AMD 12nm Polaris 30 GPUs set to land in Radeon RX-600 graphics cards before year-end

Chinese whispers suggest AMD is planning new Polaris GPU before the end of 2018, with mid-range Navi launches coming in Q1 2019

AMD could be prepping a 12nm Polaris 30 GPU to be launched before the end of 2018, according to leaks out of China.

The part, which would appear in a series of Radeon RX-600-branded graphics cards, will offer a 15 per cent performance boost compared to current RX-500 series cards, which were a minor refresh on 2016's RX-400s.

Posted on Chinese site ChipHell, the GPU will be manufactured using the 12-nanometre FinFET process, according to the rumour monger, with Navi-based cards following in the first quarter of 2019.

AMD is planning to release mid-range Navi-based cards first, followed by top-of-the-range GPUs using High-Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2).

Navi is slated to succeed the Vega architecture, and, as WCCFTech pointed out, will use a 7nm process and be primarily aimed at next-generation games consoles, such as the PlayStation 5, which is expected to be launched before the end of 2020.

Unlike Nvidia, which tends to have one graphics architecture that spreads across its entire range of GPU products, AMD's lineup is a bit more complicated.

Vega was expected to follow-up and replace the Polaris architecture. But aside from supporting very high-end (and expensive) HBM2 memory in its c£450+ graphics cards and its integration into AMD's Ryzen accelerated processing units (APUs), there's been no sign of mainstream or mobile discreet Vega graphics cards.

Hence, AMD's GPU line-up now looks somewhat disjointed, with Vega typically found in cards from £450 and upwards (now that cryptocurrency values have crashed), while 8GB Polaris-based cards can be had for under £300 - leaving little by way of AMD offerings in the middle.

The Polaris refresh and suggestion that Navi will debut in the mid-range first will therefore leave AMD with three graphics card architectures for low-, mid-range and high-end, while Nvidia's Turing architecture-based GPUs could make their debut next month.

The real performance boost for AMD's desktop graphics cars will likely come with HBM2 sporting Navi GPUs or a 7nm Vega 20 GPU with HBM2 aimed at gamers, if WJM47196 is correct.

Intriguingly, perhaps, Vega at 7nm may help deal with much of its heat dissipation issues and could conceivably accommodate two cores in a single die connected via infinity fabric.