AMD prototype video card has been spotted – believed to be the Navi 31 model, presumably the RX 7900 (we’ll get back to that later) – and it shows that the GPU will be running a pair of 8-pin power connectors.
The image was shared on Twitter by HXL, who regularly leaks GPUs, and is believed to have come from a QQ chat group (in China). So a lot of seasoning is needed here, but despite
Obviously the graphics card is an engineering (preliminary) sample as it has a red board design (the final product will not) and voltage pins (for use by engineers for debugging etc.) as Video card (opens in a new tab)who noticed the tweet notes.
As you can see, it’s a card with three fans, slightly larger than its Navi 21 predecessor, and with red stripes on the heatsink, as seen in AMD’s next-gen GPU teasers recently.
Analysis: It’s nice to see, but a triple 8-pin could still happen
We already knew that AMD was not going down the same path as AMD Nvidia RTX 4090 in terms of using a 16-pin power connector (and thus a 12VHPWR power adapter for use with traditional ATX 2.0 power supplies) with the flagship RDNA 3, as the company recently confirmed this.
The reason that the message was met with a sigh of relief was twofold: because cable melting incidents we’ve seen with the 4090and also because it shows that the power needs won’t be as high as Nvidia’s (if you doubt that).
So it’s nice to see the Navi 31 graphics card with only a couple of 8-pin connectors needed for power. Especially recently, we have speculated whether this could be the case, or whether we could see 3 x 8-pin connectors for the flagship RDNA 3. However, there is another rumor could be a turbocharged version of AMD’s next-gen flagshipthe XTX variant, which confuses things a bit – and it can have three power connectors, as mentioned.
To break it down a bit, 2 x 8-pin connectors probably equate to a 350W graphics card or so (each connector provides 150W, making 300W, plus 75W coming through the PCIe slot for 375 W maximum). Based on rumours, the 7900 XT – rumored to be one of the first graphics cards to arrive in AMD’s RDNA 3 range in ages – should be a 350W card, so it’s a reasonable conclusion that that’s what we’re looking at again here.
If there is a more powerful RX 7900 XTX that may require much more power (perhaps 400W to 450W) and thus require 3 x 8-pin connectors to provide enough power, so we may still see such a board next to vanilla. 7900 XT.
To be honest, though, we’re not convinced by the XTX speculation, and it seems more likely that such a GPU, be it the 7900 XTX or the 7950 XT, will appear even further down the line with a triple 8-pin power supply. However, this is obviously just speculation at this point.
What we do know is that we’re about to find out what AMD has up its sleeve for the first release RDNA 3 at a big event later this week (November 3). But these images showing a 2 x 8-pin Navi 31 board – assuming it’s not a fake – are a good sign in terms of using this power setup rather than a trio of 8-pin connectors. (Although, as we just discussed above, this configuration may appear in the more powerful Navi 31 model).
https://www.techradar.com/news/worried-about-nvidia-rtx-4090-melting-cables-leaked-rdna-3-flagship-pics-could-prove-a-tonic/
