Fresh off the announcement of the Radeon Vega VII at CES 2019, there has been plenty of talk about when AMD’s Navi graphics processors could be released. In the latest round of rumors, source code references in MacOS suggest that the next 7nm AMD Navi products might be coming in July.
There are a total of four specific references, to Navi 16, Navi 12, Navi 10 and Navi 9, in a beta version of MacOS Mojave 14.2, as spotted by Gigamaxx, a member of the Tonymacx86.com forums. Though the references were found inside the source code in an “AMDRadeon6000HWServiceskext” file, this still doesn’t quite point to product code names. Instead, it is likely that the references are to the compute units for each of the graphics cards, according to a report from Videocardz. Specific release dates might also still be scarce, but the discovery hints that the release is closer than it seems, as AMD roadmaps have hinted that a release could be timed for the middle of 2019.
Further supporting a July release is the fact that similar code references were spotted in MacOS Sierra ahead of the release of the Vega processors now found on board the new 15-inch MacBook Pro model. Based on that timing, it could be assumed that Navi could be coming in about six months, which again is around July.
As it is known for, AMD’s new generation of Navi 7nm GPUs is rumored to target the midrange market, and will seek to deliver high performance to consumers without breaking the bank. Previous leaks even showed that the new Navi GPUs were being tested in an internal AMD lab, resulting in promising performance that exceeded expectations. Additionally, despite prior rumors from 2016 about Navi 10 and Navi 11, it was recently suggested that Navi could come instead in two variants, with Navi 10 and Navi 12 being the first graphics processors to launch in the series.
Considering that Nvidia could also be releasing a new GTX 1660 Ti processor for midrange gamers, it will be interesting to see how the performance truly lines up if a release comes in July. Competition between AMD and Nvidia is always good, but for now, here’s a roundup of everything you need to know about AMD’s latest and upcoming 7nm Navi chipsets.
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