitors, right?
Finally, I’d honestly like to see more affordable GPUs out there, and Nvidia has already shown some sensitivity to the current economic conditions that Nvidia frankly lacks. Not many people are going to have $700/£700 to drop on a graphics card, and it’s time your run-of-the-mill PC gamer got a break for a change. A surprise RX 7600 launch from AMD would definitely do that, and might garner some goodwill from Nvidia fans that might even be won over to Team Red.
