Skip to main content

The rumored RX 6000S may be AMD’s secret ace for gaming laptops in 2022

According to a new leak, AMD may be working on new mobility graphics cards for gamers, currently dubbed the RX 6000S series.

The RDNA 2 6nm GPUs are rumored to be a refresh of the RX 6000 laptop line of graphics cards and may offer a performance boost combined with lower power requirements.

Dell G15 Gaming Laptop.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although there is little information about the alleged mobility graphics cards, there is enough to piece together from several sources. The first and main change is the switch from 7nm to 6nm: It’s likely that AMD RX 6000S would be based on TSMC’s 6nm process. It’s unclear which of the current AMD graphics cards are due for a revamp. Some leaks suggested the creation of the RX 6900M, but the most recent rumors point to the RX 6800S being the first in line.

Assuming the card in question is indeed the RX 6800S, we can expect to see the same bus and core count of the current 6800M GPU. This means 2,560 cores and a 192-bit bus interface. The clock speed, memory size, and bandwidth all are unclear right now, although the 6800M has a 2.3GHz frequency that the new card is likely to beat.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

The news comes from Disclosuzen, a Twitter user whose account has recently been suspended. However, there is more than one source to this story — Greymon55, a well-known leaker, also speculated a few months ago that AMD may be about to refresh its Navi 2X graphics cards.

Switching from a 7nm (which AMD’s current laptop GPUs are based on) to a 6nm process node could prove beneficial, offering better performance at lower power requirements. TSMC, the semiconductor foundry that AMD works with to create these GPUs, claims that the 6nm process offers 18% higher logic density compared to the 7nm.

An AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card placed in front of a black background.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s hard to tell this early on what kind of realistic performance gains we can expect from the switch to 6nm. One thing to remember is that more efficiency is never a bad thing in a laptop, and if the card becomes less power-hungry due to the switch, that alone will be an improvement. Some of the best gaming laptops on the current market are rather thin and packed full of components, so lowering the power requirements may also improve temperatures within the chassis.

For those who favor laptop gaming, exciting times are ahead. AMD is not the only manufacturer set to release new mobility GPUs in the near future. Nvidia is said to be set to reaveal the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 3070 Ti for laptops in early 2022, and Intel will be launching the Arc Alchemist GPU around the same time as well.

Given the current state of the graphics card market, more GPUs are never a bad thing. The new RX 6000S cards are likely to launch alongside the Ryzen Rembrandt APU series in early 2022.

Editors' Recommendations

Monica J. White
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
AMD may soon launch a new GPU, but it’s probably not the one you think
AMD Radeon RX 6500XT graphics cards stacked on top of each other.

After months of silence, it seems that AMD might be readying a new graphics card -- but it's not the one most of us expected to see.

Instead of following the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT with an RX 7800 XT, AMD appears to be moving down a couple of notches. Rumor has it that its next GPU will be the RX 7600.

Read more
AMD is letting Nvidia win, and it needs to step it up before it’s too late
Nvidia and AMD CEOs are shown side by side in a split-screen view.

Since the launch of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, AMD has been awfully quiet on the graphics card front -- and it couldn't have picked a worse time to go radio silent.

With Nvidia quickly making its way through its RTX 40-series lineup, AMD doesn't have much more time before it completely falls behind. What's going on with Team Red?
Rise and fall

Read more
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 vs. AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT: a close call
Two RTX 4070 graphics cards sitting side by side.

Nvidia's new release, the RTX 4070, shakes things up in the GPU market. After a long spell of only releasing overpriced graphics cards, Nvidia seems to have altered its pricing strategy for the RTX 4070. While it's hard to call it cheap, it's certainly affordable, and it offers performance that makes it a good midrange option.

However, Nvidia's latest addition to the ranking of the best graphics cards has an unexpected rival in the previous generation of GPUs. AMD's RX 6950 XT is similarly priced, but can it keep up with the RTX 4070? Check out our benchmarks and find out how these two cards stack up against each other.
Pricing and availability

Read more