There’s a saying goes: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – and AMD is following this golden rule for its upcoming Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs, as reported by Benchlife. Specifically, the GPUs will keep using the PCIe 8-pin connectors, with no plans of switching to the 12V-2×6 connector seen in NVIDIA GPUs just yet.
RX 9070 Series: PCIe 8-pin Remains
Recently, it was reported that the RX 9070 XT may consume up to 330W depending on AIB’s configurations, and that’s going to take at least two PCIe 8-pin connectors (one provides 150W, plus the 75W from the PCIe bus connector itself) – or more commonly – three connectors for stable power delivery. And that’s what most AIBs is going to design their cards with, as 12V-2×6 connector is not mandated (and it just costs more to build one).
Still, can we see use of this newfangled connector in some edge cases? Possibly. In fact, it has happened before: the ASRock Creator RX 7900 series is one of the very few, if not the only, add-in board variant that was seen using this connector for space-saving reasons, as the card uses a blower fan design which restricts the space available for board components.
The publication also noted that AMD will announce the RX 9070 series at CES 2025 next week, with launch happening by end of January. Specifically, before the Lunar New Year, which is 29th January 2025. Both the XT and non-XT variant of the lineup will feature 16GB of VRAM, as evidenced by recent leak of ASUS Radeon GPUs.
Pokdepinion: Seeing nobody outside of NVIDIA is trying to shove as much power into one card as possible, I can see why both Intel and AMD sticks to what works today.
