AMD's RX 9070 GPUs could go on sale March 6, the day after Nvidia's RTX 5070 – and I wouldn't fret about those 900W power supply rumors
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AMD RX 9070 GPUs are rumored to hit shelves on March 6
Another rumor suggests 9070 XT could need a 900W power supply
That's for a top-end overclocked version of the 9070 XT, though, and there are numerous caveats to consider here
AMD's Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards will get a full launch event on February 28, which has been confirmed by Team Red, and now chatter on the rumor mill is indicating these GPUs will be available to buy on March 6.
That purported on-sale date comes courtesy of VideoCardz's sources, an assertion also backed up by Chinese tech site Benchlife. Even though these two rumors align, we should still take this with a great deal of caution.
That said, AMD has told us that its RX 9070 models will go on sale in early March, which I take to mean the first week, and March 6 fits that picture. Still, we'll need confirmation officially, and presumably that'll come at the mentioned press event for RDNA 4 GPUs in late February.
At the same time, more speculation is floating around regarding the power consumption of the RX 9070 XT, suggesting that one third-party variant has a big ask in terms of your PC's power supply.
Tom's Hardware noticed a post on X from Tomasz Gawroński showing a purportedly leaked image of the PowerColor RX 9070 XT Red Devil, with the packaging apparently indicating that you'll need a 900W PSU to have this graphics card in your gaming PC.
This has raised plenty of eyebrows, as it's 100W more than the current recommendation for the RX 7900 XTX flagship, though even the poster admitted that they weren't sure if the image is faked.
Interestingly, Frank Azor, who is head of consumer and gaming marketing at AMD, actually replied to Gawroński, observing that there will be other RX 9070 XT models that'll 'require lower minimum power supply wattages as will there be plenty with 8 pin power connectors for worry-free upgrading.'
Note that Azor didn't confirm that the image was real, though the AMD executive didn't call it a fake, either (but of course, he doesn't work for PowerColor).
The launch date of March 6 for the RX 9070 models, if it turns out to be correct, is certainly an interesting choice – mainly because Nvidia only just announced March 5 is when the RTX 5070 arrives on shelves. So, as we theorized earlier this week, this is looking very much like a mid-range head-to-head between the RX 9070 and RTX 5070 in the first week of March.
As for the PSU requirement, I wouldn't panic about the potential scenario of RX 9070 models somehow requiring vast reservoirs of power. Some of the beefiest models may, but we must remember, the Red Devil board mentioned in the leak is a top-end graphics card, and as Azor observed, other models will require less wattage. Indeed, the rumor is that the reference 9070 XT from AMD will ask for a 750W PSU, with the RX 9070 vanilla needing 650W, far more modest requirements (add seasoning with that still).
It's also worth noting that 900W is an odd specification here, given that there aren't any PSUs delivering that exact figure, as far as I'm aware. There are 850W models and then we jump to 1000W, so why PowerColor is (theoretically) placing the requirement just above 850W, in a non-existent PSU bracket (as it were), I'm not sure. This could perhaps be another suggestion that the image is faked.
That said, I don't doubt that a heavily overclocked RX 9070 XT model will drink a lot more juice than a standard board. It clearly will, and so it wouldn't be a surprise if the top dogs of the RDNA 4 graphics card world are considerably more demanding on the PC's power supply. These GPUs will also cost a lot more than the entry-level 9070 XT products, too, and how competitive AMD's graphics cards will be in pricing terms is the other key question we're dying to have answered.
We'll have those answers soon enough, thankfully. Roll on the end of February.
We've barely seen AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs in action yet, but a new rumor suggests we could be getting an Nvidia RTX 5090 competitor at last
Still worried RTX 5000 GPUs don't have enough VRAM? Nvidia's secret weapon is powerful AI texture compression, and it's calmed some of my fears
AMD vs Nvidia: who is the graphics card champion?
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