AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series GPUs with reference design shrouds are practically unicorns, simply because the red chipmaker did make them (read: they do exist) but they were never put into mass production. Someone in China got their hands on a reference RX 9070 in China last month and this time around, someone else managed to purchase and the reference design XT variant.
The source of the seller is unknown, naturally, but the reference 9070 XT looks nearly relatively identical to the renders that we’ve seen in AMD’s presentation slides about its recent RDNA4 lineup. Compared to the non-XT, this model sports a triple-fan cooling solution, while the backplate looks a little flimsy. Typically, AMD’s reference shrouds tend to look really meaty, beefy even, with backplates usually being a sheet of rigid alloy.
Like the earlier reference RX 9070, the backplate of the XT variant also bears the older, pre-RDNA Radeon labelling, further suggesting that this is an engineering sample, and not a final product.
Additionally, the individual who managed to purchase the reference RX 9070 XT did take it apart, revealing a GPU core covered in a Graphene sheet, while memory modules surrounding the GPU were covered in not-so-high-quality thermal pads, something that they said was causing the GDDR6 modules to run at higher than average temperatures.
After replacing the thermal pads, though, the reference RX 9070 XT and its memory showed a drop in temperature, by approximately 6°C on average. The individual also tested card using a running on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and DDR5-6400 RAM.
(Source: Chiphell, Videocardz)
