While we wait for the new generation of AMD Radeon graphics cards to be announced next week, we are learning a little more about what is on these graphics cards. More specifically, what these graphics cards do not have on board.

In a reply on Twitter (opens in new tab), Scott Herkelman, senior vice president of Radeon, confirmed that the Radeon RX 6000 series and the upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs (supposedly called the Radeon RX 7000 series) will use the 12VHPWR power adapter confirmed that they do not use.

The 12VHPWR adapters introduced in Intel's ATX 3.0 specification provide up to 600W of power directly to the GPU via a single cable. It is currently used primarily with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (open in new tab).

However, AMD will probably choose to stick with the tried and true PCIe 8-pin connector in its next generation cards, perhaps with two PCIe 8-pin connectors. In the past, though, three high-end cards have been introduced.

AMD's confirmation came after reports that bending the 600W 12VHPWR power cable near the RTX 4090's connector can cause overheating issues (opens in new tab). Some Reddit users have also reported that the RTX 4090 graphics card's power connector has melted, while others blame the connector itself, but the exact cause of these unfortunate failures has not yet been determined; Nvidia says it is investigating.

AMD has already teased that its new GPUs will be more power efficient (open in new tab) than Nvidia's power-hungry RTX 4090 (open in new tab) and its 40-series brethren. RDNA 3 GPUs are more than 50% more efficient than previous RDNA 2 generation GPUs efficiency is expected to be improved.

More details are expected to be available as AMD officially unveils the RDNA 3 GPU during its "together we advance_gaming" live stream on November 3.