AMD Radeon RX 7900 leaked
It seems that some people couldn’t wait for AMD to officially reveal their new RDNA 3 GPUs later this week. Images of the Radeon RX 7900 leaked earlier this week.
The images were posted by @9550pro on Twitter. They show a card that’s clearly a prototype, with a red board design, some voltage contact points in some places and a missing backplate. The design itself matches what AMD has been teasing since late August, with three red stripes on the heatsink.
More importantly, the images of the RX 7900 that have been leaked show that it will use the same dual 8-pin power connectors as its RDNA 2 predecessors. This is in line with what AMD stated in the wake of the issues with the 12VHPWR connectors used by rival Nvidia.
The use of the 12VHPWR connector has been a point of contention for Nvidia. Reports of the connectors melting due to the high power load required by the card have plagued the launch of the GeForce 4090. A later investigation by Igor’s Lab has shown that it may be the quad 8-pin to 12VHPWR adaptor that Nvidia shipped that may be at fault and not the connector itself. However, the damage has already been done causing AMD to announce that it won’t be using it for RDNA 3.
In addition, sticking to a dual 8-pin design may also assuage the fears of those worried that upgrading a graphics card would also require a power supply unit upgrade. The 12VHPWR connector, after all, was meant to allow one connector to replace the three to four needed on some higher-end Nvidia graphics cards due to their immense power draw. The RX 7900 sticking to two 8-pin connectors, as the leaked images show, hints at lower power draw than equivalent Nvidia cards as the two connectors will only allow up to 375 watts of power. (Read: How to upgrade your GPU: An easy to follow guide)
The RX 7900 also looks to have evaded the massive increase in size of the RTX 4090. The leaked images show a card that’s barely longer than the outgoing RX 6900, and not much thicker. It does, however, seem to allow for more airflow, with a wider opening for its cooling fins. Whether or not this means that the cards will run hotter than the previous generation is as of yet unknown. This, and other important details about the RX 7900, are likely to be revealed when AMD officially takes the covers off the cards later this week.
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