An unreleased, high-end AMD RX 6900 XTX graphics card with its own AIO watercooler has been pictured, suggesting that AMD was planning for a higher-tier version of its top of the pile GPU before shortages hit, and that we might see this card debut at some point down the line.
AMD's line of new-generation RX 6000 GPUs has been just as, if more constrained than Nvidia's RTX 3000 series. With AMD RDNA2 chips going into new generation consoles, and the TSMC foundries it's building them on used for AMD Zen 2 and 3 CPUs, and heaps of other 7nm products besides, the supply has been super short. Cryptocurrency miners have had their part to play there too.
Before all this shortages happened, though, it was possible that AMD planned to expand its range with a super high end version of its 6900 XT, a card that was already binned and pushed to the extremes. The now-pictured RX 6900 XTX features a custom light bar in the top and its own AIO watercooler with a 120mm radiator. It's a thick one, like we saw with the old Fury X years ago, but the card looks smart. Shiny and chrome.
According to VideoCardz, when shortages hit, AMD shelved this design for now, and instead began giving the chips away to its board partners so that they could release super high-end versions of the 6900 XT themselves. It has reportedly made its way into GPUs like the PowerColor RX 6900 XT Liquid Devil Ultimate, and the Sapphire RX 6900 XT Toxic Extreme.
Whether when supply issues resolve themselves the original planned 6900 XTX will see the light of day, remains to be seen.
Image source: Weibo