AMD Big Navi launching October 28 to take on Nvidia RTX 3080

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By Michael Andronico
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AMD has a big October planned for PC gamers

AMD Radeon chip
(Image credit: AMD)

Now that Nvidia has unleashed its RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards onto the world, it's AMD's turn to fire back. The company just announced a series of October launch events, including one showcase that will see the reveal of the long awaited AMD Big Navi GPU.

AMD confirmed its upcoming announcement events in a tweet (spotted by TechRadar), noting that the company will showcase its Zen 3 CPUs on October 8 before following up with its RDNA 2 graphics cards on October 28.

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A series of additional videos from AMD CEO Lisa Su and the official Radeon RX graphics account provide a small extra tease. The former shows off the Zen 3 logo with the tagline "a new journey begins," while the latter calls RDNA 2 "a breakthrough gaming architecture." 

AMD's next graphics card, often called "AMD Big Navi" in rumors and leaks, is tipped to be a serious threat to Nvidia that could offer impressive graphics performance for a much lower price than the competition. One leak points to it being up to 50 percent faster than Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti, while other rumors suggest a more modest bump.

The RDNA 2 event will come on the heels of last week's reveal of Nvidia's Ampere line, which consists of the flagship $699 RTX 3080, the entry-level $499 RTX 3070 and the crazy powerful $1,499 RTX 3090. The RTX 3080 is looking like the card to get for optimal 4K gaming, while the blistering 3090 promises up to 8K performance at a smooth 60 fps for those with the right gear (and wallet). 

If AMD has a card on the level of the RTX 3080 or 3070 at a lower price, we could be in for quite the interesting GPU battle this fall. Oh, and AMD's RDNA 2 architecture will also be powering the PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles due this fall, so even console gamers have reason to tune in.

Michael Andronico
Michael Andronico

Mike Andronico is Senior Writer at CNNUnderscored. He was formerly Managing Editor at Tom's Guide, where he wrote extensively on gaming, as well as running the show on the news front. When not at work, you can usually catch him playing Street Fighter, devouring Twitch streams and trying to convince people that Hawkeye is the best Avenger.