Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
As a company that has been an also-ran to main rivals Intel and NVIDIA in the recent past, the final months of 2020 may be the most important in company history for AMD. As the supplier for the CPU and GPU horsepower behind all of the upcoming Xbox and PlayStation consoles, the company is primed to rule over the console gaming space entering the holiday season. This afternoon, AMD announced the official reveal dates for its anticipated Zen 3 CPUs and RDNA 2-based GPUs, signaling its intent to make waves in the desktop PC gaming market as well. October 3 will be the date for the Zen 3 event with RDNA 2 making its debut later on October 28.
AMD teased a pair of reveals in a tweet sent out today, confirming that the world will get its first looks at the new products in October.
First up will be a new line of CPUs based on the Zen 3 architecture. AMD has made huge strides in both the enthusiast and server markets ever since it launched the first iteration of the Zen CPU architecture in early 2017. Following several successful updates and product launches, the CPUs based on the Zen 3 architecture are expected to be the most advanced parts that will be made available for the AM4 socket. Recent rumors indicate that the CPUs will launch alongside a new X670 motherboard chipset, though AMD confirmed earlier this year that motherboards using the X570 and B550 chipset would receive updates to enable compatibility with Zen 3. Just this week, it was reported that the Zen 3 lineup would also contain 10-core CPUs in addition to the expected 6, 8, 12, and 16-core parts. The official reveal event on October 8, 2020, will likely bring a few more surprises.
On the graphics side of things, AMD will show off its new RDNA 2-based GPUs later in the month on October 28, 2020. These graphics cards will be sharing the same architecture used in the upcoming consoles but with less-constricted thermals and larger chip sizes. The company has been referring to these cards as Big Navi over the last year, though the official product names will be shown during the October event. These new products will directly compete with the new Ampere-based GPUs that NVIDIA showed off to kick off September. Both AMD and NVIDIA are angling to have new GPUs on retail shelves ahead of the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in November, a game expected to be a significant driver of new PC hardware sales.
Keep your browsers pointed to Shacknews for more news on all the upcoming gaming hardware for both the console and PC markets.