If you’re looking to score a truly wallet-friendly AMD graphics card, budget RDNA 2-powered GPUs could be pitching up before too long – or at the very least, we’ve caught sight of the existence of such cards.
Specifically, Phoronix.com – which watches Linux developments like a hawk – flagged up mentions of a new GPU series in the code for Linux graphics drivers, a certain ‘Beige Goby’.
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This new fish-based codename joins AMD’s existing Big Navi families of ‘Sienna Cichlid’ (Navi 21, meaning RX 6800 and 6900 cards) and ‘Navy Flounder’ (Navi 22, RX 6700 XT).
In theory there will be two further ranges: ‘Dimgrey Cavefish’, which could be Navi 23, the GPU expected to power the RX 6600 cards (rumors about these have been flying around a lot recently), and now we have ‘Beige Goby’ (purportedly Navi 24) bringing up the rear.
The expectation, as Tom’s Hardware, which spotted this development, observes, is that ‘Beige Goby’ will be the engine of the budget-level graphics cards below the RX 6600, so that could mean RX 6500 or 6400 products (the 6500 GPUs could alternatively be Navi 23-based – we just don’t know at this point, and all this remains guesswork, so definitely keep a keen sense of skepticism to hand).
Taking stock
Spotting just a plain new codename without any GPU specs or other details at all may seem unexciting, but the fact that AMD is bringing support for ‘Beige Goby’ GPUs into Linux is an indication that work is underway on realizing these budget graphics cards, and suggests they could be on shelves (and in laptops) before too long (perhaps later this year).
More RX 6000 GPU options will of course be welcome, although the ever-present doubt when mulling over graphics card launches these days is how much stock will be available on (and after) release.
Hopefully supply issues may start to settle down later in 2021, but on that score, what we’ve heard from AMD isn’t very positive thus far this year – and TSMC, which makes chips for AMD (and others), recently said that component shortages are likely to persist into 2022. Let’s just say we wouldn’t be getting too excited yet, because even if new affordable products are launched, in this current climate, stock could remain vanishingly thin.
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