AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT is expected to be the fastest GPU that the company launches using its RDNA 4 architecture. Despite that, by AMD’s own estimates, it seems like it will probably perform around the same level as the GeForce RTX 5070. That’s far off from the higher-end NVIDIA GPUs, which would seem to prove true the early rumors that AMD’s next GPU generation would focus on the mid-range and skip the enthusiast market entirely.
Those rumors originally originated with a fellow on the Chinese-language ChipHell forums, and now, another fellow on that site is saying the opposite for their successor. ChipHell poster zhangzhonghao is a well-known leaker with a long history of leaks (some more accurate than others), and he just posted up some information regarding the plans of “agricultural enterprises” in 2026.
According to the leaker, AMD’s next-generation GPUs based on its unified GPU technology known as “UDNA” will be fabricated on TSMC’s N3E process. N3E is the second generation of TSMC’s N3 process and reduces power consumption by 30-35% at a given performance level. Alternatively, it can offer 10 to 15 percent higher performance at the same power level. At this time, it is basically the bleeding edge of processor fabrication, although we imagine that next year both TSMC’s N2 and Intel’s 18A will be available.
That’s not all zhangzhonghao had to say about AMD’s GPU plans, though. According to his post, AMD is going to shoot for the GPU performance crown once more. He specifically says that AMD will make a flagship GPU with a big GPU core once again, and while the machine translation is idiosyncratic, we believe what he’s saying is that AMD CEO Lisa Su already announced this. We’re not sure what he’s referencing if that understanding is correct, but he also could be saying that it was formerly leaked on ChipHell.
Besides the UDNA news, zhangzhonghao also shared some other AMD tidbits, as you have probably already seen in the screenshot above. AMD’s next-generation desktop processors have already been leaked to feature a major revision to the cIOD chiplet, where the Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” processors use the same cIOD from the Ryzen 7000 processors. According to zhangzhonghao, these chips will be fabricated using TSMC’s N4C process, while the Zen 6 CCDs will be fabricated on N3E like the UDNA GPUs.
Possibly even more exciting is that several APUs (processors with powerful integrated graphics) will supposedly be seeing the addition of 3D V-Cache. That seems to include AMD’s just-announced Strix Halo processors as well as the SoC that will be used in Sony’s PlayStation 6. Contrary to the machine translation in the screenshot, the leaker says that he does not have information about Microsoft’s Xbox plans, not that Microsoft itself is uncertain (although that could be the case regardless.)
In any case, none of this hardware is going to show up until next year at the earliest, so there’s plenty of time for what ultimately comes to market to change. These leaks are promising, though—and doubly so if the Radeon RX 9070 XT ends up being a quality product. Even if you’re a die-hard NVIDIA fan, competition is good for everyone.