Next-gen GPUs could launch October 2022 – from both AMD and Nvidia

Nvidia could be releasing next-gen (presumably RTX 4000) graphics cards in October of next year – and maybe in direct competition with AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs (plus RTX 3000 Super variants might be unleashed at the beginning of 2022, as a stopgap).

This is the latest from the rumor mill (via VideoCardz) going by a couple of prominent hardware leakers, so exercise a ton of caution, but this is what Greymon55 and RedGamingTech believe to be the case.

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Let’s start with Greymon55 who tweeted a reply to a PC builder who wanted to know how long they might have to wait for next-gen GPUs, and whether those cards might be just around the corner.

Next-gen gpu will be in October next year, about a year from now.September 7, 2021

Interestingly Greymon55 has a firm release date in mind, naming October rather than saying Q4, before clarifying that they aren’t talking about Nvidia specifically, but just next-gen graphics cards in general. As someone tweets in response, that seems to imply the possible scenario that both AMD and Nvidia’s next range of GPUs will both come out in October 2022, but Greymon55 doesn’t confirm or deny – which might suggest agreement (or not – we’ll go into that in more depth later).

Greymon also just tweeted to expect RTX 3000 Super laptop cards "early next year", backing up a piece of (somewhat older) speculation from YouTube-based leaker RedGamingTech about Super GPUs being readied for a theoretical launch at the start of 2022 at CES. Those would be mobile parts, and the pepped-up laptop GPUs may only offer a modest increase of 5% to 10% in performance compared to the existing (non-Super) mobile GPUs, RedGamingTech has heard.

RedGamingTech says that his source for the mobile graphics card info observes that there may be Super GPUs on desktop, too, but that they similarly won’t offer much of a big jump in performance.

With third-party graphics card manufacturers yet to be briefed on the rumored Super desktop models, these can be expected to pitch up later down the line (if they turn up at all), given that Nvidia won’t want to run them too close to next-gen cards – maybe debuting in October as mentioned – for obvious reasons.

Another interesting snippet to note from RedGamingTech: both AMD and Nvidia are ‘nervous’ about Intel’s debut in the desktop GPU market, given that Team Blue has supposedly thrown a lot of money at R&D in pushing forward with Intel Arc cards. That’s certainly believable and a comforting rumor to hear – the more competition in the GPU arena, the better, for sure.

Analysis: Timing is a tricky beast to call

Greymon has previously indicated that Nvidia ‘Lovelace’ GPUs (RTX 4000) would be likely to arrive no earlier than the end of 2022. Arguably, October is Q4 which is of course the final quarter, so still sort of the end of next year, but it feels like the leaker is now more optimistic about a potential arrival timeframe of slightly sooner than anticipated before.

Except, of course, for the crucial fact that Greymon doesn’t clarify that it will be Team Green which gets its next-gen GPUs out next October, and as we touched on above, a fellow Twitter denizen raises the possibility of both an Nvidia and AMD graphics card launch in October, which Greymon doesn’t rule out (or confirm). So, that could be a possibility, or maybe the leaker is hinting that in fact AMD may be coming with next-gen (RDNA 3) cards in October and not Nvidia (as opposed to as well as Nvidia). AMD has previously been rumored to be looking at a Q4 launch in 2022, after all, so that still fits.

Don’t forget, though, that another rumor peddler, Kopite7kimi on Twitter, believes that Lovelace cards will turn up not in late 2022, but a ‘little bit earlier’, which would seem to fit with an October release date for Team Green.

Of course, before we get carried away with any of this, or the possibility of a head-to-head next-gen GPU deathmatch, we must remember that at this point, trying to nail exact launch dates requires extreme caution as these plans can slide anyway (any launch timescale can). What we can take from this, though, and other recent chattering from the grapevine, is that it seems like we can be hopeful that we’ll see some kind of next-gen GPU at least a while before the end of 2022 rolls around.

As for the Super spins on RTX 3000 GPUs, if RedGamingTech is anything like near the money with that guess of maybe as little as 5% performance difference with the revamp, that’s obviously not much to get excited over. Still, it’s certainly a rumor to keep an eye on going forward.