Linux driver hints that more AMD Navi GPUs are on the way

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Only the Radeon RX 5700 XT and 5700 have been announced so far.

So far, AMD has only officially announced three Navi models, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700, along with a 50th Anniversary Edition of the former. It's a safe bet there will be additional models, though, and perhaps soon, based on a breakdown of a recent Linux display driver update.

The Radeon RX 5700 XT (including the 50th Anniversary Edition) and 5700 are both based on Navi 10, the latter of which is potentially referenced as "Navi 10 Lite" in the Linux driver. But there are also references to Navi 12, Navi 14, and Navi 21 (regular and Lite).

It's not clear what exactly those are, because AMD has not yet announced any other models. However, it hints at a more fleshed out Navi stack to go up against Nvidia's growing lineup of Turing cards.

As The Inquirer notes, they may not even necessarily reference consumer desktop cards—they could be workstation or even mobile GPUs. It's really just a guessing game, at least for now.

That said, we're fairly certain that more Navi cards are on the horizon. It would be highly unusual for AMD to only launch the 5700 series and call it a day. AMD is aggressively shifting to 7nm parts, and the only other consumer GPU on 7nm right now is the Radeon VII, based on Vega.

Everything we know about the Radeon RX 5700 XT right now suggests it will compete against Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2070, and while the 5700 will go up against the RTX 2060. That leaves the field wide open for more Navi cards. We'll have to wait and see what exactly materializes.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).