Information on cheaper graphics cards with the Navi 48 chip
AMD’s new graphics card, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, is coming this month. Chinese sources say it will have a 260–270W TDP and clock speeds of around 2.8GHz base and up to 3.0–3.1GHz in boost. Recently, more details of it came together, as well as the first news on the cheaper Radeon RX 9070 “non-XT” version. The latter was expected to have its memory stripped down to 12 GB and accordingly lower emory bandwidth. But things may be better.
In stores at the end of January
The first piece of information concerns the release date. According to the BenchLife website, which released some of its own findings after the previous rumors appeared on the Chiphell forum, AMD will reveal the cards at CES 2025 (as is widely expected) and the actual release, in the sense that the graphics cards will appear in stores, is said to occur at the end of the same month – i.e. January. And it is said to involve not only the Radeon RX 9070 XT, but also the cheaper Radeon RX 9070. So it’s possible that both versions will go on sale at the same time instead of the launch being staggered.
Read more: TDP, clock speeds and performance of the Radeon RX 9070 XT: On par with the RTX 4080?
The release could possibly coincide with the release of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D, a 16-core and 12-core CPU of the Zen 5 architecture with 3D V-Cache. According to a leaker nicknamed Hoang Anh Phu, the FSR4 technology might also be made public at the same time, but in its case, it is not clear whether it will just be an unveiling of its details and a “release” in the sense of public availability to developers, since implementation in games can probably take some time, even if perhaps some collaboration took place beforehand.
Tip: AMD has spoken about FSR4. It will already use artificial intelligence
BenchLife also confirms that the TDP of some non-reference cards will be over 300W (up to 330W), but claims to have no information about the 260–270W reference TDP. This theoretically opens the possibility that the 330W is the reference value after all. However, BenchLife also writes that according to its sources, the specifications circulating on the internet are not yet final, so some of the parameters may change.
RX 9000 Radeons will not use the problematic power connectors
What isn’t changing, however, since the PCBs are probably already finished, is the power supply approach. BenchLife writes that by default the cards will have the usual 8-pin power connectors. There should be two of these on the Radeon RX 9070 XT, although non-reference cards may possibly employ three. Unlike Nvidia AMD does not mandate the use of a 12+4pin connector which has been plagued by problems with unreliability and overheating that has damaged cables and cards (and sometimes PSUs), according to this source. At the same time, though, it’s probably not forbidden for manufacturers to use it if they prefer, so it could appear on some cards.
- Tip: 12-pins on GPUs melting again: Both fans and critics are wrong
- Tip: 12+4pin connector is still more unreliable than 8pin. Already at 300 W
Both cards with Navi 48 have full memory capacity
In the previous generation, AMD released one card with the Navi 32 chip with a full 16GB of memory and a 256-bit bus (RX 7800 XT), but the second model (RX 7700 XT) had the bus stripped down to 192 bits and only 12GB of memory. We expected more of the same to be likely now with graphics cards based on the Navi 48 chip (which the Navi 32 apparently replaces). That is, the RX 9070 XT model will indeed have 16 GB of memory, but the RX 9070 would only get 12 GB, which also means a narrower bus (192 bits instead of 256 bits) and thus 25% worse bandwidth, which will affect performance even in games that don’t run into the limits of the capacity.
However, we have evidence that this time the line up will look more like in the era of Radeon RX 580 and RX 570. A list of upcoming Asus cards has been leaked on the internet and their names show that it won’t be just the Radeon RX 9070 XT with 16GB memory, but also the cheaper Radeon RX 9070 (without XT). Both models’ codes contain the O16G string, which reveals the memory capacity.
- TUF-RX9070XT-O16G-GAMING
- TUF-RX9070-O16G-GAMING
- PRIME-RX9070XT-O16G
- PRIME-RX9070-O16G
This also means that the Radeon RX 9070 will retain 256-bit memory width. While AMD may choose to lower the clock speed of the GDDR6 chips, the memory bandwidth will largely be maintained. Plus, there’s the benefit that the card won’t run out of breath as quickly in future games with larger textures and higher data footprint requirements as 12GB cards will. Thus, the Radeon RX 9070 is starting to shape up as a potentially interesting card. However, that will also depend on what price it will retail for. If the premium on the XT model is only small, it may still be that card that will be more worth getting.
Sources: VideoCardz (1, 2), Momomo_us, Hoang Anh Phu, BenchLife
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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