AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT unreleased 'reference' design disassembled and tested

AMD's flagship RDNA 4 GPU has been one of the most well-received Team Red GPU launches in a long time. As seen in our reviews of various Radeon RX 9070 XT models from GIGABYTE, ASRock, and Sapphire, the massive improvement to ray-tracing performance and the arrival of FSR 4 have closed the feature gap in a big way when it comes to GeForce RTX versus Radeon RX.

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However, unlike previous generations, which saw AMD release reference models, this time around, there weren't any, which has left many wondering what happened. With only a handful of models available at the competitive $599 MSRP price point, a reference or 'Founders Edition' style design from AMD could have given PC gamers another avenue for picking up a highly sought-after Radeon RX 9070 XT.

Still, a few of these reference designs were produced and shipped to OEM partners to be used with new PCs. One of these models was recently spotted on the Chinese-based Chiphell forums, where the buyer spent 5499 RMB or $748 USD to acquire it on Goofish. The user has disassembled the card and benchmarked it.

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The GPU sports three fans with a 2.5-slot thickness and a minimal all-black design. As a reference model, power delivery is via two 8-pin connectors, not the three 8-pin setups found on some OC models. Lifting the hood, we see eight copper heat pipes, an aluminum fin-stack heatsink, and a 14-phase PCB.

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The GPU and VRAM feature Honeywell PTM7950 thermal interface materials (TIM) for cooling. After benchmarking it using the Frumark stress test, the GPU temperature hit 62 degrees Celcius with an 84-degree hotspot, and memory temperatures hit 88 degrees. Replacing the thermal pads reduced memory temperatures considerably, which points to RDNA 4 memory running hot without the proper cooling.