AMD Could Launch Navi 12 and Navi 14 GPUs Next Quarter

PCGamesN and other media are reporting that AMD might launch Navi 12 and Navi 14 graphics cards in October since the chipmaker has ushered Navi 12 and Navi 14 support into Mesa 19.2.

(Image credit: AMD)

AMD's last-minute effort to add Navi 12 and Navi 14 support into Mesa 19.2 doesn't necessarily mean the corresponding graphics cards will launch soon. We can't discard the possibility that AMD just wanted to ready support in Mesa in preparation for the Navi 12 and Navi 14 launch, which could be next month, the month after that, or even next year. There's no concrete evidence that the graphics cards are actually ready, and therefore, it's anyone's guess at this point when they will land.

Now that Mesa 19.2 has support for both Navi 12 and Navi 14, AMD could theoretically launch the corresponding graphics cards before Mesa 19.3 is out. We've checked the Mesa release calendar: Mesa 19.3 RC1 is programmed for October 15 while the final release is scheduled for November 5. If we want to be over-optimistic, AMD could release Navi 12 and Navi 14 next quarter.

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GPUArchitectureTransistor CountDie SizeFoundryLithographyGraphics CardRelease Date
Navi 21RDNA 1.0??TSMC7nm*Radeon RX 5800?
Navi 10RDNA 1.010.3 billion251 mm²TSMC7nmRadeon RX 5700July 7, 2019
Navi 12RDNA 1.0??TSMC7nm*Radeon RX 5600?
Navi 14RDNA 1.0??TSMC7nm*Radeon RX 5500?

*Information in the table is unconfirmed.

Believe it or not, the Navi 12 and Navi 14 rumor mill has been pretty stagnant lately. A recent CompuBench submission points to an alleged Navi 14 graphics with 24 Compute Units (CUs) and 4GB of memory. Other than that, we don't have any more leads on Navi 12 or Navi 14.

Initially, Navi 12 is rumored to power the Radeon RX 5600-series while Navi 14 is allegedly tailored to the Radeon RX 5500-series. However, some claim the opposite. There are speculations that Navi 12 is bigger than Navi 10. Navi 10, which is currently employed in the Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, maxes out at 40 CUs, and speculation is that Navi 12 would push the CU count to 64. If that's the case, Navi 12 would most likely be inside the Radeon RX 5800-series. At the moment, AMD is the only one who knows the truth, and we doubt the chipmaker will tell us.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • hannibal
    If amd put orders to Navi 12 and Navi 14 now They have to wait 6 months Until They will get first chips from TSMC... 8 think that They will prefer putting more orders to Navi 10 and Ryzen 3000 chips at this moment... so that is most likely the reason we don`t see any new small Navi rumours at this moment. Only production samples around, but no production capasity from TSMC to produce them...
    Heh! Intel could screw amd and every other company by making big order to TSMC by themselves ;) nobody else would not have any production for long time :)
    Ofcourse that would be really bad thing to happen, but Intel has money to do it. It would take at least half year to full year to other companies to move production to Samsung.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hannibal said:
    If amd put orders to Navi 12 and Navi 14 now They have to wait 6 months Until They will get first chips from TSMC...
    But you don't know when they bought the wafers - probably back when the lead time was still shorter. The news about a 6 month lead time is for capacity being purchased today, which would affect chips planned for launch in Q1/Q2 of 2020.
    Reply