Today’s PC landscape is changing in ways few expected, and almost nobody wanted. AMD, the eponymous Team Red, is coming into the new year with an odd assortment of chips in tow. Maybe it’s enough to know there’s likely more in store later this year, but first AMD has to handle the ravages of the ongoing RAM shortage.
In an interview with Gizmodo during CES 2026, AMD’s VP in charge of Ryzen, David McAfee, talked to me about the company’s full PC gaming suite. I spoke with the exec the day after one of AMD’s oddest CES showcases to date, where it revealed a few new chips in existing families, including the Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU and several more Strix Halo APUs (accelerated processing units)—specifically the Ryzen AI Max+ 388 and 382—which were also built for some future mobile gaming device, perhaps even more handheld PCs. However, those chips are still using older RDNA 3.5 GPUs, meaning they won’t have access to AMD’s latest upscaling updates that would truly push mobile devices for gaming.
AMD’s novel CPUs for lightweight laptops, the Ryzen AI 400 series, didn’t get nearly as much time in the limelight as Qualcomm and Intel’s competing CPUs. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D has a higher clock speed, which means some of the most hardcore gamers can make use of a few extra frames. McAfee told me directly there won’t be a huge difference in performance between the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and this new, overclocked chip. Modern DirectX 12-supported games may not see as big an increase as some “high-framerate” esports titles or older DirectX 9 titles, he added. Everyone else will feel safe sticking with what works, and that seems to be AMD’s intent with this latest CPU. The sophomore chip and the new hotness will be sold alongside each other.
AMD is pushing to keep GPU costs low(ish)
Keeping GPU costs low seems to be AMD’s entire modus operandi for the start of 2026. What worked last year will work this year, so long as the company can contain the worst excesses of memory price gouging. The entire PC market is suffering under the RAM supply crunch. Sure, you should be able to buy a new Ryzen 7 9850X3D when it eventually goes on sale (we still don’t have an idea of its official price), but will self-starters also suffer the 500% markup on DDR5 RAM for the sake of a new PC?
AMD doesn’t have a GPU to compete against Nvidia’s top-end GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. The best it can do is outcompete Team Green on performance per dollar. The Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT were both great GPUs if you could nab them for close to their suggested retail price. The XT only hit its fabled $600 close to eight months after launch. With memory prices going haywire, consumers have reasons to be concerned that all component prices could increase. Last year, a customer service rep for major AMD GPU maker PowerColor told Reddit users that prices could “kick up” in 2026.
“We have very strategic partnerships over many, many years with all the DRAM manufacturers to make sure that both the amount of supply that we need and the economics of what we’re able to buy from them are what we can support in our graphics business,” McAfee told Gizmodo. However, the Ryzen lead admitted that he can’t predict the future. He added that AMD was trying to work with the AIC (add-in card) manufacturers to maintain prices close to what AMD suggests. Considering how long the RX 90-series kept above MSRP, that may not be enough to calm gamers’ nerves.
“Without the memory at the right price, building graphics cards with our add-in-board partners that hit the right price and market, that’s tough math to put together,” McAfee added. “So managing that memory ecosystem very closely is absolutely something that is a core part of what we do.”
Being cautious around multi-frame gen
While AMD is competing with Nvidia on GPUs, it’s also trying to become the fresh face of AI upscaling technology. The RX 90-series introduced FSR 4, a new model of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution technology that boosts game performance by making lower-resolution frames appear like they’re running at a higher resolution. Last year, AMD trotted out FSR Redstone as a mid-cycle update to its upscaler. This update added multi-frame interpolation, aka multi-frame generation, to the party. Essentially, this technology takes multiple AI-generated frames and sticks them in between rendered frames, artificially increasing the frame rate.
The wider PC gaming community is far more hesitant to adopt frame generation than AI upscaling. Frame gen necessarily hits at a game’s latency, making controls feel floatier than they should. Redstone and Nvidia’s latest DLSS 4.5 have worked to reduce the visual glitches from AI-generated frames, but these imperfections still mar the experience. McAfee tried to make it clear AMD was only taking baby steps into multi-frame generation.
“We will proceed very cautiously and listen to the gaming community and the reaction that they have to these multi-frame gen capabilities,” McAfee said. “I think a lot of gamers feel like [frame gen technology has] gone too far in some cases. And so I think that’s why you’re going to see us step very carefully as we build this out over the next several years.”
We may need to wait a little while longer before we see any new PC or handheld APU sporting RDNA 4, the same GPU architecture as the RX 90 series. Once that happens, we may see Redstone hit the mobile market. Smaller and cheaper devices can make better use of upscaling than $600 graphics cards, something McAfee agreed with.
“The value of frame interpolation and upscaling on a handheld platform is incredibly significant,” he said. “So as we’re looking out at what we’re going to do in our handheld roadmap in the future, those are absolutely the conversations we’re having about… how do we deliver a really high-quality experience and make sure that all of the benefits that go along, both power, smoothness of gameplay, etc., make their way onto those handheld platforms as well?”
Read the full article here
