AMD Planning To Launch PS5, Xbox Series X GPUs For PC First

Both the upcoming Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be powered by the next-generation of AMD's graphics processing architecture, RDNA 2. But before both consoles launch during the holiday season, AMD might be launching its new graphics cards to PC gamers.

In a recent Bank of America Global Technology Conference webcast (via RockPaperShotgun), AMD CFO Devinder Kumar confirmed that the company plans to launch its new range of RDNA 2 GPUs and Ryzen 3 CPUs in late 2020, but that the GPUs would launch before they appear in Microsoft and Sony's new consoles. Although no specific window was mentioned, an Autumn release to coincide with Nvidia's suspected launch of its Ampere-powered RTX 3000 cards is suspected.

Kumar mentioned that "enthusiasts love to buy the best, and we are certainly working on giving them the best," later stating that the new RDNA 2 GPUs will be the first products with the architecture available to consumers. This is expected to fill a gap left open by AMD currently, with Nvidia's RTX 2080 and 2080Ti going largely unchallenged by its only rival.

RDNA 2 is a big jump forward for AMD, as they attempt to once again contend for a spot in the most expensive gaming PCs build possible. In collaboration with Microsoft and its new DirectX 12 Ultimate API, RDNA 2 is expected to support both ray-tracing and variable-rate shading, which have been mentioned as headline features in Xbox Series X marketing thus far.

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