The next generation of graphics card releases is upon us, with Intel releasing its second-generation Battlemage cards just before the new year. With both Nvidia and AMD having keynote events at CES 2025, we also know more graphics cards are about to launch. Nvidia's RTX 5000 series is likely to capture the high-end and enthusiast side of the market, and early leaks show high prices to match the expected high performance.

That leaves AMD's Radeon, which is going to skip a numbering generation and go straight to the RX 9000 series if everything in leaks comes true. Yes, that means the next AMD GPUs will be over 9000, but unlike the super-powered Goku that the phrase was originally coined for, AMD's cards are going to aim for the midrange.

I'm not entirely sure that leaving Intel to the budget end of the market and Nvidia to the high end is the right move, but it worked for the RX 7000 series, which eventually overperformed with successive driver updates. What I am sure of is that AMD, under the steering of Dr. Su is a different animal from the AMD of yesteryear, and nothing is done without purpose. The technology that will make up RDNA 4 is going to be exciting to see once it is released, and here's why.

5 They might finally have dedicated hardware ray tracing

This would be a huge divergence from earlier cards but could pay off

While Nvidia leans heavily on its RT cores for AI-accelerated ray tracing and upscaling, and Intel has similarly dedicated cores in its graphics cards, AMD has long stuck to software-based solutions running on the general-purpose GPU cores that underpin all Radeon graphics cards. It's not a bad approach, as it means that AMD upscaling technologies can be used on any graphics card as they're not tied to any particular hardware cores, but it does mean that ray tracing on AMD GPUs is behind in performance compared to the competition.

But, in a recent post on GPUOpen, there are signs that AMD might introduce hardware-based cores for performing AI calculations for real-time ray tracing. The processing power needed for ray tracing denoising is immense, which is why Nvidia uses RT cores and AI to clean up the ray tracing image, in Ray Reconstruction. It's arguably the feature that brings systems to their knees when turned on in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, so doing it all in software as AMD has done in the past is unlikely.

Plus, the PlayStation 5 Pro (which is powered by AMD hardware) has a dedicated chip for AI acceleration of the PSSR upscaler, which isn't that far away from the FSR upscaler that Radeon graphics use. That points to AMD including similar dedicated silicon into future RDNA cards. Even if it only handles a small part of FSR 4's tasks, it could bring hefty improvements in ray tracing performance.

4 They're going to be relatively affordable

Leaked Nvidia pricing has me worried for enthusiasts

AMD has always tried to price its graphics cards as a more affordable version of Nvidia's offerings, and I can't see that changing with Radeon RX 9000 series. Intel's B580 Battlemage cards have anchored the budget end of the market at a relatively affordable $250, which almost prices Nvidia and AMD out from being able to compete there.

We all thought the next Nvidia cards would be expensive, but the leaked pricing of the GeForce RTX 5090 shows we might not have guessed high enough. At $2,200 for the US market, that's a $600 increase on the price of the flagship RTX 4090 at launch. That's before going into custom GPUs, which are historically another few hundred on top.

Now, AMD has already said they won't be trying to compete at the flagship level of Nvidia. Even so, that gives a huge range of pricing for Radeon GPUs to slot into, and they only have to show that they are good value compared to the mammoth prices of Nvidia. That might not be that difficult to do since the RTX 5080 is rumored to be a half-power RTX 5090, and the tiers below that will be even more trimmed down.

3 More VRAM for your money

16GB of VRAM is fine for most users

The era of graphics cards being fine with 8GB of VRAM is over. Full stop. There's no excuse for anything less than 16GB as we go into 2025, because AAA games demand all the memory space they can get for textures and other graphical features. I used to have an RTX 4070 Ti with 12GB of VRAM, and I was forever turning down settings to fit into the memory space, even when the GPU core had plenty of power left.

The rumors for Radeon show 16GB of VRAM for each of the expected GPUs, and while it's not the fastest GDDR7, that might not make much of a difference. AI tasks love faster memory, but they also need a larger amount of VRAM, which is why 16GB and higher graphics cards are still higher than MSRP even years after launch. With Nvidia's RTX 5070 rumored to have 12GB of VRAM and the RTX 5060 having 8GB, AMD is in a strong position for the mid-range.

2 AMD drivers are fine nowadays

The days of weird performance issues are mostly gone

AMD's GPU driver team has done wonders over the last few years. I've been using computers since before discrete graphics cards were actually a thing, and have used most GPUs from the three current manufacturers to all the companies that either fell by the wayside or got bought along the way. It's my opinion that the AMD drivers have never been in better shape, and while they don't get the Day 1 driver treatment of Nvidia, they get fixes and features that benefit more users.

The only thing they could do better is to have better explanations of the features inside the driver and how they work and how or if they work together with other features or not. All GPU makers have issues with their drivers, all of them strive to fix issues in a timely manner, and all three are doing a good job at that currently.

1 The midrange competition is going to be fierce

AMD has always been strong in this price bracket

AMD has a track record of good-performing mid-range cards going back its entire history. The RX 480 and RX 580 were monsters, and only very recently got to a stage where they can't really keep up with current games. The Vega years were less exciting, but then RDNA 3 and the RX 7000 series launched with pretty much every model being a banger for price and performance.

If the early rumors are true, and we won't see an RX 7900 XTX or 7900 XT this generation, we might see similar performance from the RX 7800's replacement instead. That puts existing flagship performance in the mid-range, and if the pricing is right, no number of RTX features will be able to compete. This is the price and performance tier in which AMD thrives, just above the console-level hardware, which coincidentally is also mostly manufactured by AMD. Expect a fierce battle for the mid-tier in the near future, and one that AMD's performance and higher VRAM amounts will see it succeed in.

I'm looking forward to seeing what AMD releases in the New Year

One thing is true, when the graphics card market has competition, we all win. It's been a long time since there was a viable contender at the top of the market, which has dragged the mid-tier pricing upwards. With Intel dragging the budget price bracket back below $300, a successful AMD Radeon RX 9000 series launch could keep mid-tier pricing more affordable. And with generational leaps in power, the next Radeon GPUs might perform better than the current flagships, but at a lower price. With many gamers still being on 1080p and 1440p monitors, that means higher frame rates and better visual quality at a lower upgrade cost.