AMD R9700 with 32 GB VRAM claims to obliterate Nvidia RTX 5080 in Windows 11 AI performance

Alongside the Radeon RX 9060 XT, which is meant for 1080p gaming, AMD has also announced its new Radeon AI PRO R9700, a new workstation GPU meant to take on AI workloads. The company understands that there is a growing demand for high-performance GPUs that can chew through AI tasks in local setups.

In fact, other companies are aware of this too, as Dell recently debuted its "most powerful laptop" in the form of the Dell Pro Max Plus which will come with a dedicated discrete Qualcomm NPU.

AMD's R9700 is basically identical to the RX 9070 XT in terms of core specs and hence packs 64 CUs (compute units) and 128 AI accelerators (2nd Gen). Where the AI PRO R9700 trumps the 9070 XT is in the available VRAM buffer. AI tasks are known to be highly memory dependent, and hence the increased 32 GB capacity of the R9700 is meant to help with that. AMD is sticking with the same memory interface and thus the bandwidth should be similar to the 9070 XT's.

If you are wondering about how much the VRAM can help, AMD claims that its new AI RPO GPU can obliterate Nvidia's RTX 5080 thanks to its double buffer. Team Red says that when it comes to dealing with larger AI models, the R9700 can be up to nearly 500% better than its Team Green counterpart. Their performance comparisons were done on Windows 11 PRO 24H2.

And when four R9700 PRO GPUs join forces, AMD promises even greater potency thanks to 128 GB of total combined VRAM:

Aside from comparisons with Nvidia's 5080, AMD also compared the R9700 with last gen W7800. In this case, VRAM is not the winning factor for the new card, but the core performance itself. The company promises up to twice the performance in certain situations.

We have already looked at the AI performance of the 9070 XT vs 7800 XT and the Nvidia 4070, so we can attest that in some situations such claims are indeed valid.

As far as pricing is concerned, AMD did not reveal that, but seeing how the card has been put up against the RTX 5080, the new AI PRO R9700 may have a similar SEP (suggested retail price). The availability of the GPU is slated for July this year.