It’s almost time to welcome new AMD GPUs into the market, but these contenders may not be the pixel pushers we were expecting. It appears that the company is planning some unexpected changes to its naming scheme, in addition to skipping an 8000 Series of Radeon graphics cards altogether. Excitingly, we should also expect the next iteration of FSR 4 to arrive alongside them.
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su will take to the stage at CES 2025 on January 7, revealing what should be a cavalcade of components. We’re anticipating Ryzen 9900X3D and 9950X3D CPUs to materialise, alongside the latest from the company’s GPU team. Turns out, we should expect to see the RDNA 4 architecture to make its debut via Radeon RX 9070 XT come the event.
Leaker All_The_Watts shared the first references to the graphics card, alongside a non-XT variant. Within the hour, momomo_us then shared a screenshot from French hardware retailer ‘GrosBill Pro’ which contained listings for both Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070.
The leaks haven’t stopped there, with others confirming a few further juicy details on Radeon RX 9070 XT. AMD itself revealed the reference cooler design foRr its next-generation offerings via a Reddit advertisement, which X user AnhPhuH confirms is indeed the aforementioned graphics card. In another post, they also claim that FSR 4 will debut alongside it as rumours swirl about the software suite’s potential shift to include machine learning smarts.
Processing these potential leaks gives me proverbial whiplash, especially as we were discussing references to Radeon RX 8800 and 8600 just a few weeks ago. The omission of an 8000 Series in favour of 9000 is likely a bid to create product parity between AMD’s GPU and CPU range, with Ryzen 9000 being the current generation on the latter front. This makes sense from a brand perspective but how long this parallel approach will last though is anyone’s guess.
If this is the case, then the shift from what would be 9700 XT to 9070 XT instead puzzles me. Adopting naming conventions closer to your competitor’s (Nvidia) than your own established branding feels ripe for causing confusion among consumers. Nevermind the fact that this spoils proper parity with your processors, namely Ryzen 7 9700X in this case.
Of course, you should never judge a book by its cover and I will naturally measure the merit of Radeon RX 9070 XT by its performance and value instead. Expect more information on this graphics card to pour out of the woodwork over the coming days, with finer details likely to leak the closer CES 2025 becomes. The same token applies to FSR 4, which I’m hoping will be backwards compatible.
Club386 will attend CES 2025, so be sure to come back for any and all announcements concerning Radeon RX 9070 XT and more. In the meantime, give the site a follow on Google News to make sure you don’t miss any of our daily news coverage, as well as reviews and other thoughts on all things tech.
