According to the latest rumors, AMD would give a new outlet to its Radeon RX 7900 Golden Rabbit Edition (GRE), and it would be convert it into a laptop graphics card. This graphics card, unlike the other models in the RX 7900 series, uses a smaller package known as Navi 31 XL. Although it can house the same number of cores as the Navi 31 XT and XTX chips, this silicon has two disabled Infinity Cache memory units. And all this in a package the same size as a less powerful Navi 32.

Thanks to its more compact size, AMD would use this graphics chip to bring to life the company’s top-of-the-line GPU in the portable segment, the Radeon RX 7900M. Interestingly, this chip was first mentioned by Moore’s Law is Dead, just over a month ago. But of course, at that time AMD was not expected to launch a Radeon RX 7900 GRE. In this way, it can be said that this launch was unexpected when from the beginning the rumors already suggested that it would be a chip for portable graphics.

The Radeon RX 7900M would have more cores than the RX 7900 GRE

While the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE offers a configuration of 5,120 Stream Processorsits laptop counterpart, the Radeon RX 7900M will increase the number of cores. Although the desktop model it has a TDP of 260W, this is unfeasible for use on a laptop. Without going any further, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobilethe top-of-the-line GPU of its competition, has a TDP of 120W. With Dynamic Boost, which is when the CPU isn’t running at peak performance, the GPU can get up to 175W consumption to support higher graphics performance.

Power consumption issues and will they add more cores? That’s right, this is the only option that AMD is finding to use this architecture in laptops. The reason is obvious, and that is that to drastically reduce temperatures, AMD will have to noticeably cut clock speeds that reaches the graphics chip. To prevent performance from dropping drastically, it will balance increasing the number of cores to find the perfect balance between consumption and performance.

For now, laptops will not be AMD’s priority

While this chip has only just made its debut in a desktop GPU, it indicates that we are still a long way from seeing it debut in laptops. A few days ago we saw how the processor arrived AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. AMD’s new top-of-the-line processor for notebooks, and the first notebook CPU to come with 3D V-Cache technology. While this chip was expected to be used by AMD to start releasing laptops with AMD Radeon RX 7000M graphics.

Well, this was not what happened. Specifically, it was the opposite. The first GPU to accompany AMD’s new top-of-the-line processor was a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. It should also be taken into account that this processor came exclusively to a single laptop, the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 X3D. So, with the server processor, AI and console business, it seems that AMD doesn’t need to take unnecessary risks in the consumer PC market.