Sapphire teases dual-fan RX 9070 XT GPU — may be the smallest custom RX 9070 XT

Sapphire teased a new AMD Radeon GPU on Twitter. The graphics card, which features the classic dual-fan Sapphire Pulse cooler design, is likely a Radeon RX 9070 or RX 9070 XT.

If this will indeed be an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, recent benchmarks (if they are accurate) of real-world raster performance seem to indicate a card highly competitive with Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 Super, so seeing it in a more reasonable dual fan configuration is nice.

Narrowing our focus back on the Sapphire Pulse GPU specifically, some things can be approximated based on the imagery. Besides being a standard dual-slot, dual-fan GPU, unlike the other AIBs we've seen, the actual GPU length also seems quite conservative and more compact to fit into your typical mini-ITX case.

Of course, bulkier AIB GPUs like Asus' various triple-fan RX 9070 and 9070 XT models are better suited for larger cases that can accommodate them, at least theoretically. We'll have to wait for benchmarks before determining the final differences between these AIB GPUs and how their cooler designs may impact performance and overclocking ability.

The new Sapphire Radeon Pulse design looks nearly identical in terms of visual design. However, the color scheme for this particular series of GPU cooler designs has evolved over the past few generations. This is mainly due to removing many white accents that used to come with Sapphire Pulse GPUs, like the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5600 XT. Now, the design is much more streamlined around blacks with red highlights, as on the last-gen Sapphire Pulse RX 7900 XT.

These design changes are noted and probably blend better into more PC builds, but fans of the classic Sapphire Pulse GPU color scheming may be a little sad to see Sapphire's visual language fall more in line with other AIB-making black-and-red GPUs.