AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards will not use 12VHPWR power connector
As we await the new generation of AMD Radeon graphics cards, which are set to be announced next week, we are learning a bit more about what's powering these graphics cards. Well, more specifically, what's not powering these graphics cards.
Radeon senior vice president Scott Herkelman confirmed in a Twitter reply that the Radeon RX 6000-series and the upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs (presumably called Radeon RX 7000-series) would not be using the 12VHPWR power adapter.
Introduced with the ATX 3.0 spec, which is published by Intel, the 12VHPWR adapter delivers up to 600W of power directly to a GPU via a single cable. It's primarily in use today for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090.
AMD, however, will choose to stick with the tried and tested PCIe 8-pin connectors for its next-gen cards, likely two of them. Though we have seen some high-end cards arrive with three in the past.
AMD's confirmation comes after reports that bending the 600W 12VHPWR power cable close to the connector in the RTX 4090 could potentially cause overheating issues. Some Reddit users have also said that the power connectors on their RTX 4090 graphics card have melted, with some blaming the connector itself, though the exact cause of these unfortunate failures is yet to be determined. Nvidia says it is investigating.
AMD has already teased that its new GPUs will be more power efficient than Nvidia's power-hungry RTX 4090 and its 40-series brethren. RDNA 3 GPUs are looking to offer over 50% efficiency increase over its previous RDNA 2 generation GPUs, too.
We expect to see more information on November 3 as AMD officially announces its RDNA 3 GPUs at a 'together we advance_gaming' live stream.