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AMD has famously stuck to the tried and tested with its current crop of Radeon 9000 GPUs, meaning cheaper GDDR6 video memory rather than faster GDDR6X or GDDR7 used by recent Nvidia alternatives. That makes its graphics cards cheaper to make, even with the firm's specialised InfinityCache system that makes up for a lack of memory bandwidth with an integrated L3 cache.
However, Team Red's next-gen GPUs look likely to use GDDR7 VRAM instead, based on a line of text in a recent Linux GPU driver update. Phoronix was the first to notice the change with a commit plainly titled "drm/amdgpu: add GDDR7 vram name". The patch shows a simple array of strings, with GDDR7 being added to the likes of LPDDR4, LPDDR5, HBM3E and HBM4.
Based on a separate report from hardware insider KeplerL2 on Neogaf that was discussed on the latest DF Direct, we're only expecting one major GPU launch from AMD or Nvidia next year - one codenamed AT2.
This is the first RDNA 5 (UDNA) graphics card, and could form the basis of Project Helix's graphics component, so releasing a consumer GPU using the same silicon would make sense. That also makes it likely to be the first consumer AMD GPU with GDDR7, which would be a logical progression. The GPU has been rumoured to come with up to 64 compute units, which would put it in the same tier as the RX 9070 XT; an AT0 flagship and AT3/AT4 mid-tier cards have also been mentioned.
Of course, this is all just hear-say at the moment, so we'll have to wait for more concrete evidence or an official AMD proclamation to know anything for sure. Given the continuing AI-led surge in PC component prices, especially for RAM, VRAM and SSDs, it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see these upcoming projects cancelled, delayed or modified from their creators' original plans. In the meantime, at least AMD can work on its presumably forthcoming DLSS 5 competitor.
What's your prediction? Will we see any major GPU releases in 2027? Let me know in the comments below.