Rumor mill: Despite being in the middle of a well-documented memory crisis that has spiked the price of components and hardware, AMD is reportedly following Nvidia in releasing a new GPU. It's not a surprise early RDNA 5 launch, though: it's an entry-level RX 9050 desktop card with 8GB of VRAM.
According to VideoCardz's report, the Radeon RX 9050 will be a lower-clocked Navi 44 model positioned below the Radeon RX 9060 series in AMD's product stack.
The RX 9050's specs are said to almost match the RX 9060 XT 8GB. It has the same 2,048 cores, 8GB of GDDR6 (18 Gbps), and a 128-bit memory bus. That means it would actually have more cores than the standard RX 9060, though its lower clocks should keep it below the rest of the RX 9060 series. Its 1,920 MHz game clock and 2,600 MHz boost clock are 24% and 17% slower than the RX 9060 XT.
The new card's memory bandwidth is shown as 288 GB/s, matching the Radeon RX 9060 rather than the RX 9060 XT, which is listed at 320 GB/s thanks to its use of 20 Gbps GDDR6 modules.
The RX 9050 is also said to feature a PCIe 5.0 x16 interface, two DisplayPort 2.1a ports, and one HDMI 2.1b port. There's no word yet on total board power (TBP). The recommended power supply is listed as 450W, which is 50W lower than the RX 9060 XT, so the RX 9050's TBP is expected to be less than the RX 9060 XT 8GB's 150W.
Pricing is another unknown. AMD's new card is expected to compete with the RTX 5050. Nvidia's card launched with a $249 MSRP, but the cheapest model on Newegg right now is $289.
AMD hasn't officially announced the RX 9050, but it could be saving that for Computex, which starts in Taipei on June 2.
AMD's rationale for the card is likely the demand for comparatively cheap desktop GPUs, especially from OEMs and budget builders. A cut-down Navi 44 card gives it something to sell below the RX 9060 series. It also gives Team Red a direct answer to Nvidia's RTX 5050, even if another 8GB card in 2026 is unlikely to generate much enthusiasm.
Assuming the report is accurate, this would mark the second new GPU introduced at a time when memory is scarce due to AI prioritization. In late April, Nvidia quietly launched a new variant of the RTX 5070 laptop GPU that includes 12GB of VRAM – 50% more than the standard version. Framework lists the module for $1,199 – 72% more than the 8GB version.