AMD CEO teases RDNA 4 release as gaming revenue drops by 69%

There’s been a lot of speculation about the potential release date for AMD’s upcoming RDNA 4 graphics cards. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, has just put an end to most of these claims. While initial predictions pinned AMD’s future best graphics cards at the end of 2024, AMD now confirms that RDNA 4 is on track to launch in early 2025. This announcement arrives alongside a steep decrease in AMD’s gaming revenue.

AMD has been quiet about RDNA 4 (or RX 8000 series) for months, but we’ve seen many reports from various leakers who had something to say about the potential release date for these next-gen GPUs. At the beginning of 2024, these claims were fairly optimistic, with some leakers claiming that the AMD Radeon RX 8000 series might launch as early as this summer. That  did not happen, and as the months went by, many of them adopted a more conservative release window sometime in 2025. Now, thanks to AMD’s third-quarter earnings call, we know that those later claims were correct.

Su spoke about AMD’s decline in gaming graphics revenue as she revealed that RDNA 4 GPUs are set to be released in early 2025.

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“In gaming graphics, revenue declined year-over-year as we prepare for a transition to our next-gen Radeon GPUs based on our RDNA 4 architecture,” Su said, as quoted by VideoCardz. “In addition to a strong increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities.”

The comment about a performance increase makes me curious. AMD itself admitted that it’s targeting the mainstream market with its next-gen GPUs in a recent conversation with Tom’s Hardware. Leakers predict that its new flagship may not beat the RX 7900 XTX in performance, so an increase is hard to picture right now — but AMD is planning to improve the performance-per-dollar aspect of its GPUs, so that’s where it might excel.

In its previous earnings call, AMD revealed that its gaming revenue was down by a staggering 48% year-over-year. The company didn’t expect things to get better, and it appears that they have not improved whatsoever. The report reveals that AMD’s gaming segment revenue in the third quarter was down 69% year-over-year, and the company cites “a decrease in semi-custom revenue” as the main culprit here.

With Nvidia’s RTX 50-series also rumored to launch in early 2025, and both companies expected to make announcements at CES 2025, we’re about to see the GPU market start heating up.