The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is arguably the cardboard to seize this technology (to date), assuming you’ll find it in inventory. However AMD by no means launched a reference ‘MBA’ (Made by AMD) design for buy, so it has been all the way down to AIB producers to dish over that RDNA 4 compute. The truth is, all of us assumed an MBA design did not even exist, because of the phrases “creative render: not accessible for buy” beneath AMD’s GPU announcement publish.
Nevertheless, it appears like a Chinese language forum-goer has truly bought their fingers on a reference RX 9070 XT. A publish on Bilibili (through unikoshardware on X) reveals a sctreen seize of what appears to be a Chiphell publish displaying photos of the reference design card all neatly packaged.
so there may be actually an amd reference rx9070xt (made by amd/mba).and somebody in china is promoting it at MSRP 599usd. https://t.co/Rrm1SYy1Gh pic.twitter.com/aaMSQUNbhNMarch 13, 2025
Properly-known X consumer harukaze5719 additionally posted an image of the cardboard, which does certainly appear to be the identical design because the “creative render” AMD gave us, albeit in all black moderately than silver and black. That “creative render” design, by the way in which, is what we see within the picture above which was additionally made by AMD (I’ve circled the playing cards in query—one presumably meant to be an RX 9070 and one presumably meant to be an RX 9070 XT).
The seeming MBA playing cards pictured by the Chinese language forum-goer and on X are presumably prototypes as AMD has by no means talked about the precise existence of any reference playing cards. Plus there’s the entire black vs silver-and-black factor (which is admittedly solely positively the case for the latter X publish, as we’re not proven the entrance of the cardboard within the Billibilli publish).
Correct reference design graphics playing cards—ones which might be made to be offered—are normally coveted for a few causes: First, they’ve some ineffable air of officialness and rarity to them, and second, they all the time retail at MSRP.
So we’re all the time unhappy when there is no reference model of a card, but it surely is sensible for AMD and Nvidia to maintain prices down by delegating all manufacturing to AIBs, at the least for some playing cards.
These playing cards, nonetheless, are probably engineering samples. Ones that apparently by no means made the grade to be produced en masse, or AMD determined in opposition to it in the course of the preliminary testing. That is occurred earlier than, loads of occasions, like when Nvidia made a prototype RTX 4090 Ti with a large cooler that somebody present in a bin.
Nonetheless, it isn’t an excessive amount of of a loss, in my view, at the least not in comparison with the dearth of a Founders Version of the RTX 5070 Ti, given Nvidia’s FE designs look genuinely beautiful. The “creative render” MBA RX 9070 XT, however, not a lot—not terrible, however not spectacular, both. Only one man’s opinion.
The true loss is the dearth of one other MSRP-priced card, and that is one thing the existence of any prototype card will not repair.
