One AMD Radeon-branded GPU cooler has recently emerged from Korean forums DCinside, which didn’t match any of the known models. However, considering the design language used – which follows the RX 7000 series’ designs – and its unusually large footprint, this cooler is potentially one originally intended for the uber-flagship card, like the RX 7950 XTX.
The Radeon RX 7950 XTX That Could Have Been
Now, the final name of this flagship is never known, and there were suggestions that AMD may even name it “RX 7990 XTX” in homage of the legendary Radeon HD 7000 series equivalent. Whichever the case may be, this cooler was designed to handle one very power hungry GPU, given the presence of a space with room for three PCIe 8-pin connectors. This, in theory, allows the GPU to pull up to 450W from the three cables (not counting the 75W from the PCIe bus).
For comparison, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX required 355 watts to operate at maximum power – it only required a pair of connectors in such case, as they provide just enough juice to the GPU. Napkin math: 2x150W per connector is 300W, and add another 75W you get 375W of maximum allowable power draw. The RX 7900 XTX is just 20 watts short of that limit, so adding a third one will almost guarantee that the chipmaker intended to pull more power than what a pair of PCIe 8-pins can handle.
In the end though, such a card never make it out of AMD’s engineering labs, so all of these is at best an educated guess. At the very least, we can confidently say that such a GPU did exist at one point, but it probably wouldn’t be able to compete with NVIDIA’s flagship at the time, the GeForce RTX 4090, which had significantly more cores to boot.
Source: Videocardz
Pokdepinion: It’s a piece of history, at least.
