Wednesday, January 8th 2025
ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT Comes with Three 8-pin Power Connectors
At the 2025 International CES, ASUS showed off its Radeon RX 9070 XT TUF Gaming graphics card. This card was part of a multi-brand showcase AMD set up in its booth. The card features the latest generation of TUF Gaming board design that the company is debuting with the GeForce RTX 50-series and Radeon RX 90-series. The card features a triple slot cooling solution, with its Axial-Tech fans taking up an entire slot (thicker fans mean lower RPM). The PCB is 2/3 the length of the card, so all airflow from the third fan is vented through the heatsink and out a large cutout on the backplate.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the ASUS TUF Gaming RX 9070 XT is its power connectors. The card calls for three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. We've only seen one other custom RX 9070 XT come with three connectors, and that is the XFX RX 9070 XT Merc 319 Black. The question then arises, what is a small performance-segment GPU going to do with 525 W of power on tap? Most other cards, including the PowerColor Red Devil, come with just two 8-pin connectors (375 W), so does the presence of three connectors mean that the board power of overclocked RX 7090 XT exceed 300 W, and board partners are trying to reduce the load on the 75 W put out by the PCIe slot, by sneaking in a third 8-pin input? This isn't the only oddball power connector configuration we've seen at CES for the RX 9070 series. The ASRock RX 9070 XT Taichi comes with a 16-pin 12V2x6 power connector, although there's no way of telling yet if this is configured for 600 W—it could even be keyed for 300 W.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the ASUS TUF Gaming RX 9070 XT is its power connectors. The card calls for three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. We've only seen one other custom RX 9070 XT come with three connectors, and that is the XFX RX 9070 XT Merc 319 Black. The question then arises, what is a small performance-segment GPU going to do with 525 W of power on tap? Most other cards, including the PowerColor Red Devil, come with just two 8-pin connectors (375 W), so does the presence of three connectors mean that the board power of overclocked RX 7090 XT exceed 300 W, and board partners are trying to reduce the load on the 75 W put out by the PCIe slot, by sneaking in a third 8-pin input? This isn't the only oddball power connector configuration we've seen at CES for the RX 9070 series. The ASRock RX 9070 XT Taichi comes with a 16-pin 12V2x6 power connector, although there's no way of telling yet if this is configured for 600 W—it could even be keyed for 300 W.
77 Comments on ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT Comes with Three 8-pin Power Connectors
Shoulda painted the shroud red, cuz red wunz go fasta
I can't see how it's any necessary on Navi 48, unless it's built like Rocket Lake to support basically whatever overclocking as far as you got wares to fuel and cool it. Doubt it tho. Smells like it's gonna peak at 320ish watts, ultimately providing the absolute diminishing returns thereafter because the power density is too ridiculously high.
Should've been a single 8-pin card with ~180 W limitation anyway.
both 4060ti....
I paid more for a modell with three fans which was much quieter in several different tests.
My assumption is that a three fan design sometimes is quieter than a two fan design.
My assumption is that a visual bigger cooler sometimes is quieter.
Of course I can not judge from outside how the card is build. If the thermal resistance was ever calculated or considered. When the build quality is lacking like from the msi radeon 6800 z trio - a bigger cooler with three fans will not benefit at all. Most graphic cards advertise how fabulous their cooling is.
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On topic three power supply connectors.
Some power supplies come with only two gpu cables. Those have two gpu connectors on it and one connector on the power supply side. Therefore the same current runs over just a single cable. Basically two cables for three connectors on the graphic card.
I do not have schematics and board view of those graphic cards. I assume those three power supply connectors will be connected in parallel anyway on the graphic card side
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That card has not 4 dp connectors :(
But I see we're in the wrong topic talking about green :)
To the MOON BABY!
www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-9070-xt.c4229
Nominal boost is 2970 MHz according to the data we have so far. But no doubt it runs 3+ without any tweakingI mean, these are positioned as midrangers... but perhaps they've been high end cards all along and we got just spoiled by absurdities like the 4090 and 5090 :laugh:
But something tells me it won't be that pretty or they'd have no doubt gloated about it just a little during CES, especially when they know NV hasn't shied on adding very large, blown up TGP numbers to their cards (arguably their biggest weakness right now). Instead, they almost seemed evasive about them, with a basic acknowledgment of "yes, it exists, yes, we are launching it, here is what they look like" as they have. We'll see.
My point stands. This die doesn't need 3 8-pins. It needs good pricing. 2x8 at 400 USD will do wonders, 3x8 at 500... not that great.
RDNA3 was already brutally inefficient at anything over 2700. That 2970mhz you see there, is the boost clock. It'll do 3100 on an OC at best. More? Not happening especially 24/7 unless you like seeing a 110C hotspot.
People really have wild fantasies these days lmao.