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Surprisingly, AMD’s future Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs, which will be based on the RDNA 4 design, are said to have GDDR6 memory.¹ A lot of people were surprised by this because they thought the new GPUs would have faster GDDR7 memory.
The story started with the well-known hardware leaker Kepler_L2².It looks like the RX 8000 series GPUs will come with 18 GB of GDDR6 memory. A few new desktop GPUs, like the RX 7900 GRE or RX 7700 XT, use the same memory speed…
You might think it’s odd that they chose to stick with GDDR6 memory, since faster GDDR7 memory is supposed to be widely available by the end of this year. It does make sense, though, when you think about AMD’s common and mid-range goals for Radeon² and RDNA 4.
High-end gamers won’t be interested in the RX 8000 line. It is said that the top GPU will be “slower” than the 7900 XTX, but on average it will be about 15% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT². This means that AMD will be able to charge less for the cards if you choose 18Gbps GDDR6.
They might also add more VRAM for AI tasks because of this choice. Radeon RX 7900 XT speed in a smaller and cheaper-than-7800-XT GPU could shake up the mid-range and hobbyist market, which is currently ruled by the GeForce RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 SUPER². This is assuming that RDNA 4 is more efficient than current RDNA 3 options.
Even though the memory is slower, the RX 8000 series GPUs should still have great speed. When put together, the RDNA 4 design and GDDR6 memory should make the new generation much faster than the old one.¹
In conclusion, AMD’s choice to stick with GDDR6 memory for the RX 8000 series GPUs may come as a surprise, but it is in line with their plan for the RDNA 4 design. We are looking forward to seeing how this choice changes the speed and cost of the RX 8000 series GPUs when they come out.
