Nvidia plans to not release another GPU till next year, what is AMD doing?

According to an article published by WCCFTech, the Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 will be the third and final 700 series GPU released in 2013 behind the GTX 780 and GTX 770. The source of all this is a leaked slide that they were able to get their hands on and release out into the wild.

As you can see from the slide, if it is true, is that the GTX 760 will replace the GTX 660 TI, you can read about the specs of the GTX 760 here. Basically it looks as if Nvidia plans to have all of its higher end GPUs such as the GTX Titan, 780, 770, and 760 be released under the 700 series title while all the mid to low budget cards will stay under the 600 series. One card that is missing from the 700 series is a GTX 790 dual GPU card. While not terribly surprising since they have the GTX Titan, you would expect them to release once as a flagship even if in limited quantities. Both Nvidia and AMD are in a lull when it comes to GPUs. AMD has been burning the midnight oil with its APUs that will power next generation consoles and Nvidia has been busy with the mobile market.

Originally AMD was not planning to releasing the Radeon HD 8000 series if you believe rumors but has said they plan to do a release of the series by the end of the year. The Radeon HD 8000 series will be OEM only, you can read about the AMD Radeon HD 8000 series here. The AMD Radeon HD 8000 series is going to be similar to Nvidia in the fact is will be basically rebranded GPUs of the previous series with some minor improvements and performance gains.

Now how could AMD counter punch Nvidia? Next year when Nvidia releases their new “Maxwell” architecture, AMD will be releasing their own new architecture code named “Volcanic Islands”. The VI architecture will be based on a 20 nm manufacturing process, which will compete with Maxwell’s 20 nm process. AMD proved with the Radeon HD 7990 that it had the fastest GPU on the market, surpassing the GTX Titan, but did that with a dual GPU card based on their “Southern Islands” architecture. With AMD showing they can make a card to compete with Nvidia’s top end 690 and Titan, one can assume they will be ready for the challenge with the Volcanic Islands architecture when 2014 rolls around and everyone is looking for something new for their PC.

In the end 2013 is going to be a down year for the enthusiast GPU market. Nvidia 700 series and AMD HD 8000 series are going to end up a wash I believe in the end so it will come down to see what AMD is going to do for the HD 9000 series vs Nvidia’s 800 Series.