AMD Had Plans To Equip RX 7800 & 7700 XT With 12VHPWR Connector

AMD has confirmed that they originally had plans to utilise the controversial 12VHPWR connector for its recently released Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT graphics cards.

AMD 12VHPWR

In an interview with Club386, AMD Radeon Chief Scott Herkelman discussed the use of the 12VHPWR connector on its most recently released graphics cards. Originally AMD was planning on implementing the connector with the new cards stating “We specifically, for 7900 Series, and even 7600, we didn’t plan on the new power cable, but 7800 and 7700 did have a plan for it. We removed it, and that was a purposeful removal.”

AMD had decided against using this connector primarily over its issues as well as the idea that the end users were being blamed for the issues. “You shouldn’t blame end users for issues you have. You should catch and own any problems”. This is a strong statement that Herkelman followed with an example of the Vapour-chamber issues on the cards which he claimed to be all over social media owning the problem as an AMD problem.

When Will AMD Introduce The Connector

Following off from the decision to not include the connector, Herkelman cleared up on when we would see the connector actually incorporated into AMD cards. AMD won’t be including the connector until the issues surrounding it are cleared up and there is enough end-user confidence that it is working correctly. I imagine that this means the next generation as there are already improved designs for the 12VHPWR connector named 12V2x6 featuring shortened sense pins in the works and even already in the wild on certain NVIDIA FE cards.