AMD and NVIDIA were supposed to use CES 2025 to show off their next generation of graphics cards. It didn't quite turn out that way.
While NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang proudly announced new RTX 5000 GPUs during the keynote speech, AMD pulled its RDNA 4 news — including Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 cards — from its separate presentation at the last minute.
It was so last minute, in fact, that the PR pack I received before the show still had some RDNA 4 information inside. When AMD's CES presentation wrapped up, it understandably left many of us scratching our heads. Where was the GPU information we'd received before the show?
AMD didn't have a lot to share in the CES press pack either. There were six slides in total, with only a few offering worthwhile information.
AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 architecture — the new standard for Radeon 9000 GPUs — is outlined: a 4nm process, next-gen AI accelerators, next-gen ray tracing accelerations, and next-gen AMD Radiance Display Engine. Beyond that, we got an announcement for FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (now powered by machine learning), a brief look at GPU designs from AMD's board partners, and an explanation of the new naming scheme (which hopes to line up better with AMD's Ryzen CPUs and well as NVIDIA's GPUs).
So why exactly did AMD pull its RDNA 4 announcement at CES? Paul Alcorn from Tom's Hardware spoke with AMD executives David McAfee and Frank Azor shortly after the presentation, receiving assurances that the RDNA 4 GPUs are coming along nicely. The CES no-show was ultimately blamed on the 45-minute limit.
McAfee more recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that the Radeon 9000 series will launch in March. He also noted that "hardware and software are looking great."
Radeon 9000 series hardware and software are looking great and we are planning to have a wide assortment of cards available globally. Can’t wait for gamers to get their hands on the cards when they go on sale in March!January 20, 2025
This is as close to an official announcement as we can get (so far), and the reaction from Team Red supporters is understandably mixed. Many pundits are pointing out the obvious: March comes after January and February, which means that NVIDIA's RTX 5000 GPUs — including the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 — will already be on the market (and assumedly sold out everywhere). The two more powerful NVIDIA cards are expected to launch on January 30, while the 5070 cards are expected in February.
With AMD's new Radeon 9000 naming scheme, it certainly appears that the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are meant to compete directly with NVIDIA's two GPUs launching in February. If so, it's going to be a month or so behind when it finally launches its RDNA 4 cards. This almost certainly wasn't the initial intention, as there are rumors floating around that stores are already stocking the cards, and some reviewers are even left holding the new GPUs without any updated drivers. That leads me to some conclusions.
Although AMD hasn't explicitly stated anything, it certainly seems like it's waiting to see NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 pricing and performance before releasing more information. NVIDIA stirred up a lot of people with its claims that the RTX 5070 could match the RTX 4090 (and at a much lower $549 price), but how much that relies on DLSS 4's new Multi-Frame Generation tech remains to be seen.
What are the possible outcomes? AMD could have a true breakthrough with RDNA 4, and it's biding its time to announce a GPU that can compete with or even best NVIDIA's RTX 5070/Ti cards. Those who bought an RTX 5000 card are left wishing they'd waited a bit longer to see what AMD was cooking.
More likely, however, is that AMD will check NVIDIA's February launch notes (including price and performance), drop the price to match the performance difference (if it's in favor of NVIDIA), and hope that its Team Red faithfuls didn't already buy an RTX 5070/Ti at launch. I'm still on the fence between AMD and NVIDIA for my next GPU, and it's going to be very tempting to try to nab an RTX 5070 on launch day.
Viewed from one angle, AMD has completely bungled its RDNA 4 announcement. From a different perspective, it's getting a lot of press for RDNA 4 without really having to do much heavy lifting. I'm still holding out hope that AMD can deliver some proper competition for NVIDIA with its upcoming RX 9000 GPUs.
