ranzware
AMD’s Frank Azor was quick to step on rumours last week of a 32 GB variant of the RX 9070 XT, categorically denying the mega-VRAM-equipped hypotheti-card would be released. Now it seems he’s just playing with us, as he’s taken to his X account once more to “tease” a 320 GB card called the 90700.05XTXT Max.
Honestly, given AMD’s naming schemes at this point, it doesn’t seem that far out of the realms of possibility. As for the specs, however, the absurdity is pretty clear. A 96-pin power connector? Presumably that’s nearly as wide as the card itself, and glows under heavy usage. Particularly when paired with a Back to the Future-friendly 1.21 gigawatt power supply.
Still, that 320 GB of delicious memory should stop a certain segment of hardware enthusiasts grousing about the lack of VRAM on modern cards, shouldn’t it?
With that sort of overhead, presumably 80K gaming is on the table, to match up with the resolution of your new holoscreen. Which you view from your space-chair, while browsing adverts on your Neuralink and debating who won the climate wars with your AI life-partner.
Spoilers: It was nobody. Nobody won. Anyhoo, I look forward to seeing this card on our test benches when it eventually arrives. Nothing would please me more than seeing several people wheel a crate into the PC Gamer offices containing AMD’s latest graphics card, and the joy we would feel at watching the lights dim as we put it through its paces.
The cynic in me might suggest that the reason we’re seeing so many baseless rumours around the RX 9070-series cards is that AMD somewhat whiffed the announcement, providing us ravenous tech journos with nothing more than a single slide and very little detail on what to expect when they arrive next month.
As a result, you could reasonably post a tweet suggesting the new AMD cards have 2.3 GB of VRAM, 150,000 CUs, and come with a free slice of cheese, and someone would retweet it with the comment “crazy if true.”
Details, AMD. We like details. Thankfully, we will receive some details about the upcoming (real) RX 9070-series on February 28. Still, it’s all in good fun, at least. When I think of the mega-cards of the future, part of me wonders if they’ll be locked up in server racks beyond the reach of us mere mortals, and we’ll never actually see one for ourselves.
Services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now and AMD’s A-Bit-Later-But-It’s-Coming-I-Promise (I made that last one up) will be the order of the day, and speculation may be all we have.
A dark thought, isn’t it? Fair play to Mr Azor, though. It’s rare the hardware news gives me an honest chuckle on a Monday morning.
Besides, we all know that if AMD really was to radically change its GPU naming scheme at this point, it’d end up being something like the AMD AI Radeon Max AI 9 9970 AI RX 9070 XTXXTX AI Pro+. AI. You may joke, but this wouldn’t be the first AMD naming scheme I’ve seen that made me throw my hands up in the air and say “you must be kidding.”
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Kurt Indovina
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