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How's about some positive whispers from the hardware grapevine amidst the relentless talk of increasing prices? Admittedly these whispers are not quite as positive or exciting as a new mid-range GPU might be, but the word on the street is that we'll soon be seeing a new low-end card in the form of the AMD Radeon RX 9050.
According to VideoCardz, it has received information about the graphics card, and that includes not just information about its existence but also its specs—although it notes thes are "preliminary and only single-sourced". On this front, things are quite strange, as it will share the same Stream Processor (SP) count as the RX 9060 XT, not RX 9060.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | RX 9050* | RX 9060 | RX 9060 XT |
|---|---|---|---|
Stream Processors | 2,048* | 1,792 | 2,048 |
Game clock | 1,920 MHz* | 2,400 MHz | 2,530 MHz |
Boost clock | 2,600 MHz* | 2,990 MHz | 3,130 MHz |
*Rumoured
The RX 9050 will apparently have the same Navi 44 GPU as you'll find in both the RX 9060 and RX 9060 XT, but it will have the latter's full 2,048 cores. The RX 9060, which we might expect the RX 9050 to ape, uses the same GPU but has 1,792 cores.
The low-end sacrifice seemingly comes in the form of clock speed, as VideoCardz's information has it that the RX 9050 will be rated a few-hundred MHz lower than both the RX 9060 and RX 9060 XT. That goes for both game clock and boost clock, with the former being a more vague estimate at how the GPU will likely run during workloads such as gaming.
AMD could be trying to make use of a surplus of Navi 44 chips that are up to scratch when it comes to cores, just like the RX 9060 XT, but don't quite make the cut for an RX 9060 or RX 9060 XT when it comes to clock speeds. These would be ones that for whatever reason can't reach the latter GPUs' higher clock speeds and remain cool and stable.
It could also in part be strategic if there's simply room in the market for a lower-end GPU. It'll be interesting to see how these RX 9050 GPUs (assuming this leak is legit) overclock, undervolt, or whether some of them could push up towards RX 9060 clock speeds with a BIOS swap.
The card is, of course, expected to have just 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, and this will run over a 128-bit memory bus. The memory bandwidth will reportedly be 288 GB/s and speed will be 18 Gbps, both matching the RX 9060. I don't even think the avid anti-8 GB crowd will complain about this one, though, given we're talking an entry-level card.
Obviously we'd all like to see higher-end cards going for cheaper but that's not the market we're in right now. Nor does it seem to be the market we'll be in for some time, so until things change, I'm all for giving as many options as possible to consumers on a budget, and this seems like a good way of doing so.
It's an interesting choice re the core count and clock speed, so (assuming it comes to fruition) we'll just have to see how it pans out. Who knows, we might even get more than we expect with overclocks—but I'm getting ahead of myself again.
1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Nvidia RTX 5050
4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
