AMD has already announced its new Ryzen Z2 chips for handheld PCs, but its CES 2025 keynote (and associated media briefings) also included a whole new generation of graphics cards and new X3D processors for both desktops and laptops.
We’ll start with the graphics news, as the American firm briefed press on two GPUs built using the new RDNA 4 architecture – the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 – as well as a long-awaited upgrade to their FSR upscaling tech, FSR4.
The RX 9070 XT and 9070 are positioned to counter Nvidia’s mid-tier 40-series and 50-series graphics cards, with the RDNA 4 architecture promising improved ray-tracing performance, better AI capabilities and even an improved media encoder – all areas of relative weakness for AMD versus competitors like Nvidia and Intel. The cards are produced on a 4nm process and ship this quarter, with models coming from the likes of Acer, Asus, Sapphire, XFX, ASRock, Gigabyte and PowerColor.
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FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 is the first time AMD is using AI for its upscaling, something long embraced by Nvidia to good effect. The feature is exclusive to RDNA 4 graphics cards, and hopefully will offer a step change beyond previous AMD efforts in what is now quite a competitive space with the likes of Sony, Intel and Nvidia all producing reasonable solutions. As before, frame generation and anti-lag tech is included, and in a round table after the keynote AMD said FSR4 features won’t be exclusive to specific models, as reported by More Than Moore. However, RDNA 4 cards will likely be best equipped to make use of these features.