- Radeon AI Pro R9700 targets local AI workloads and multi-GPU setups
- The new workstation-class GPU shares its name with a 20 year old ATI card
- New GPU features 128 AI accelerators and 32GB GDDR6 RAM
At Computex 2025, AMD announced the Radeon AI Pro R9700, a workstation GPU aimed at local AI tasks and multi-GPU compute environments.
For those familiar with the history of graphics cards, the name might ring a bell. Over 20 years ago, the original Radeon 9700 Pro marked a turning point for ATI. It was one of the first GPUs to beat Nvidia convincingly in both performance and delivery, and its launch back in 2002 helped shift market dynamics.
Fast forward to today, and AMD, which acquired ATI for $5.4 billion in 2006, is reusing the 9700 name for a very different card. The AI Pro R9700 is not for gamers, but for developers and professionals working with large-scale AI models.
Tuned for AI
The Radeon AI Pro R9700 features 128 dedicated AI accelerators, 32GB of GDDR6 memory, and a PCIe Gen 5 interface. Power draw is rated at 300W.
AMD says it can hit 96 teraflops of FP16 performance and deliver 1531 TOPS for AI inference.
Unlike GPUs built for rendering or gaming, this one is tuned for local inference and training. AMD claims it can run models with up to 32 billion parameters without cloud offload.
In a system with four cards, that scales up to 123 billion. The AI Pro R9700 is optimized for multi-GPU configurations and workloads like LLM training, simulation, and AI-accelerated rendering.
It ships with ROCm support on Linux, with Windows support expected later. Availability is set for July 2025.
While the AI Pro R9700 was AMD’s headline release for professional AI workloads at Computex, the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series and RX 9060 XT GPU rounded out the line-up with options aimed at creators, enthusiasts, and gamers.
Leave a comment