AMD RX 9000 Series GPU Reveals

[SpyderTracks]

May have a winner card for me.

The ASRock Steel Legend RX 9070 XT, fits the colour aesthetic of my mobo (same series) plus dimensions of 298 x 131 x 58mm, just within my case boundaries. Plus it's 2 x 8pin connectors. It's a 3 slot, was hoping for a 2, but don't mind as the rest fits well.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asrock-radeon-rx-9070-xt-steel-legend-16gb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gra-asr-04036.htmlhttps://www.overclockers.co.uk/asrock-radeon-rx-9070-xt-steel-legend-16gb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gra-asr-04036.html
Also one of the cheaper cards listed so far, Overclockers seems to have the best range in the UK market so far, not certain if the prices showing at the moment are just placeholders, but we'll see.

 

[TonyCarter]

I don’t need a new GPU, so decided to upgrade my work PC (M1 Mac Studio) to an M4 Mac Studio for less than the cost of a 5090 🤣

 

[TonyCarter]

May have a winner card for me.

The ASRock Steel Legend RX 9070 XT, fits the colour aesthetic of my mobo (same series) plus dimensions of 298 x 131 x 58mm, just within my case boundaries. Plus it's 2 x 8pin connectors. It's a 3 slot, was hoping for a 2, but don't mind as the rest fits well.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asrock-radeon-rx-9070-xt-steel-legend-16gb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gra-asr-04036.htmlhttps://www.overclockers.co.uk/asrock-radeon-rx-9070-xt-steel-legend-16gb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gra-asr-04036.html
Also one of the cheaper cards listed so far, Overclockers seems to have the best range in the UK market so far, not certain if the prices showing at the moment are just placeholders, but we'll see.

For some reason, I thought you had a waifu build 😁

 

[SpyderTracks]

For some reason, I thought you had a waifu build 😁

Maybe not visually but certainly mentally, you’re spot on!

 

[SpyderTracks]

I don’t need a new GPU, so decided to upgrade my work PC (M1 Mac Studio) to an M4 Mac Studio for less than the cost of a 5090 🤣

I didn’t realise they’d brought out an M4 studio, thought it was only the Mac Mini that had been updated so far.

Ah, just seen it on pre order, did they even advertise that???? That thing is going to fly!

 

[SpyderTracks]

If anyone is interested in a 9070 or 9070 XT, from reports I've seen the memory temps can run quite high on some models (over 90c), some models have hit up to 94c in Furmark), you may be able to improve performance very easily by simply adding some thermal pads on top of the VRAM modules.

But this is likely only going to be significant if you're overclocking the VRAM or running heavy rendering or AI or something like that, for an inconsistent load like gaming, not sure it's necessary.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Any of you concerned with the 12VHPWR connector on some 9070XT models such as the Sapphire Nitro+, unfortunately it looks as though the design pretty much in line with Nvidia's without active current balancing.

Surprises me coming from Sapphire, they normally have some over-engineered disigns.

 

[TonyCarter]

I didn’t realise they’d brought out an M4 studio, thought it was only the Mac Mini that had been updated so far.

Ah, just seen it on pre order, did they even advertise that???? That thing is going to fly!

I didn’t see much fanfare about it, but saw some news on the normal Apple news sites (AppleInsider, MacRumors).

But then I got an email on my Apple Developer account about a new ‘powerhouse’. Lops like it will be about twice as fast as my M1 model, but still stuck to 2xUSB10gb ports on the front with all the TB5 ports on the back.

 

[TonyCarter]

Any of you concerned with the 12VHPWR connector on some 9070XT models such as the Sapphire Nitro+, unfortunately it looks as though the design pretty much in line with Nvidia's without active current balancing.

Surprises me coming from Sapphire, they normally have some over-engineered disigns.

Hopefully the lower power draw (vs a 5080/5090) will mitigate the meltiness somewhat?

 

[Arasaki]

They apparently added fuses to the power connector on the Nitro to prevent the issues faced by the 5080/90

 

[TonyCarter]

They apparently added fuses to the power connector on the Nitro to prevent the issues faced by the 5080/90

Let's add a cheap fuse that will just blow to save the system, than spend a tiny bit more to put in proper power stages to avoid any risk over overpowering and blowing up in the first place!

 

[Arasaki]

Yeah, I'm avoiding that card for this reason, but at least they have done something rather than just letting them die.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hopefully the lower power draw (vs a 5080/5090) will mitigate the meltiness somewhat?

This should be the case, even with full draw going down 2 pins, I wouldn't have thought the amps will exceed 20 like we saw on the 5090

 

[SpyderTracks]

Right.

Teams status set to "On Lunch", online webstore accounts all logged in, arms coated in baby oil.

Let the battle commence!

 

[TonyCarter]

RX9070

• 16GB Sapphire Pulse 9070 Gaming - £700
• 16GB Gigabyte 9070 Gaming OC - £715

RX9070XT

• 16GB Sapphire Pulse 9070XT Gaming - £845
• 16GB Gigabyte 9070XT Gaming OC - £860

 

[Steveyg]

Oooof £700 is fairly steep

 

[Arasaki]

I was hoping for the Pure or XFX

 

[TonyCarter]

I was hoping for the Pure or XFX

Why sell a Pure for £550 when you can put a tiny OC on it and charge £200 more

It's like Apple saying you can get a MacBook Air for £499...but it's got 1GB RAM and 128GB SSD - and to get it to 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD would be another £1000...but Apple can loudly announce a computer with 'UPTO 9999 jigglewatts*' for £499.

Spoiler: *upto

if you spend £9000 upgrading that £499 base model to 60-cores/128GB RAM/8TB SSD

 

[Arasaki]

And the Pulse is gone...

 

[SpyderTracks]

That was intense, Overclockers completely crashed on the dot of 2pm, everywhere else sold out within seconds.

After completely failing even to be able to access the sites once I had it in the basket, I gave up. One site as soon as you went to check out it deleted it from your basket.

But I've managed to get a pre-order from eBuyer for a Sapphire Pulse quite a bit cheaper than @TonyCarter was seeing, they SAY they're expecting stocks tomorrow, so we'll see if that pans out. Not the card I wanted, and may have to mod or change my case. Was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to just how intense that all was!

On Overclockers as I was waiting, when you refresh the page, it shows you how many views that page has had that day, the Steel Legend was up to over 5000 views just before 2pm, so I knew there would be a massive rush for it.

To be honest I thought this release may be a little more sane than others, but no.