AMD RDNA 4 GPU rumors flood forth, including possible name change to RX 9070 – because bigger is better, compared to Nvidia’s RTX 5070? – Lovablevibes | South Africa | Nigeria | Africa

AMD is supposedly launching RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 next-gen GPUs
Previous rumors suggested these would be the RX 8000 series
Performance is rumored to be a bit slower than previous chatter from the grapevine

Rumors around AMD’s next-gen GPUs have gone into overdrive this past weekend, and we’ve learned that these RDNA 4 graphics cards may not be the RX 8000 series as previously thought – and we’ve been treated to further speculation on price and performance, too.

So, the theory now is that AMD is going to launch an RX 9070 XT, as first flagged up by an editor on Chiphell, which was pointed out by HXL on X. This will supposedly be the top RDNA 4 GPU, previously rumored to be the RX 8800 XT.

It’ll come alongside a vanilla RX 9070 as a lower-tier offering, if another presence on X – All The Watts, a name we’re not familiar with in the rumor scene – is correct. They believe that the RX 9070 XT will be slightly slower than the current 7900 XT, and that the plain RX 9070 will be about equivalent to the performance of the 7800 XT.

All The Watts spilled some purported price ranges, too, and it seems AMD is looking at around $449 to $649 (in the US) for the Navi 48 graphics cards, which will put the RX 9070 XT at that $650 or so level, and the plain RX 9070 perhaps at $550 to $600. It all feels very vague, though – we’re also told that dropping down a chip, Navi 44 GPUs will range in price from $179 to $349 (RX 9060 models and downwards, presumably).

Another regular rumor peddler on X, Hoang Anh Phu, also shared that the RX 9070 XT is coming at CES 2025, where AMD is rumored to be revealing RDNA 4 – and that FSR 4 will debut alongside it (plus a whole bunch of other stuff, too, in theory).

Finally, Hoang Anh Phu also claimed that a render of a GPU that cropped up in an official AMD advert is supposedly a reference design for one of the next-gen graphics cards from AMD. Season that, and all of this chatter, liberally, of course.

It’s worth further noting that All The Watts reckons there’ll be mobile 9070 variants too, which would be no surprise, but that we may also get some new GPUs for the current RDNA 3 range, namely the RX 7750 and 7650. The latter in particular might be an interesting addition for more affordable GPUs (hopefully).

(VideoCardz spotted all these various posts, by the way, so a hefty four hat tips goes their way – 1, 2, 3, 4).

(Image credit: MSI)

Analysis: Turning it up to 9070?

There’s been a lot of spillage in a very short time around AMD’s next-gen GPUs, and it seems that the RX 9070 XT and 9070 might really be happening. The story is that this was a late switch from AMD in terms of next-gen naming, as until recently, Team Red was going to run with RX 8000 as had been claimed via the rumor mill.

Why switch the name? Well, in some ways, the change to RX 9070 performs that trick of making it seem ‘better’ than Nvidia’s xx70 class graphics card, which this time round will be the RTX 5070 (and 5070 Ti, apparently). So, your mid-range choices early next year could be the RTX 5070 (Ti) or RX 9070 (XT), so the bigger number must be better, right?

It’s that kind of Spinal Tap (turning it up to 11) marketing thinking, we assume (if it happens) – and it’s interesting to note that rather than the 9700 XT, it’s the 9070 XT. (Although that’ll help avoid confusion with AMD’s Ryzen CPU names, to be fair, and the Ryzen 9700X – but it does seem angling very much towards ‘outplaying’ Nvidia too).

The other reason could be that – again, according to rumors – AMD is looking to switch away from the RDNA brand entirely after this next generation of graphics cards. We won’t have RDNA 5, in other words, but UDNA, the ‘U’ meaning unified as this architecture will supposedly bring together CDNA (data center) and RDNA (gaming) under one umbrella.

If that happens, then AMD’s likely to head off the RX x000 naming path entirely, which would make sense rather than go with RX 10000 – which doesn’t work after RX 9000, of course. In other words, the move to UDNA effectively frees up the RX 9000 name for this generation – so why not use it now? We’re just engaging in pure speculation here, mind, but this makes us think it’s perhaps a bit more likely that UDNA, not RDNA 5, comes next on AMD’s GPU roadmap.

As for the performance levels mentioned above for the RX 9070 XT and 9070, they’ll probably come as a bit of a disappointment. The previous hope was that the RDNA 4 top dog GPU could be a bit faster than the 7900 XT, and it’s seemingly slightly slower according to All The Watts – but be particularly skeptical there.

Furthermore, we assume that this is talking about rasterization (non-ray tracing performance), and for ray-traced graphics, AMD supposedly has a much bigger leap in frame rates ready for us, or so other rumors have suggested.