AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 9000 GPUs were originally intended to be unveiled at CES 2025, but a last-minute decision to pull RDNA 4 from the presentation left many fans of Team Red wondering exactly what had happened.
Since the pulled announcement, there have been a number of leaks, rumors, and statements (straight from AMD executives) regarding RDNA 4. Following up on this week's revelation that the Radeon 9000 series cards won't launch until March, AMD VP and GM of Ryzen and Radeon David McAfee returned to X (formerly Twitter) to add some information.
In a response to Hardware Unboxed, McAfee states, "We are taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles."
I really appreciate the excitement for RDNA4. We are focused on ensuring we deliver a great set of products with Radeon 9000 series. We are taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles. We also have a wide range…January 22, 2025
Getting RDNA 4's drivers in tip-top shape only makes sense, and having extra FidelityFX 4 (FSR) support in games will benefit AMD's appeal. As a longtime AMD user, I have put up with delayed, rushed, and downright inferior software plenty of times. That's not something you want to drop into the hands of new adopters (or my hands!)
And with FidelityFX 4 changing its upscaling approach from algorithms to machine learning — no doubt to better compete with NVIDIA's DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation magic — AMD needs to nail the launch in order to draw attention away from Team Green.
McAfee's response to Hardware Unboxed, in which the latter offers a positive opinion on the delayed launch, fits with AMD's perceived approach. Scrapping the CES presentation and letting info drip out is certainly pulling attention back towards AMD even as NVIDIA is prepping the launch of its upcoming RTX 5000 GPUs.
The flagship RTX 5090 and sibling RTX 5080 are set to launch on January 30, and you can read Windows Central Senior Editor Ben Wilson's NVIDIA RTX 5090 review to see what all the noise is about. He calls it "the best consumer-grade graphics card in the world," but at $1,999 to start it certainly has a lot of PC enthusiasts looking for GPUs in a more affordable price bracket. That should be where AMD is planning to launch its RDNA 4 cards.
Stock shortages could be NVIDIA's downfall
I (and many others) received a CES press pack ahead of the event, which included a few slides about RDNA 4. But beyond a brief look at partner reference cards, an announcement for FSR, and an explanation of the architecture's optimizations and improvements — including next-gen AI accelerators, next-gen ray tracing accelerators, and optimized compute units — I didn't have much to go on.
What first got me jazzed about RDNA 4 was a video from Hardware Unboxed looking at how FSR 4 compares to FSR 3.1. I wrote about it in a separate piece detailing how I thought the RTX 5070 was my next GPU before seeing AMD's new tech. Going off of the limited demo, AMD's FSR 4 seems to have cleaned up a lot of the background noise and high-quality details in fast scenes that you'd normally see when using FSR 3.
AMD's decision to wait for NVIDIA's initial RTX 5000 run — including the RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti, and 5070 — to settle is looking smarter all the time. Videocardz reported on rumors coming from Overclockers UK (a popular PC hardware retailer) staff, in which it's claimed that there are "single digits" of the RTX 5090 and "very tight (few hundred)" for the RTX 5080. Considering how big of a company Overclockers UK is, that doesn't bode well even if the stock doubles in the next week.
OC UK staff member Andrew "Gibbo" Gibson is the one who brought the stock shortage to everyone's attention on the company's forum. In the post, they also stated:
"We are expecting greater demand than 40 series, but with the launch just prior to CNY and lots of other rumours circulating initial waves of supply are poor and will probably take some time to build up. So the stock we have will be made available from the launch via the webshop but I know what we have is likely to last only seconds, minutes at most."
If NVIDIA indeed struggles with supplying demand, AMD's extra time to shine up its software, add new games to FSR 4, and let board partners pump out more GPUs —some are already in the hands of retailers — could prove to be very lucrative.
