AMD Prepares Entry-Level Radeon RX 9050 GPU, Comes in 8 GB & 4 GB, With The Latter Cutting The Memory Bus In Half

AMD seems to be working on a new entry-level graphics card, the Radeon RX 9050, which will come in 8 GB and 4 GB flavors.

AMD RDNA 4 Lineup To Soon Get New Entry-Level Options With 8 GB & 4 GB Radeon RX 9050 GPUs

The AMD Radeon RX 9000 "RDNA 4" GPU lineup is getting more options, which will make the lineup a lot messier and confusing.

AMD currently has two product series, the Radeon RX 9070 and the Radeon RX 9060. Each series has at least three options, with the RX 9070 consisting of the 16 GB XT, 16 GB Non-XT, and the 12 GB GRE flavors, while the RX 9060 series consists of the 16 GB XT, 8 GB XT, the 16 GB XT LP, and the Non-XT model. The naming scheme is all over the place, but the Radeon team is now aiming to move to a newer entry-tier series, called the RX 9050.

For the Radeon RX 9050 series, AMD is going to utilize the same RDNA 4 core architecture and a cut-down version of its Navi 44 core, bringing the total number of cores down to 1024 across 16 compute units. That's half the number of cores of the full Navi 44 chip featured on the RX 9060 XT. Based on this, we can expect 64 Texture Mapping Units and 16 RT cores, while the ROPs & RT core count remain to be confirmed.

As per the listed specifications (revealed through AIB), the Radeon RX 9050 graphics cards will also come in two memory configurations. The RX 9050 features a 64-bit bus (half that of the full 128-bit bus on the Navi 44 chip) and a 128-bit variant. This will enable 4 GB & 8 GB VRAM options for entry-level users.

The 8 GB memory is on par with the baseline of the RX 9060 series, but the 4 GB model goes even lower. With just 4 GB, the graphics card won't be able to perform as consistently as the 8 GB GPU and may result in large bottlenecks and performance differences. The memory is expected to be clocked around the same 18 Gbps speeds, which gives us just 144 GB/s bandwidth for the 64-bit, and 288 GB/s for the 8 GB model.

It would've been better if AMD had labeled these cards as RX 9040 4 GB and RX 9050 8 GB, rather than making things confusing by putting both under the same series, when the performance and specs differ vastly due to split memory configurations.

Considering the TDP of the RX 9060 is around 130-140W, the Radeon RX 9050 GPUs could end up in the 100W or sub-100W range. We really want to see if the 4 GB model can be tuned down enough to yield a 75W TDP, as that would make it somewhat acceptable as a card that requires no PCIe power.

Currently, the models shown around these GPUs are dual-fan models that measure up to 249 mm and dual-slot designs. Currently, there's no word on pricing, but considering that graphics card prices are not stable anymore due to DRAM shortages, we can expect the Radeon RX 9050 series to be listed around $200-$300, which is unfortunate since these are entry-level designs that should be priced in the $100-$150 range.

AMD Radeon RX 9000 "RDNA 4" GPU Specs:

GPU	Radeon RX 9070 XT	Radeon RX 9070	Radeon RX 9070 GRE 12 GB	Radeon RX 9060 XT	Radeon RX 9060	Radeon RX 9050 8 GB	Radeon RX 9050 4 GB
Architecture	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 4
GPU SKU	Navi 48	Navi 48	Navi 48	Navi 44	Navi 44	Navi 44	Navi 44
Process Node	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 4nm
Transistor Count	53.9 Billion	53.9 Billion	53.9 Billion	29.7 Billion	29.7 Billion	29.7 Billion	29.7 Billion
Die Size	357mm2	357mm2	357mm2	199mm2	199mm2	199mm2	199mm2
Compute Units	64	56	48	32	28	16	16
Ray Accelerators	64	56	48	32	28	16	16
AI Accelerators	128	112	96	64	56	32	32
Stream Processors	4096	3584	3072	2048	1792	1024	1024
Game Clock	2400 MHz	2070 MHz	2220 MHz	2530 MHz	2400 MHz	1920 MHz	1920 MHz
Boost Clock	2970 MHz	2540 MHz	2790 MHz	3130 MHz	2990 MHz	2600 MHz	2600 MHz
Peak FP32	48.7 TFLOPs	36.1 TFLOPs	34.3 TFLOPs	25.6 TFLOPs	21.4 TFLOPS	5.3 TFLOPs	5.3 TFLOPs
Peak FP16	97.3 TFLOPs	72.3 TFLOPs	68.6 TFLOPs	51.3 TFLOPs	42.9 TFLOPS	10.65 TFLOPs	10.65 TFLOPs
Peak INT8	779 TOPS (Sparsity)	578 TOPS (Sparsity)	549 TOPS (Sparsity)	410 TOPS (Sparsity)	343 TOPS	TBD	TBD
Peak INT4	1557 TOPS (Sparsity)	1156 TOPS (Sparsity)	1097 TOPS (Sparsity)	821 TOPS (Sparsity)	686 TOPS	TBD	TBD
ROPS	128	128	96	64	64	TBD	TBD
Infinity Cache	64 MB	64 MB	48 MB	32 MB	32 MB	TBD	TBD
Memory	16 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6	8/16 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	4 GB GDDR6
Memory Speed	20 Gbps	20 Gbps	18 Gbps	20 Gbps	18 Gbps	18 Gbps	18 Gbps
Bus Interface	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit	64-bit
PCIe Interface	PCIe 5.0 x16	PCIe 5.0 x16	PCIe 5.0 x16	PCIe 5.0 x16	PCIe 5.0 x16	PCIe 5.0 x8	PCIe 5.0 x8
TBP	304W	220W	220W	142-182W	132W	~100W	~100W
Price (MSRP)	$599 US	$549 US	$549	$299/$349 US	$249	$199?	$149?
Launch	6th March, 2025	6th March, 2025	8th May, 2025	2025	TBD	TBD	TBD

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.