AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs are about efficiency in terms of performance and price: 'We know where gamers buy products, it's well below that $1,000 price point'
AMD's David McAfee and Frank Azor have explained RDNA 4's absence from its CES press conference this year, and also spent a bit more time with us talking about its new «gamer-first» graphics card architecture. And that means making sure the cards are designed efficiently from both a performance-per-watt and manufacturing point of view.
«We've been working a lot in the architecture to drive efficiency,» McAfee tells us backstage after the AMD keynote. «We know where gamers buy products; it's well below that $1,000 price point. And we are aiming for a card that delivers outstanding performance where most gamers are buying their cards today. And that's not $1,000 plus, that's well, well below that.»
That's maybe a thinly veiled swipe at the expectedly expensive graphics cards rival Nvidia is thought to be announcing in its own CES keynote today. And that announcement is part of the reasoning behind RDNA 4 not getting its own announcement at the show, featuring only in a pre-briefing ahead of CES.
But this focus on efficiency is the number two priority for the RDNA 4 GPUs.
«So I would say number one priority is focusing on improving performance in the areas that gamers care about most,» says McAfee. «And I think, I think in this generation, you'll see it as big ray racing improvements, big ML Ops improvements for things like FSR 4 and ML Super Resolution.
»I would say the second priority—that will be very clear when we show you more details about the product—is every part of the architecture is designed for efficiency. And efficiency is a really broad word. I'm not necessarily talking about performance per watt. I'm sure performance per watt is part of that, but it's also about making sure that the manufacturing process, the design decisions, like all of that, is incredibly cost optimized to deliver the best value to the end user."
These priorities are all about AMD's discrete graphics division trying to play to its strengths and build on the successes it had from the
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