AMD CES 2025 Announcement Misses One Key Product Category!

AMD CES 2024 Livestream Announcements

AMD’s CES 2025 keynote has just finished, where they showcased a wide range of new and exciting technologies, albeit predictably next-gen versions of their existing hardware. The company unveiled its latest Ryzen 9 9000X3D series CPUs to accompany the already top selling 9800X3D, which they say are designed for gamers seeking top-tier performance but in a turn up for the books, they didn’t show anything in terms of the new upcoming Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, which was very strange considering that NVIDIA are going live with their own announcements in just a few hours, and it’s pretty much set in stone that it’s all going to be about the 50 series, codenamed Blackwell.

In addition to its consumer-oriented products, AMD also announced new offerings for corporate users because, as you likely guessed, AI is big business, and AMD want to continue trying to take a piece of that ever-growing market. These advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies are growing at a rapid rate so it was kind of expected to be a big part of their keynote, as well as new server processors designed to power the next generation of data centres, which we won’t dive into right now because the big parts that you’re likely interested in, come down to CPUs and GPUs, which even though AMD didn’t show directly, we still have the low-down on it..

Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT

Starting things off with GPUs, because this was a bit of an odd one. As thousands tuned into their livestream, along with many partners attending in person, the chat was flooded with eager fans wanting to know more about RDNA4, especially as the bulk of the presentation centred around AI and other non-consumer-type products.

So starting with the one thing they didn’t mention. graphics cards. Before the briefing, we were supplied with slides going through everything from GPUs to CPUs and AI, but for some odd reason, it was completely axed from the live event, but we’re here to bring you the lowdown anyway.

AMD are changing things up for the new lineup of GPUs, namely in their positioning and naming structure. As was expected, they’ve dropped the idea of the 9700 XT for instance, and instead, are releasing the Radeon RX 9070 and 9060 series. Though information was pretty scarce, one slide did show the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards which are directly taking over from the RX 7900 XT and below, though should see some welcome gains in gaming performance for AMD even though it seems the high-end, namely a 7900 XTX successor will be non-existent.

Built on their new RDNA4 architecture and featuring the Navi 48 GPU, these cards promise to deliver stunning visuals and smooth gameplay at high resolutions, as well as the introduction of FSR4 technology, which we covered earlier today. Though it’s a shame that as a new technology, you also need new hardware, and those on older RDNA cards won’t be able to harness the new form of upscaling.

While specific performance metrics were not revealed, AMD confirmed that the RX 9070 series will replace the existing RX 7900 XT, RX 7900 GRE, and RX 7800 XT models. The RX 9070 series is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2025, giving gamers something to look forward to, and we can’t wait to hear more details on this in the coming days, as if AMD doesn’t speak up soon, it is all bound to leak soon enough anyway.

Some information that was given to us is that it will utilise the 4nm process, so an upgrade from RDNA 3.0, along with 2nd generation AI accelerators, 3rd generation Raytracing accelerators and the 2nd generation AMD Radiance Display Engine for better colour representation with brighter, sharper images where it matters most.

No word on pricing or availability and it may even seem that things aren’t as far ahead in terms of being ready to launch as first thought, especially as there was simply no mention of it at all, so I guess we’ll just have to wait a little longer to bring more detail on the GPUs that never were, or may have been, or may still be? Though saying that, ASUS have further confirmed that these cards are real, and are very much around the corner with an Instagram post.

More Ryzen 9 Zen 5 X3D CPUs

Moving onto AMD’s Ryzen 9 Zen 5 processors with 3D V-Cache. As we all know, these are designed to push the boundaries of gaming performance but with the 9800X3D being the only chip on the market, what if you’re a gamer, but are also wanting something a bit more work focussed as well? Luckily, much like we saw on the 7000 series, there are new 12-core and 16-core CPUs which boast significantly increased cache sizes, resulting in a potential performance uplift compared to their predecessors.

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D, for example, offers 140MB of total cache, nearly double the 76MB found in the non-X3D model and a nice little uplift from the 120MB found on its predecessor, the 7900X3D. While the preview charts look promising, we will of course be putting them to the test ourselves as soon as we get a sample in our offices.

There’s also the flagship, Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which also sees a boost in terms of the cache, though with the same 5.7GHz boost clock as the 7950X3D, there’s not much more going on from what we can see, other than the whopping 50W increase in TDP from 120W on Zen 4, now to 170W. Maybe AMD are doing the opposite of Intel now, and are throwing power limits out of the window?

In the provided charts, the 9950X3D demonstrated performance improvements over the previous generation 7950X3D of 8% and a remarkable 20% increase over Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K. AMD’s commitment to 3D V-Cache technology does seem a good call though, as it’s proven a big hit with gamers in the last couple of years though lets hope we get clear clarification when it comes to the 9950X3D and if users will have to “configure” it to be able to unleash the full potential in games.

AMD Ryzen Z2 for Gaming Handhelds

The other key point that we want to touch on is AMD’s Ryzen Z2 series APUs which bring high-performance gaming to handheld devices. Designed specifically for portable gaming, the Z2 series offers a balance of performance and power efficiency, enabling extended gameplay sessions without compromising on visual fidelity. The Z2 series will be featured in upcoming handheld gaming devices from ASUS and Lenovo, expanding the options available to mobile gamers. No doubt more devices will follow soon enough, this is just the first wave of announcements, and rumours of a Steam Deck 2 are already starting to smoulder.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned, we’re sure more details will follow as CES 2025 progresses over the next few days, and AMD seek to maintain the momentum of these announcements. Don’t forget to watch the livestream above, there’s plenty of detail there for you to soak up depending on the product areas you want to see, though sadly, you won’t find anything else on RDNA4, other than what you’ve read here.