RX 9070 XT Red Devil packaging recommends a 900W power supply — AMD's Frank Azor confirms custom cards with lower wattage requirements

PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil
(Image credit: X/Tomasz Gawroński)

Packaging for one of AMD's custom Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics cards has been uncovered, showing the alleged power supply requirements for the RDNA 4 GPU, which will rival the best graphics cards. Tomasz Gawronski posted an image of what appears to be the box of PowerColor's Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil, revealing an eye-opening 900W minimum power supply requirement.

If you're unfamiliar with PowerColor's product stack, the Red Devil models are the top-end SKUs with the highest factory overclocks. Therefore, they consume more power than regular and moderately overclocked models. Also, note that the 900W requirement applies to the entire system, not just the Radeon RX 9070 XT.

The RX 9070 XT Red Devil's 900W minimum power supply requirement is identical to the previous RX 7900 XTX Red Devil. That means you'd need a power supply that can deliver at least 75A on the 12V rail. PowerColor previously used the Ryzen 9 7950X as the reference for the 900W requirement on the RX 7900 XTX Red Devil. Compared to the vanilla RX 7900 XTX with a TBP (typical board power of 355W), which calls for an 800W unit (at least 65A on the 12V rail), the RX 9070 XT Red Devil's is 100W higher. AMD's recommendation is based on a PC configured with a Ryzen 9 5900X.

However, if we look at the competition, the RX 9070 XT Red Devil's requirement doesn't shock us one bit. For example, Nvidia recommends an 850W power supply as the baseline for the RTX 5080, which is rated with a TGP (total graphics power) of 360W. In Nvidia's case, the chipmaker utilizes a Ryzen 9 9950X for its calculations.

If we had to make an educated guess, 300W of that 900W is likely headroom, so we're assuming PowerColor estimates around 600W for the entire system. Perhaps 200W of that 600W is for hardware other than the GPU, so the specific TBP for the RX 9070 XT Red Devil comes down to around 400W. However, due to the factory overclocks, this isn't indicative of the reference RX 9070 XT.

Frank Azor, AMD's Chief Architect for Gaming Solutions, responded to Gawronski (click on the embedded tweet above), clarifying that there will be 9070 XT variants with lower minimum power supply wattage requirements. In a way, the AMD executive didn't shoot down the authenticity of the 900W power supply requirement on the leaked RX 9070 XT Red Devi, but he didn't confirm it.

Azor also poked some fun at Nvidia's ongoing GeForce RTX 50-series shortage and 16-pin meltdown woes, saying there will be plenty of RX 9070 XT GPUs with 8-pin PCIe power connectors for "worry-free upgrading."

The RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT will debut in early March, focusing on the mid-range GPU market. Nvidia reportedly delayed its RTX 5070 to counter the RX 9070 series launch. Specs of the RX 9070 XT were allegedly leaked, revealing a Navi 48 die with 4,096 shader cores, 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit memory interface, and a boost speed of up to 3,100 MHz.

Another report allegedly revealed that the GPU performed similarly to an RTX 4070 Ti Super in Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth Wukong. Frank Azor also confirmed that the RX 9070 XT would not be coming in a 32GB variant, dashing people's hopes for potential 9070 XT workstation-focused partner cards.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

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  • ezst036
    I love that more and more retail packaging items mention Linux these days.

    Some people may overlook that but its a massive win having it printed out on the box.
    Reply
  • AkroZ
    ezst036 said:
    I love that more and more retail packaging items mention Linux these days.

    Some people may overlook that but its a massive win having it printed out on the box.
    It's not just mentionning, this means they have done the efforts to port there softwares on Linux. But you have many that don't bother.

    Note that on this package Linux is a registered trademark but not Windows. From what I found Microsoft prefer writing Windows 10 without trademark symbol unless for a legal document.
    Reply
  • SomeoneElse23
    The devil is in the details?
    Reply
  • chemistu
    900 Watts though, I thought these new AMD cards were aimed at the mid range. Is 900W a mid range PSU these days? I just put together a new PC thinking I'd upgrade the graphics when the 9xxx / 5xxx cards came out (the trusty AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition™ , (definitely ™ on that one I'm thinking) is just not just not up to the job any more. Unless, of course, that job were be acting as an industrial space heater in a Russian tractor factory. A bit hot, bit loud those old 'versary cards.)
    I bought an 850W PSU and thought that would be overkill for a mid range PC?
    Reply
  • qwertymac93
    chemistu said:
    900 Watts though, I thought these new AMD cards were aimed at the mid range. Is 900W a mid range PSU these days? I just put together a new PC thinking I'd upgrade the graphics when the 9xxx / 5xxx cards came out (the trusty AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition™ , (definitely ™ on that one I'm thinking) is just not just not up to the job any more. Unless, of course, that job were be acting as an industrial space heater in a Russian tractor factory. A bit hot, bit loud those old 'versary cards.)
    I bought an 850W PSU and thought that would be overkill for a mid range PC?
    The red devil is their overclocking SKU. The hellhound might be more your speed.
    Reply
  • jp7189
    chemistu said:
    900 Watts though, I thought these new AMD cards were aimed at the mid range. Is 900W a mid range PSU these days? I just put together a new PC thinking I'd upgrade the graphics when the 9xxx / 5xxx cards came out (the trusty AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition™ , (definitely ™ on that one I'm thinking) is just not just not up to the job any more. Unless, of course, that job were be acting as an industrial space heater in a Russian tractor factory. A bit hot, bit loud those old 'versary cards.)
    I bought an 850W PSU and thought that would be overkill for a mid range PC?
    I think its very unlikely these cards will go past 450watts. So, a quality 850 psu should be fine as long as the rest of the PC components are mid range; <150w CPU, single m.2 stick, couple nice fans, etc.
    Reply
  • YSCCC
    Actually a quality 850W like FSP, Seasonic or Corsair should be fine, if it goes say, 500W and you are with a 14900KS, somehow at their respective max power draw they are still going 820W, but hey, in reality we never go to that load, and a quality 850W could handle that perfectly, just not as efficiently.

    I am personally more worrying if AMD, being the AMD they are, seeing Nvidia apparently having :

    1) No stock
    2) Melty connector 2.0
    3) very scalper price
    4) Minimal real uplift

    Would just go balls up again and : ok, let's up charge them AGAIN, so we will still get kicked and not gaining market shares
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    If the card really falls between a 4070Ti Super and and a 4080 in performance, then a recommendation of 900W for the PSU is pretty ludicrous and, if indeed necessary, hints to pretty high power draw... no idea why the article states "doesn't shock us one bit" with those expected metrics. Also once again funny how CPUs get slammed for high power consumption, but not GPUs xD
    Reply
  • YSCCC
    KyaraM said:
    hen a recommendation of 900W for the PSU is pretty ludicrous and, if indeed necessary, hints to pretty high power draw... no idea why the article states "doesn't shock us one bit" with those expected metrics. Also once again funny how CPUs get slammed for high power consumption, but not GPUs xD
    Lol, and leaks says they're going to price it in $750 range, seems like the good ol AMD is still here, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity
    Reply
  • tamalero
    AMD always says a number way above the normal. They are accounting for crappy power supplies, which output a lot of power in other rails (like 5V) instead of the 12V.
    When the usual was 500W. They were recommending 700W supplies and so on.


    And if you count power hungry cpus like the 14900k.
    900W might not be as a bad idea to recommend.
    Reply