AMD RDNA 4 Navi 48 GPU to Support AV1 B-Frames

AMD's upcoming RDNA 4-based Navi 48 GPUs, including the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, will support AV1 encoding, making them a strong contender for content creators and streamers. This is a welcome upgrade compared to the budget Navi 44. AV1 B-Frame Support AMD's inclusion of hardware AV1 encoding on the Navi 48 was spotted by HXL (@9550pro) in the GPUOpen Libraries. The "AV1 B-Frame" support refers to a feature within the AV1 video codec that improves both video compression and quality. With this support, the RDNA 4-based Navi 48 GPUs will offer better compression efficiency than older standards like H.264 and HEVC. Navi 44 Exclusion Unfortunately, this hardware encoding support is absent on the budget-focused Navi 44, which will be powering the lower-end RX 9000 series GPUs. This means that these GPUs will not be suitable for content creation and streaming. This decision is reminiscent of the RDNA 2 generation, where budget options like the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 lack…