Unveiling a Ghost: Was This AMD's Cancelled Radeon RX 7500
Ever curious what goes on behind the scenes of GPU development. Occasionally, we get a look. Web gossip has been circulating, fueled by photos alleged to be from X (formerly Twitter) user GOKForFree, that appear to suggest a cancelled AMD RX 7000-series graphics card testbed. Might this be the elusive Radeon RX 7500 that never made it to market.
According to the details here, this cryptic GPU, when interrogated with GPU-Z, allegedly comes with 6GB of RAM on a 96-bit bus, along with 1,536 shading units and 64 ROPs. It's an interesting bunch of specifications that gives the impression of a potential entry-level offering.
How Would It Have Stacked Up
To put those numbers into perspective, today's AMD Radeon RX 7600 features 8GB of GDDR6 memory, a wider 128-bit bus, 2,048 shading engines, and the same 64 ROPs count. The RX 7600 was likewise marketed as an incremental step beyond the RX 6650 XT and like-for-like replacement of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060.
Interestingly enough, hardware gurus speak of an as-yet-unannounced AMD Radeon RX 7500 XT mentioned by some sites. That board was reported to have the same 6GB of memory as this just-out prototype but less shading units (1,024) and ROPs (32). Questions come to mind: was the leaked board actually the *real* RX 7500 XT, and did the above-discussed specs pertain to a non-XT RX 7500. It is not probable that AMD would release an XT variant of a highly base-spec GPU, adding another layer to the mystery.
A Never-Existing Competitor
This unflogged card appears to have been positioned directly at Nvidia's cheapest offerings. Recall the 6GB version of the RTX 3050. It boasted more shaders but less ROPs. If Nvidia had released an RTX 4050 with 6GB VRAM, this AMD card may have had a home. Without any desktop RTX 4050 appearing, maybe AMD chose not to release an alternative to a non-existent competitor.
Most would find this to be a good decision. In the game environment of today, a 6GB GPU would struggle and become outdated very quickly. We already see even the 8GB cards, like some of the RTX 3060 Ti models, reach the wall performance-wise versus their 16GB equivalents when working with the newest textures and resolutions. For an oppressed gamer, a 6GB card might have offered short-term cost-cutting but ultimately ended in frustration.
A Sneak Peek, But Not the Entire Picture
The leaker, GOKForFree, indicated that he could not benchmark the card completely because the card appeared to have a very low maximum frequency of 300 MHz. This is typically what occurs with engineering samples that lack proper driver support, so the hardware cannot spread its wings.
This leak offers a compelling glimpse into what might have been AMD's last attempt at a sub-$200 GPU based on RDNA 3 architecture. The cutthroat budget end of the market, particularly cards with 4GB or 6GB of VRAM in the $100 to $200 range, seems to have been abandoned by both of the larger GPU players, who are aiming at cards in the $300 range and above with 8GB of VRAM.
