So RDNA4 will seemingly be just mid-tier cards and the rumored GeForce 50 series B203 has just 96 SMs (vs. 84 for the 4080) meaning the rest of the descending stack will also be small improvements. Both will also remain in the same 5-4nm node.

Is anyone who updated this generation feeling good yet?

I also honestly don't think we'll see a B202 GPU released, at least not for consumer prices like the 4090. Why would Nvidia when that could compete with the Teslas in inference like the 4090 does? It'll probably be canned like the 4090 Ti.

It's true that the upcoming cards don't feel as exciting as they could be, mostly in the high-end with AMD skipping it and Nvidia likely using those chips for AI.

For those of us that look at the lower end classes, things don't look much better, but at least we can still have some hope that they'll be better than what we got this gen. At least we can hope that they'll be better priced.

Hoping AMD pulls off something special in the mid to high end with RDNA 5. Because if GB205 (5070?) specs are anything to go by, I'm looking at going AMD for the first time in many years. 12GB is simply not enough in 2025, particularly in that tier.

That's one of the things I hope from AMD. Kopite said that Nvidia would keep the same memory design it used for Ada with Blackwell, which kind of implies the same bandwidth and likely same amount of VRAM, which owuld suck for the 5070 but also 4060s.

But, with AMD not having a high-end part to "protect" from its lower end parts and having to offer something to entice consumers to buy their new GPUs, I hope they improve their memory solution a notch, with the 8600 having the same design as the 6700 and 7700 with 192-bit and 12GB, good nough for an entry card, with the 8700 and above going straight to 256-bit and 16GB, with hopefully the 8800, if there is such card, opting to carry either 20 or 24GB.

That's one, or maybe the only field AMD can put pressure on Nvidia, besides price, unless they've somehow managed to boost their RT performance by a whole lot.

RDNA5 is rumored to be related to at least the next-generation Xbox, so it might be one of the 'good ones' like RDNA2 in terms of stack diversity and value. Alas, it's probably some 2.5-3 years away.

The big unknown with RDNA4 is the memory. Will that 8800XT come with a 256 bit bus and 16GB VRAM or will there be more? Considering that the purported performance will be roughly on par with the 7900XT, which comes with 20GB, a 320 bit bus seems more appropriate - but at the same time too big for a non-high-end card.

My RDNA4 expectations:

1. 8800XT: 72CU, 320 bit bus, 20GB VRAM @24k MT/s, TBP ~250W, ~7900XT performance
2. 8700XT: 60CU, 256 bit bus, 16GB VRAM @22k MT/s, TBP ~210W, performance somewhat above 7800XT
3. 8600XT: 40CU, 192 bit bus, 12GB VRAM @22k MT/s, TBP ~170W, performance between 6750XT and 6800
4. 8500XT: 32CU, 128 bit bus, 08GB VRAM @20k MT/s, TBP ~140W, ~7600 performance

Last time AMD Radeon only bothered with mid tier cards was the 400/500 Polaris series, which is also the same timeframe that PS4 Pro launched.
PS5 Pro is supposedly launching this holiday and now we're apparently only getting mid tier RDNA4 8000 series cards during the same timeframe.

I think I see a pattern.

I agree with most of your post. I only disagree with the performance of the 8600, because a 6800 isn't much slower than the current 7800, and if the 8700 has that level of performance, that could lead to problems with those two cards.

At the same time, I really hope the 8600 gets the performance bump it didn't have this gen, so I have mixed feelings.

The last time AMD only had mid tier cards was with the first RDNA cards in the form of the RX 5000 series, topping out with the 5700 XT, which was a farily competitive card, tying with the 2070 in raster (the first gen RDNA cards didn't have ray tracing hardware in them).

I said 6750XT and 6800 (non-XT) because there really ain't anything else in between those 2 cards (the 7700XT could possibly count, but I have no idea how the 7700XT stacks up to the 6800 non-XT) from AMD, so I just said between 6750XT and 6800.

Also, in case it wasn't clear, 8800 and 8700 are based on the bigger chip, while 8600 and 8500 come from the smaller one.

The 6800 performs about the same as the 7700XT:

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6800.c3713

And that's kind of my problem with AMD cards, they have too many cards within 10-15% of each other. It's also the reason I hope they change the memory of the new cards to diferentiate them.