AMD’s RX 5700 XT was originally named the RX 690. Evidence of the disregarded graphics card branding comes straight from AMD. An image – supposedly that of the limited edition 50th anniversary RX 5700 XT – was spotted by our very own eagle-eyed hardware sleuth Dave within the red team’s E3 press deck, brandishing the Radeon RX 690 Limited Edition title in lieu of Lisa Su’s signature.
AMD announced its Radeon RX 5700-series over at E3 2019 during its Next Horizon Gaming event. The initial lineup will include three cards: the RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, and 50th Anniversary Edition RX 5700. The latter comes equipped with a black and gold shroud and AMD CEO’s signature.
But if you look closely at the image included within the company’s E3 press deck, despite the limited edition finish, the famed initials of Dr. Lisa Su are nowhere to be found. And if you zoom in a little further and over to the right, you’ll spot the words “Radeon RX 690 – Limited Edition” around the circumference of the graphics card’s single radial fan.
You can also spot the slide in question during Lisa Su’s E3 livestream. It’s around the 1:29:41 mark during the official livestream replay.
The RX 5700-series supplants the Polaris 500-series graphics cards in AMD’s stack – or at least the best of them. The last generation was championed late in life by the Radeon RX 590, with the RX 580 dominating the mainstream market thanks to its alluring performance per dollar.
The Radeon RX 5700-series will also be, at long last, a departure from the Graphics Core Next architecture for gaming designated cards. In its stead is the RDNA architecture, redesigned from the ground up on the 7nm process node from TSMC.
| Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Ed. | Radeon RX 5700 XT | |
| GPU | AMD Navi 10 | AMD Navi 10 |
| Lithography | 7nm FinFET | 7nm FinFET |
| Compute units | 40 | 40 |
| RDNA Cores | 2,560 | 2,560 |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bandwidth | 448GB/s | 448GB/s |
| Boost clock | 1,980MHz | 1,905MHz |
| Game clock | 1,830MHz | 1,755MHz |
| Base clock | 1,680MHz | 1,605MHz |
| Transistors | 10.3bn | 10.3bn |
| Die size | 251mm2 | 251mm2 |
| TDP | 225W | 225W |
| Price | $499 | $449 |
AMD reportedly chose the RX 5700-series branding to celebrate its 50 years as a company, although it’s also conveniently a larger number than Nvidia’s 20-series branding. But evidently the 50th anniversary spiel wasn’t always the plan – even up until the point when the limited edition 50th anniversary shroud had been finalised.
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Aside from the text on the fan, the AMD RX 690 and finalised limited edition RX 5700 XT renders are identical. The text on the final version reads: “50th Anniversary Edition.”
That all likely means that the RX 5700 would have been classified as the RX 680 within the now-defunct 600-series. The RX 590 was more or less just an overclocked RX 580 – albeit with a 15% boost clock increase over the RX 580. The RX 5700 XT, on the other hand, features four more Compute Units and a 10% boost clock increase over its little sibling, the RX 5700.