AMD’s next-generation Radeon lineup will not fully arrive until 2028, with only a single RDNA 5 GPU reaching shelves in 2027, according to hardware leaker Kepler_L2. The claim pushes the RDNA 5 release date most enthusiasts had circled back by a year, and it lines up with a near-identical delay on Nvidia’s side.
Kepler_L2, a leaker with a track record of accurate hardware calls, says AMD will ship just one RDNA 5-based chip in 2027. The rest of the generation, which AMD is expected to sell as the Radeon RX 10000 series, would follow in 2028. TechPowerUp reports that this first chip carries the internal codename “AT2”, though its position in the lineup is still unclear: it could open the generation as a new flagship, or AMD could use it as a mid-range or entry-level part to keep a foot in the market while the rest of the stack finishes development.
The same leak claims Nvidia is on a matching schedule: the GeForce RTX 60-series, built on the “Rubin” architecture, is said to skip 2027 entirely and launch as a complete stack in 2028 instead. That would leave both companies without a proper new GPU generation for most of next year, aside from AMD’s one early chip.
Why a staggered RDNA 5 release date isn’t unusual
Staggering a GPU generation by a year like this is not unusual when a new process node or packaging approach is involved. Chipmakers often validate a single design on the new node before committing the rest of the stack, which spreads out yield risk and lets sales start before the whole line-up is ready. Read that way, one RDNA 5 chip in 2027 followed by the remaining Radeon RX 10000 series in 2028 looks less like a straightforward delay and more like AMD choosing to de-risk the launch rather than ship everything at once.
One chip does not necessarily mean one graphics card, either. AMD routinely carves several SKUs out of a single die through binning and cut-down configurations, so a solitary RDNA 5 chip in 2027 could still surface as more than one product on shelves, just narrower in range than a full generational refresh would normally allow.
AMD’s current lineup has to hold the line longer
That single-chip gap matters most for people already running AMD hardware. We covered modders getting DLSS 5 running on AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs earlier this month, and that workaround looks more useful now: if this leak holds, RDNA 4 has to carry AMD’s Radeon range for at least another year beyond what most buyers assumed, with only a partial RDNA 5 stack turning up alongside it in 2027. The same logic applies to the modded FSR 4 upscaling work already squeezed out of unlikely hardware: software gains on the existing architecture carry more weight when the next generation is further away than expected.
What to watch
- Whether AMD confirms AT2 as a flagship or a lower-tier part, since that decides what actually reaches buyers in 2027.
- Whether further leaks corroborate Kepler_L2’s timeline, since this remains an unconfirmed rumour rather than anything AMD has said on the record.
