AMD's Radeon RX 5950 XT might arrive sooner than expected

We may see the AMD Radeon RX 5950 XT, dubbed “the Nvidia killer,” before very long. While it’s been speculated that AMD might hold off on Big Navi for now, it looks like Christmas might just come early for gamers.

As Wccftech.com reports, a family of AMD GPUs has just passed RRA certification on February 19, 2020, including one called AMD ATI-102-D32310 GPU. This could be the AMD Radeon RX 5950 XT we’ve long been anticipating.

AMD RRA certification

Every consumer application-specific integrated circuit (ASICs) has to pass RRA certification in South Korea before it hits the market. But, more importantly to those of you who’ve been itching to get your hands on the Big Navi, passing RRA certifications is usually a good indication of when products will get released.

In the past, AMD’s Radeon RX 5700, RX 5700 XT, RX 5500 XT and RX 5600 XT were each released a month after passing their own certifications. This means that we could see a fresh batch of AMD Radeon graphics cards before the end of March, the Radeon RX 5950 XT front and center.

If we’re lucky, AMD might even showcase its prowess at its Financial Analyst Day on March 5. It’s the perfect opportunity to show off its fabled “Nvidia killer.”

Could Big Navi be a monster GPU that'll seriously worry Nvidia?

But is this really the Big Navi?

Of course, we’re not 100% sure that one of these GPUs is the RX 5950 XT. They could very well be the more powerful refresh to the existing Navi series, just not Big Navi. Plus, AMD could be saving its big release for Computex 2020 in June.

However, it’s more likely possible that the RX 5950 XT family will be AMD’s big next release. The Radeon RX 5950 XT was already spotted in an EEC filing, which mentions three other GPUs alongside it: Radeon RX 5950, Radeon RX5900 and the Radeon RX 5800.

In addition, its patent number, D32310, is similar to the ones previous Navi cards got. The Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT were codenamed D16302 and D18206, respectively, while the Radeon RX 5500 XT was registered D18902. Finally, AMD’s latest release, the Radeon RX 5600 XT, had the codename D32501.

If it is the AMD Radeon RX 5950 XT, then we might have our hands on the first RDNA2-based full Navi die to support ray tracing – and finally beat Nvidia at its own game.