AMD Navi GPU news: AMD already testing 7nm Navi graphics cards in the labs

Good news on Navi should outweigh the bad as graphics card market returns to normal following crypto-currency bust

AMD is already prepping 7nm Navi-based graphics cards that, it is expected, it will be launched before the end of 2018.

Specialist website Fudzilla claims that not only are 7nm Navi-based graphics cards up and running in AMD's labs, but that the devices are performing well.

The design, according to AMD Radeon Technologies Group senior vice president of engineering David Wang, will be a standard monolithic die design, rather than multi-chip module.

We have already taped out multiple 7nm products at TSMC, including our first 7nm GPU planned to launch later this year

Similar to a multicore CPU, a multi-chip module GPU contains multiple GPU modules with an interconnect all on a single chip.

Rumours have suggested that 7nm Navi-based cards will bring GTX 1080-level performance at a price of around £250. But AMD does have a reputation, in recent years, for disappointing the market when it comes to graphics cards.

Its launch date is not entirely clear, either. Fudzilla mooted a mid-2019 unveiling, but AMD's chief technology officer Mark Papermaster hinted at a launch this year in a corporate blog posting in August.

"We have already taped out multiple 7nm products at TSMC, including our first 7nm GPU planned to launch later this year and our first 7nm server CPU that we plan to launch in 2019," he wrote.

He concluded: "I look forward to providing more details on those innovations as we prepare to introduce the industry's first 7nm GPU later this year and our first 7nm CPUs next year."

The company needs the new products with the bursting of the crypto-currency bubble this year leaving it with stocks of current-generation graphics cards piling up.

I look forward to providing more details on those innovations as we prepare to introduce the industry's first 7nm GPU later this year

As a result, graphics cards have largely returned to normal after spiking in price between around November 2017 and April 2018. And the bursting of the bubble has left AMD's GPU division somewhat exposed after Nvidia unveiled its Turing-based GeForce RTX graphics cards, which are now starting to become available in volume.

In consequence, AMD's third quarter financial results ended up disappointing investors.

Revenues were up by just four per cent to $1.65 billion, compared to the same quarter in 2018, although net income increased by 67 per cent to $102 million, partly on the back of a solid improvement in gross margins.

It was the GPU business, though, that dragged the company's results down. The company will now need to shift stocks in advance of its Navi launch, which could mean bargains for graphics card customers in a year otherwise bereft of good deals for PC gamers.

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