AMD Might Be Releasing A Radeon RX 640 Graphics Card Ahead Of Navi
It is 100 percent factual that blood cannot be squeezed from a turnip, no matter how strong your arms and grip might be. However, AMD can (and apparently will) squeeze more life out of its Polaris GPU architecture as it readies new 7-nanometer Navi GPUs, which could possibly make an appearance in a few weeks during Computex. Or maybe not.
AMD has said it plans to talk about Navi at Computex, though it is not yet clear if that means a formal launch is right around the corner, or still off in the distance a bit. Either way, we fully anticipate AMD launching its next-generation Ryzen 3000 series desktop CPUs based on Zen 2 at Computex. That is a discussion for a different article, though.
As it pertains to GPUs, one of TechPowerUp's forum members made an interesting discovery. While sifting through the driver code for AMD's Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.4.3 driver package—an "optional" update and also the most recent Adrenalin release—he noticed references (plural) to a Radeon RX 640 SKU that has not yet been released.
There are at least two instances of "Radeon RX 640" contained within the driver code. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be a reference to Navi. Instead, the entries have the same device ID as the Radeon RX 550X, which is a current generation graphics card based on Polaris.
Separately, the folks at Videocardz took a look at the driver package and also found a reference to a Radeon RX 630. So, what's going on there?
The prevailing theory is that AMD is getting ready to rebrand its existing Polaris GPUs. Nothing is confirmed, but it looks like the Radeon RX 550X (Polaris 23 XT) will become the Radeon RX 640, and the Radeon 540X (Polaris 23 MXL) will become the Radeon RX 630.
Being rebrands means they are essentially the same cards, though it's possible that AMD will be using a refined version of Polaris with better power efficiency and maybe slightly higher clocks. Otherwise, the remaining features should be identical.
Meanwhile, it's also possible that AMD will bill its Navi GPUs as the Radeon RX 3000 series. This would create clear separation over both Polaris and Vega, while utilizing a higher number than NVIDIA's GeForce 2000 series. Isn't marketing fun?
