With the leak of information about Nvidia’s upcoming graphics, there was also a Christmas leak in the Radeon RX 9000 competition (which until recently we assumed would be the Radeon RX 8000). Information from China indicates how much power these graphics will consume and also something about frequencies. For now, of course, they should be taken with a grain of salt, because although they are probably leaks from the card manufacturers, they can still be distorted by “silent mail”.
The information appeared a few days ago on the Chinese forum Chiphell from a leaker with the nickname Zhangzhonghao (which is not the first time he appears in this role).
Radeon RX 9070 XT clocks
The most interesting is probably the information about the frequency. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is said to have a base frequency according to this source 2,8 GHz. We are writing basic, but it is likely that it is not what is usually stated as a base clock for graphics. AMD doesn’t even write this data in the specifications anymore, and it’s a frequency at which the GPU practically never moves under load (it should be a kind of minimum clock rate, achievable even under the worst “power virus” loads). Therefore, we assume that this figure will apply rather to the so-called game frequency (game clock), where, according to AMD graphics, it should typically run while gaming.
In reality, in games, the tempo is rather higher, often around the frequency referred to as boost. Zhangzhonghao also states the beat boostwhich according to him should be 3,0–3,1 GHz. The fact that the exact value is not given may mean that this is the range of frequencies observed in gaming, not exactly the number that the Radeon RX 9070 XT will have written in the specifications. Or it could also be the boost range of different cards (where 3.1GHz would be higher factory overclocked models). So don’t take these measures as an exact number, but rather as a guide. As a reminder: this is a GPU with 4096 shaders and 256-bit memories (GDDR6).
For comparison, the Radeon RX 7800 XT, which is probably the closest equivalent to the Radeon RX 9070 XT in the last generation (with a 256-bit memory bus), has a game frequency of 2124 MHz and a boost frequency of 2430 MHz in the reference parameters. Overclocked editions such as Nitro+ from Sapphire actually run at around 2450-2550 MHz in games. So 3000 MHz in games would be an improvement of some 20%, however performance may not scale linearly like that.
Consumption
There was a recent indication from Seasonic that the TDP of these graphics could be a relatively low 220W, however that seems to have been some guesswork that was off. The current leak states that the TDP (more precisely TBP or the total consumption of the card) should be 260–270 W (literally “26X”). This is roughly the same consumption as the reference parameters of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE and Radeon RX 7800 XT, so its use also for the successor Radeon RX 9070 XT makes sense. Nvidia is supposed to use a TDP of 250 W for the GeForce RTX 5070 and 300 W for the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.
In addition to this reference consumption, the leaker states that the non-reference Radeon RX 9070 XT will have an increased TDP of up to 330 W in some cases. It is not likely that AMD would formally state this TDP in the specifications as a kind of OC profile. Non-reference cards tend to have TDPs increased above the standard parameters, and increases of values such as 60-70 W are not uncommon. Less expensive editions will likely have their consumption increased less, or even not at all.
There may not be much difference in performance between the reference models and the 330W top editions. It is likely that in the initial state the frequencies will be shifted very high and there will not be much more reserve left. Overclocking above this level probably already works in an inefficient voltage range, and therefore a relatively small increase in frequency is paid for by a large deterioration in consumption. Such a clock setting policy makes sense for relatively cheaper graphics with fewer computing units.
Only 5% slip on RTX 4080?
According to Zhangzhonghao, the Radeon RX 9070 XT is supposed to have a performance that will only be about 5% of the GeForce RTX 4080. So, at least when testing in several games, the information the leaker has is limited. With this result, the card could probably be a little bit faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XT, if confirmed.
In addition, with the new RDNA 4 architecture that will be in this GPU, the performance in ray tracing acceleration is supposed to improve a lot, so the comparison with the RTX 4080 could also be valid in such games (or at least if they are not written to fit Nvidia hardware and nothing to another…)
Unfortunately, we can only work with machine translation, but it seems that in this case we are talking about reference cards with a TDP of 260-270 W. Those with higher overclocking and consumption increased to 330 W could therefore theoretically be closer to GeForce RTX 4080 on average to match. But of course there would be variance in individual games due to how the code and character of individual games differ. Sometimes the GeForce would be faster, sometimes slower.
AMD is expected to reveal these graphics cards next month at CES 2025. The company is scheduled to hold an initial presentation on January 6th, so we could have official information soon.
Resources: VideoCardz, Chiphell
Source: www.cnews.cz
