AMD's upcoming Instinct MI400 accelerator series, scheduled for 2026 introduction, is set to incorporate a new Multimedia IO Die (MID) architecture alongside significant compute density improvements. According to recent patches discovered in AMD-GFX mailing lists, the accelerator will feature a dual Active Interposer Die (AID) design, with each AID housing four Accelerated Compute Dies (XCDs)—doubling the XCD count per AID compared to the current MI300 series. Introducing dedicated Multimedia IO Dies is a new entry in AMD's accelerator design philosophy. Documentation reveals support for up to two MIDs, with each likely paired to an AID, suggesting a more specialized approach to multimedia processing and interface management.

Specifications from the Register Remapping Table (RRMT) implementation indicate sophisticated die-to-die communication pathways, with support for local and remote transactions across XCDs, AIDs, and the new MIDs. The system enables granular control over eight potential XCD configurations (XCD0 through XCD7), suggesting that AMD can scale compute up and down with SKUs. While AMD has yet to release detailed specifications for the MI400 series, separating multimedia functions into dedicated dies could optimize performance and power efficiency. As the 2026 launch window approaches, AMD will spend the remaining time refining the software stack and ROCm support for its next-generation accelerator based on UDNA architecture. Since designing an accelerator is a year-long effort from the physical implementation standpoint, we expect the Instinct MI400 design to be finalized by now. All left is silicon bring-up, software optimization, and mass production, likely at TSMC's facilities.

There is hardly a scarcity of mini PCs available on the market. These pocket-friendly computers have an ever-expanding fan base, and now it appears that brands are pulling all sorts of tricks to make their offerings stand out from the rest. Chaatrey is a well-known player in the mini PC segment, and has announced the AMD-powered AN3P mini PC. The product does have quite an interesting feature, which we will get to later.

At its core, the AN3P mini PC is powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS APU with eight Zen 3+ cores and sixteen threads. Despite having already blown out two birthday candles, the Ryzen 7 7735HS continues to be quite a performant chip in 2025, trading blows with the Intel Core 5 120U in synthetic benchmarks. In terms of memory and storage, the AN3P can be equipped with up to 32 GB of memory, and up to 1 TB of solid-state storage. Both the memory and storage are user-accessible and can be upgraded down the road, which surely is a must-have for many people.

A new Steam Deck mod is here, and the performance improvements that it brings to the table appear to be quite promising, thanks to the magic of frame generation. The gaming handheld is not exactly the most performant in terms of raw GPU performance, so technologies such as AMD's FSR 3 undoubtedly improve the gaming experience on the Deck by quite a substantial degree. Dubbed Decky Framegen, the plugin utilizes AMD FSR 3 to generate frames without having to go about rendering them, thereby increasing FPS quite a lot.

As of right now, this plugin allows gamers to employ frame generation in unsupported games such as Final Fantasy XVI, Witcher 3, Hogwarts Legacy, and a few others. Deck Wizard's detailed video reveals that the plugin does quite a good job, allowing for playable framerates in several titles. However, the games which are unable to manage 30 FPS are unlikely to benefit much, owing to the issues surrounding input lag. Moreover, a few graphical glitches here and there are also to be expected, which is something that many purists might not entirely be willing to deal with. Considering that Valve recently shot rumors of an AMD Ryzen Z2-powered Steam Deck 2 being in the works, there is no denying that those holding out for hardware improvements, still have a fair amount of waiting to do.

As the 2025 International CES was drawing to a close, we hung around a little longer in Las Vegas to catch some important one-on-one interviews with industry leaders. We were invited by AMD to interview David McAfee Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Client Channel Business. His position in the company gives him a hawk's eye view on everything that matters to you—from Ryzen desktop CPUs to Ryzen AI processors, the disruptive new Ryzen AI MAX chips, and the all important Radeon RX 9000 series powered by RDNA 4. AMD's CES 2025 announcements event had some notable misses, such as the lack of updates on the Radeon RX 9000 series, or even the Ryzen Z2 line of processors for gaming handhelds. We began by asking McAfee how this year's CES event was distinct from previous ones, often led by CEO Lisa Su and covering a wide range of product families.The interview follows.

Mid-week, a member of Valve's Linux graphics driver team updated the Mesa 25.0 documentation with an insightful note—in which, Samuel Pitoiset (lead developer of the RADV open-source driver) shared an early observation regarding AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 generation. The software engineer and his colleagues are busy getting everything finalized prior to an impending Mesa 25.0 feature freeze. Wednesday's patch notes reveal the outlook for "GFX12 on RADV"—Pitoiset seemed satisfied about "initial support expectations—he reckoned that it: "should be good enough, but it's missing two features (cooperative matrix and video decode/encode), compared to GFX11 (RDNA 3) because lack of time. DCC is still under active development, but it might be possible to finish it during the RC period."

According to Phoronix's expert opinion, the two missing features are not complete "show-stoppers" for potential buyers of first wave RDNA 4 GPUs. The site's editor-in-chief—Michael Larabel—posits that the "vast majority of those wanting to buy the Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards (when they launch in March)" will not be discouraged by the inceptive absence of RADV Vulkan Video and VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix. He added some post-publication clarification regarding the RADV patch notes: "this is only about Vulkan Video, not VA-API video acceleration... It seems some readers are taking this to mean VA-API support for the new VCN block isn't ready for RDNA 4. It's just the RADV Vulkan Video support that isn't complete." Mesa 25.0 is expected to reach a stable release stage by the end of February—just ahead of Team Red's next-gen desktop GPU launch. Late last week, an AMD official divulged that their team would be: "taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance" on Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) graphics cards.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial results. "The fourth quarter was a positive step forward as we delivered revenue, gross margin and EPS above our guidance," said Michelle Johnston Holthaus, interim co-CEO of Intel and CEO of Intel Products. "Our renewed focus on strengthening and simplifying our product portfolio, combined with continued progress on our process roadmap, is positioning us to better serve the needs of our customers. Dave and I are taking actions to enhance our competitive position and create shareholder value."

"The cost reduction plan we announced last year to improve the trajectory of the company is having an impact," said David Zinsner, interim co-CEO and chief financial officer of Intel. "We are fostering a culture of efficiency across the business while driving toward greater returns on our invested capital and improved profitability. Our Q1 outlook reflects seasonal weakness magnified by macro uncertainties, further inventory digestion and competitive dynamics. We will remain highly focused on execution to build on our progress and unlock value."

MAINGEAR, the leader in premium-quality, high-performance gaming PCs, today unveiled a variety of custom-configurable "50 Series" gaming desktops, featuring NVIDIA's newly revealed GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 GPUs. Available across seven gaming chassis options—MG-1, North, shroud, shroud Signature Edition, Rush, Force, and Zero, as well as all Workstations—these systems can be custom configured with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs and the latest CPU options from AMD and Intel to set a new benchmark for desktop gaming performance and customization.

Building on the excitement from CES 2025, MAINGEAR's "50 Series" also introduces non-APEX configurations of the hot new Rush and Force desktops, featuring 360 mm and 420 mm AIO coolers respectively, instead of open loop liquid cooling. Additionally, customers can order Rush desktops with custom chassis artwork for unparalleled personalization - as seen at CES. Available custom designs include Machina, Night Drive and Good Fortune.

Corsair today launched the new edition of its celebrated Vengeance Gaming PCs, featuring NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards paired with Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen 9000 Series processors. Powered by NVIDIA Blackwell, GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs bring game-changing capabilities to gamers and creators. Equipped with massive level of AI horsepower, the RTX 50 Series enables new experiences and next-level graphics fidelity with full ray tracing, further reduces latency with Reflex 2 technology, multiplies performance with NVIDIA DLSS, generates images at unprecedented speed, and unleashes your creativity with NVIDIA Studio.

Vengeance PCs with GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs are NVIDIA NIM-ready RTX AI PCs, supporting the latest NIM microservices—optimized AI models for language, speech, vision, content generation, and more. These systems enable enthusiasts and developers to build AI assistants, productivity plug-ins, and innovative content creation workflows with peak performance.

It would be fair to say that the GeForce RTX 5080 has been quite disappointing, being roughly 16% faster in gaming than the RTX 4080 Super. Unsurprisingly, this gives AMD a lot of opportunity to offer excellent price-to-performance with its upcoming RDNA 4 GPUs, considering that the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti aren't really expected to pull off any miracles. According to a recent tidbit shared by the renowned leaker Moore's Law is Dead, the Radeon RX 9070 XT is expected to be around 3% faster than the RTX 4080, if AMD's internal performance goals are anything to go by. MLID also notes that RDNA 4's performance is improving by roughly around 1% each month, which makes it quite likely that the RDNA 4 cards will exceed the targets.

If it does turn out that way, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, according to MLID, should be roughly around 15% faster than its competitor from the Green Camp, the RTX 5070 Ti, and roughly match the RTX 4080 Super in gaming performance. The Radeon RX 9070, on the other hand, is expected to be around 12% faster than the RTX 5070. Of course, these performance improvements are limited to rasterization performance, and when ray tracing is brought to the scene, the performance improvements are expected to be substantially more modest, as per tradition. Citing our data for Cyberpunk 4K with RT, MLID stated that his sources indicate that the RX 9070 XT falls somewhere between the RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 3090 Ti, whereas the RX 9070 should likely trade blows with the RTX 4070 Super. Considering AMD's track record with ray tracing, this sure does sound quite enticing.

AMD today put out detailed guides on how to get DeepSeek R1 distilled reasoning models to run on Radeon RX graphics cards and Ryzen AI processors. The guide confirms that the new Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" processors come in hardwired to LPCAMM2 memory configurations of 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB, and there won't be a 16 GB memory option for notebook manufacturers to cheap out with. The guide goes on to explain that "Strix Halo" will be able to locally accelerate DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama with 70 billion parameters on the 64 GB and 128 GB memory configurations of "Strix Halo" powered notebooks, while the 32 GB model should be able to run DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B. Ryzen AI "Strix Point" mobile processors should be capable of running DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-14B on their RDNA 3.5 iGPUs and NPUs. Meanwhile, older generation processors based on "Phoenix Point" and "Hawk Point" chips should be capable of DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-14B. The company recommends running all of the above distills in Q4 K M quantization.

Switching gears to the discrete graphics cards, and AMD is only recommending its Radeon RX 7000 series for now, since the RDNA 3 graphics architecture introduces AI accelerators. The flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX is recommended for DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B distill, while all SKUs with 12 GB to 20 GB of memory—that's RX 7600 XT, RX 7700 XT, RX 7800 XT, RX 7900 GRE, and RX 7900 XT, are recommended till DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B. The mainstream RX 7600 with its 8 GB memory is only recommended till DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B. You will need LM Studio 0.3.8 or later and Radeon Software Adrenalin 25.1.1 beta or later drivers. AMD put out first party LMStudio 0.3.8 tokens/second performance numbers for the RX 7900 XTX, comparing it with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER and the RTX 4090.

ASRock has quietly updated its CPU Support List with entries for the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D desktop processors—starting off with motherboard BIOS versions 3.15 and 3.16. The Taiwanese manufacturer seems to be the very first company to add these "Zen 5" models to public-facing motherboard compatibility databases—according to yesterday evening's VideoCardz report, the likes of MSI, GIGABYTE, and ASUS have not yet followed suit (at the time of writing). The appearance of Team Red's "Granite Ridge" 16-core and 12-core 3D V-Cache-equipped processors on ASRock's website has set off chatter across PC hardware discussion communities.

AMD has not officially revealed a specific launch date (or pricing details) for its Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D CPUs—instead, a loose March window has been marked down on this year's calendar. Industry watchdogs believe that ASRock's freshly updated database is proof of an imminent launch—a couple of insiders predicted a January rollout, but this seems unlikely to occur by the end of this working week. Given the reported scarcity of Team Red's already released and highly-praised Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming processor, many folks will welcome the addition of two alternative options. Team Red has already set expectations for the (presumably) more expensive models—recently, a product manager disclosed that their "new chips will provide similar overall gaming performance" to the current champion.

If you're looking for innovative use of AI technology, look to the cloud. Gartner reports, "73% of respondents to the 2024 Gartner CIO and Tech Executive Survey have increased funding for AI." And IDC says that AI: "will have a cumulative global economic impact of $19.9 trillion through 2030." But end users aren't running most of those AI workloads on their own hardware. Instead, they are largely relying on cloud service providers and large technology companies to provide the infrastructure for their AI efforts. This approach makes sense since most organizations are already heavily reliant the cloud. According to O'Reilly, more than 90% of companies are using public cloud services. And they aren't moving just a few workloads to the cloud. That same report shows a 175% growth in cloud-native interest, indicating that companies are committing heavily to the cloud.

As a result of this demand for infrastructure to power AI initiatives, cloud service providers are finding it necessary to rapidly scale up their data centers. IDC predicts: "the surging demand for AI workloads will lead to a significant increase in datacenter capacity, energy consumption, and carbon emissions, with AI datacenter capacity projected to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.5% through 2027." While this surge creates massive opportunities for service providers, it also introduces some challenges. Providing the computing power necessary to support AI initiatives at scale, reliably and cost-effectively is difficult. Many providers have found that deploying AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct GPUs can help them overcome those challenges. Here's a quick look at three service providers who are using AMD chips to accelerate AI advancements.

AMD's small portfolio of current-gen (RDNA 3) mobile-oriented Radeon dedicated GPUs pales in comparison to a wide selection of related desktop offerings—a certain demographic of PC gamers have wondered whether the incoming RDNA 4 generation will produce more options for portable platforms. An extensive Notebookcheck article indicates that Team Red is not (immediately) interested in catering to mobile dGPU enthusiasts—the online publication conducted an interview with Ben Conrad, director of product management (client-side). The "Navi Mobile" Radeon RX 7000M range is an uncommon sight on gaming laptops—relative to NVIDIA's wide rollout of dedicated GeForce RTX 4000 Mobile GPUs—normally, higher-end models are present on ultra-expensive specification sheets (paired with "Dragon Range" Ryzen HX CPUs). Industry experts believe that lower-end options are more likely to turn up inside external enclosures.

One of Notebookcheck's questions focused in on this topic—they believe that: "the number of AMD dGPU-based laptop SKUs have been pretty anemic." Their interviewee was ambushed with a query regarding his company's outlook for mobile RDNA 4 options. In response, Conrad stated: "our current graphics strategy is focused on the desktop market with RDNA 4. So, I think you'll see those types of products first in the future. Certainly, RDNA 4 and future graphics technologies will make it into mobile, whether they be on APUs or future products." VideoCardz has read "between-the-lines" and posits that Team Red could skip a generation—UDNA is possibly a better fit for a new wave of laptop dGPUs. A sort-of stopgap has appeared on the horizon—in the shape of AMD's forthcoming "Strix Halo" RDNA 3.5-based integrated solution. The flagship chip's Radeon 8060S iGPU looks promising when compared to a current-gen dGPU, but it will likely struggle when pitted against Team Green's "Blackwell" dedicated mobile platform. Upcoming competition in the APU field will arrive in the form of Intel's "Panther Lake" processors—slated for launch later this year. Its next-gen iGPU is said to utilize the Xe3 "Celestial" architecture.

Earlier in the month, AMD introduced multiple Ryzen 200 series CPU models—these mainstream laptop and desktop offerings are based on well established architectures. Team Red is once again treading familiar ground with its selection of "Hawk Point" hardware—featuring "Zen 4" CPU cores, as well as (RDNA 3) Radeon 700M series integrated graphics solutions. AMD's latest mild re-branding of existing designs—notably the Ryzen 8000 mobile APU series—are expected to arrive within the second quarter of 2025. Several of these "new" products will sport NPUs, but marketing/press material is surprisingly free of all things AI-related.

Yesterday, a Lenovo China product manager revealed that the entire Ryzen 200 product stack will adopt the FP8 chip package—formerly exclusive to the region-exclusive Ryzen 7 8745H APU. The Beijing-based company representative disclosed—via a Weibo blog post—that the incoming Ryzen 200 processor series will not use the "FP7 and FP7r2" formats. Additionally, they also introduced a previously unannounced SKU: "the FP8 package version of Ryzen 7 8745H will be launched in 2025 as Ryzen 7 255H." This model is likely another Chinese exclusive—the Weibo comment section provides further evidence of new Lenovo ThinkBook products being based on this Ryzen 7 255H. AMD's official listings have quietly confirmed that their Ryzen 200 series will be FP8-exclusive. Team Green is likely making matters easier for itself, by streamlining its packaging options for this affordable-tier of laptop-oriented chips.

Intel has implemented substantial price cuts across its Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" server processor lineup, marking a significant shift in its data center strategy. The reductions, quietly introduced and reflected in Intel's ARK database, come just four months after the processors' September launch. The most dramatic cut affects Intel's flagship 128-core Xeon 6980P, which saw its price drop from $17,800 by 30% to $12,460. This aggressive pricing positions the processor below AMD's competing EPYC "Turin" 9755 128-core CPU both absolute and per-core pricing, intensifying the rivalry between the two semiconductor giants. AMD's SKU at 128 cores is now pricier at $12,984, with higher core count SKUs reaching up to $14,813 for 192-core EPYC 9965 CPU based on Zen 5c core. Intel is expected to release 288-core "Sierra Forest" Xeon SKUs this quarter, so we can get an updated pricing structure and compare it to AMD.

Additionally, Intel's price adjustments extend beyond the flagship model, with three of the five Granite Rapids processors receiving substantial reductions. The 96-core Xeon 6972P and 6952P models have been marked down by 13% and 20% respectively. These cuts make Intel's offerings particularly attractive to cloud providers who prioritize core density and cost efficiency. However, Intel's competitive pricing comes with trade-offs. The higher power consumption of Intel's processors—exemplified by the 96-core Xeon 6972P's 500 W requirement, which exceeds AMD's comparable model by 100 W—could offset the initial savings through increased operational costs. Ultimately, most of the data center buildout will be won by whoever can serve the most CPU volume shipped (read wafer production capacity) and the best TCO/ROI balance, including power consumption and performance.

ASUS is working on a new line of NUC mini PCs powered by the AMD Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" mobile processors that come with oversized iGPUs and CPU core counts as high as 16-core/32-thread "Zen 5." This was sniffed out in shipping manifests by Olrak29_ on its way to being tested by the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) for regulatory certification similar to CE, with the manifest describing the NUC model as the "NUC14LNS," meaning that this box is from the NUC 14 series. The manifest describes the NUC sample as featuring the top of the line Ryzen AI MAX+ 395.

The Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 maxes out everything on the silicon, featuring 16 "Zen 5" CPU cores across two CCDs with full 512-bit FPUs, with 80 MB of "total cache" (L3+L2) between them; a 50 TOPS-class NPU that can locally accelerate Microsoft Copilot+, and that large RDNA 3.5 iGPU with 40 compute units (2,560 stream processors), 80 AI accelerators, and 40 ray accelerators. What's interesting about this NUC is that it will not come with SO-DIMM slots, since the "Strix Halo" SoC features a 256-bit wide LPDDR5X memory interface. It will either have hardwired memory, or use a pair of LPCAMM2 modules (each with a 128-bit bus width), which is less likely. With all the rage about AI developers using M4-powered Mac minis to accelerate DeepSeek, is ASUS eying a slice of the AI market?

When the next-generation AMD Radeon RX 9000 series of GPUs, headed by RX 9070 XT and RX 9070, are surrounded by rumors, AMD's officials are coming to the rescue. According to the Bulgarian retailer's disclosure, AMD's initial pricing strategy for the new cards caused concerns, given their reported performance levels. The RX 9070 XT was reportedly positioned at around $899, matching the price point of the RX 7900 XT. The standard RX 9070 was said to carry a $749 price tag. To clarify the situation, AMD's Frank Azor jumped on social media platform X and explained, "While we aren't going to comment on all the price rumors, I can say that an $899 USD starting price point was never part of the plan."

Earlier reports indicate AMD has distributed its first wave of RDNA 4 graphics cards to various partners and retailers globally. However, these companies are currently unable to sell the new GPUs, as AMD has apparently set a March timeline for their release. This information gained additional credibility when a retailer in Bulgaria provided insights into AMD's preliminary launch strategy for the RX 9000 series. The retailer demonstrated the PowerColor Red Devil RX 9070 XT, one of three RX 9070 XT models that PowerColor unveiled during CES. While several AMD board partners have completed their RX 9070 XT designs, they have not yet disclosed official specifications or retail prices. Until March, we have limited information on pricing strategy.

AMD Radeon engineers are spending newly allocated extra time on optimizing their upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) technology—industry watchdogs believe that a finalized version will launch alongside the initial lineup of RDNA 4 graphics card, now scheduled for release in March. Recently, David McAfee—Vice President and General Manager of Ryzen and Radeon products—revealed that his colleagues were working hard on maximizing performance and enabling "more FSR 4 titles." Insiders have started theorizing about how the current landscape of FSR 3.1-compatible games will translate with next-gen "AI-driven" upscaling techniques—several outlets believe that a freshly patched PC version of The Last of Us Part I is paving the way for eventual "easy" updates.

Kepler_L2—an almost endless fountain of Team Red-related insider knowledge—picked up on a past weekend VideoCardz report, and proceeded to add some extra tidbits via social media interaction. They started off by claiming that Team Red's: "RDNA 4 driver replaces FSR 3.1 DLL with FSR 4." When queried about the implication of said development, Kepler believes that all FSR 3.1 game titles will become ready to support FSR 4 on day one. The upgrade process—possibly achieved through a driver-level DLL swap—is reportedly quite easy to implement. According to the insider: "yeah, it should just work."

AMD has just published its "How to Sell" Ryzen AI MAX series guide—several news outlets have pored over the "claimed" gaming performance charts contained within this two-page document. Team Red appears to be in a boastful mood—their 1080p benchmark results reveal compelling numbers, as produced by their flagship Zen 5 "Strix Halo" processor (baseline 55 W TDP). According to Team Red's marketing guidelines, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU: "competes with a GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile GPU at similar TDP and form factor." The first-party produced comparison points to their Radeon 8060S integrated graphics solution being up to 68% faster—in modern gaming environments at 1080p settings—than the competing Team Green dedicated laptop-oriented GPU, limited to 65 W TGP due to form factor restrictions. Overall, the AMD test unit does better by 23.2% on average (referring to Wccftech's calculations).

According to the document, AMD's reference system was lined up against an ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2023) gaming laptop specced with an Intel Core i9-13900H processor, and a GeForce RTX 4070 mobile graphics card. The Ryzen AI Max+ 395's "massive iGPU" can unleash the full force of forty RDNA 3.5 compute units, paired with up to 96 GB of unified on-board memory (from a total pool of 128 GB). Non-gaming benchmarks place the flagship Team Red processor above Intel Core Ultra 9 288V and Apple M4 Pro (12-core) CPUs—as always, it is best to wait for verification from independent evaluators. Saying that, the "Strix Halo" APU family has generated a lot of excitement—even going back to early leaks—and the latest marketed performance could drum up further interest.

Gplay.BG's YouTube channel uploaded a fascinating video feature over the past weekend—providing another look at PowerColor's Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil special edition retail package. The Bulgarian retailer's CEO—Ivan Hinov (aka DonBrutar)—appeared to have a sealed box in-hand. Gplay's presentation implies that they have joined the ranks of other European shops having RDNA 4-based cards in-stock, although VideoCardz reckons that special/limited edition Red Devil bundles (of recent generations) are normally distributed to media outlets. Hinov repeatedly referred to one of VideoCardz's recent news articles—regarding a speculated AMD Radeon RX 9070 GPU series launch window. Industry insiders reckon that AMD had—initially—formed a release strategy focusing on late January, possibly on the 23rd. The new cards will be launched around March time, according to an official Team Red statement.

Gplay's video provides some extra insight on this topic—Hinov confirms (in a roundabout way) that his company received information about a January release window, prior to Team Red's announcing of a postponement. The VideoCardz insider network discovered possible launch MSRPs of: "around $899 for the RX 9070 XT, and $749 for the non-XT." Interestingly, Gplay's chief commented on these rumors during his comparison segment: "delay of the Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) and Radeon RX 9070 XT has created uncertainty. These cards were expected to launch at prices significantly higher than the Radeon RX 7800 XT and close to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which makes little sense. For example, the Radeon RX 9070 XT was rumored to cost 500 BGN (~$269 USD) more than the RX 7900 XT while offering only marginally better performance. This pricing strategy was a clear mistake."

Late last week, the official PowerColor website was updated with dedicated product pages for their Radeon RX 9070 XT Hellhound and Reaper custom designs going live. As expected, a bare minimum of information is displayed alongside multiple promo images—we witnessed this exact same pattern with the Red Devil's official listing, half-way through January. AMD's board partners are seemingly keeping quiet about first wave RDNA 4 hardware specifications—TechPowerUp and other tech news outlets have, so far, ascertained the fundamentals from leaks and accidental listings.

An extensive hands-on experience—at CES—was covered in our news section, but PowerColor's showroom representatives were not overly chatty when asked about under-the-hood details. Allegedly, the company's Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) Reaper model has turned up at a British e-tailer's warehouse—printed SKU info indicated the presence of 16 GB VRAM. Judging from photos and renders, the Navi-48 GPU-based Hellhound and Reaper are relatively svelte when compared to the chunkily-proportioned (triple-slot) Red Devil. The new Hellhound model occupies the middle of PowerColor's graphics card product stack—this dual-slot design features a smattering of RGB lighting and a dual BIOS switching system, the latter implies that a factory overclock has been implemented. The slightly smaller (SFF-friendly) affordable-tier Reaper card is reportedly specced with reference clocks—looking at photos, there is no physical mode switcher present on this design. The barebones Reaper aesthetic does not encompass fancy integrated lighting systems—anti-RGB champions will find this choice most pleasing.

AMD has released its latest Adrenalin Edition 25.1.1 Radeon beta driver today, supporting additional gaming titles, improvements, and bug fixes. In this release, AMD has brought driver game support for the newly released FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH, released today, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which is finally coming to PCs after being console-exclusive for years. AMD has brought day-one support and has managed to fix some software issues along the way. First in line is the improvement in performance while playing Apex Legends with DirectX 12 API, which has been a pain point for AMD's drivers. Previously, some AI enthusiasts experienced lower-than-expected performance while using LM Studio on AMD Ryzen AI and Radeon products, which is now also fixed.

However, some issues persist. Users can experience a partial black screen problem in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 when using Radeon Anti-Lag 2 and Ray Tracing on AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, intermittent crashes in FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH, driver timeouts in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and performance stuttering in Marvel Rivals with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 frame generation. Additionally, users may encounter an intermittent AMD Bug Report Tool appearance after using the AMD Cleanup Utility and potential HEVC encoding issues with OBS Studio's Twitch-enhanced broadcasting, which will hopefully be fixed soon.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 25.1.1 Beta

PC hardware enthusiasts located in Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom have stumbled upon amusingly out-of-date AMD Radeon RX 9070 series GPU advertising. Earlier today, examples were presented on the Radeon subreddit—the social media-sourced announcements provide another look at Team Red's new reference design (Made-By-AMD/MBA) for the RDNA 4 generation, but the accompanying text (translated to English) implies that gamers can "play now" on not-yet-released Navi 48 GPU-based hardware. AMD has officially delayed its launch of Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) cards into March, but older leaked information pointed to a possible January 23 (today) rollout.

This marketing campaign has seemingly kicked off prematurely—perhaps initiated by mistake. VideoCardz reached out to retail sources for comment—their report indicates that promotional material was ready to go, but embargoes are reportedly still in place. They reckon that a basic specification teaser could emerge online in the near future. Board partners have already distributed products across retail networks, and finalized units have been unboxed—today's advertised claim of "immediate availability" is no longer valid, but many folks hoped for a pre-January 30 kick-off. NVIDIA will be launching its GeForce RTX 50 series at the end of this month, but industry soothsayers believe that things will not go smoothly.

When AMD announced its upcoming Radeon RX 9000 series of GPUs based on RDNA 4 IP, we expected the general availability to follow soon after the CES announcement. However, it turns out that AMD has scheduled its Radeon RX 9000 series availability for March, as the company is allegedly optimizing the software stack and its FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) for a butter smooth user experience. In a response on X to Hardware Unboxed, AMD's David McAfee shared, "I really appreciate the excitement for RDNA 4. We are focused on ensuring we deliver a great set of products with Radeon 9000 series. We are taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles. We also have a wide range of partners launching Radeon 9000 series cards, and while some have started building initial inventory at retailers, you should expect many more partner cards available at launch."

AMD is taking its RDNA 4 launch more cautiously than before, as it now faces a significant problem with NVIDIA and its waste portfolio of software optimization and AI-enhanced visualization tools. The FSR 4 introduces a new machine learning (ML) based upscaling component to handle Super Resolution. This will be paired with Frame Generation and an updated Anti-Lag 2 to make up the FSR 4 feature set. Optimizing this is the number one priority, and AMD plans to get more games on FSR 4 so gamers experience out-of-the-box support.

This morning, an official Yeston social media account boasted about receiving a brand new Navi 48 GPU-equipped model: "🌸got my Sakura Atlantis RX 9070 XT today!! It's shiny!🧜‍♀️" This message was accompanied by four photos, showcasing the card in an outdoor setting. This particular custom design (with white PCB and I/O bracket) was first revealed around mid-January—also via a photo shoot, albeit indoors—with the full moniker: "Radeon RX 9070 XT-16G Sakura Atlantis." Many press outlets jumped onto the presence of "16G" in that name—indicating 16 GB of VRAM—a specification point that AMD was reportedly wanting hidden from public view. Unlike certain Team Red board partners, Yeston has not set up a dedicated product page for the new Sakura Atlantis.

A March launch window has been set—made official by AMD's David McAfee—for the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT). VideoCardz has observed a slow-down in promotional activities from AIBs over the past couple of days—bizarrely, GIGABYTE has chosen to scrub all Radeon RX 9000 series products from its website. Hardware Busters believes that AMD will be taking notes during the GeForce RTX 5070 GPU's launch week—they allege that the gathering of performance data (from NVIDIA hardware) is crucial in revising strategies for the March launch of RDNA 4 cards. In the meantime, Yeston will likely continue to post pretty pictures of its cute Sakura Atlantis design—also lined up for attachment on their upcoming "Blackwell" GPU-equipped lineup.