AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT should actually have been called RX 690

AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition
(Picture: Screenshot/AMD)

AMD seems to have named the RX 5700 XT rather late. On the E3 presentation slides of the 50th Anniversary Edition you can still read “Radeon RX 690”.

RX 5700 XT: new AMD naming scheme

AMD also surprised with the naming of the new Radeon Navi graphics cards. In earlier leaks the name RX 3080 had appeared often. AMD would have been in the parade once more against a competitor. In the end, this even led Nvidia to protect the designations “3080”, “4080” and “5080” under trademark law. There were no reasons to do that. AMD has named the new graphics card series Radeon RX 5700. The first two models are called RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT and compete against the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 from Nvidia.

RX 5700 XT should probably have been named RX 690

The naming was probably not originally planned that way. During the presentation of the new graphics cards at the E3 2019, PCGamesN attracted some attention. The RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition, which was also presented, has a lettering in the radial fan. On the fan it says “Radeon RX 690 – Limited Edition”. The Navi graphics cards should have continued the already known naming scheme of the Polaris generation. It’s hard to say how short-term the change was – perhaps an older render image of the RX 5700 XT slipped in when the presentation was created.

AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition Radeon RX 690
(Picture: via PCGamesN)

Why AMD has changed its name is currently part of the speculation. During the presentation at Computex 2019, Lisa Su said that the RX 5000 graphics cards were also an allusion to AMD’s 50th birthday. However, it is also possible that the company wanted to achieve a better differentiation from the older models. After all, Navi is not a simple refresh, but a new architecture called AMD RDNA.

About Florian Maislinger 1222 Articles
Florian Maislinger is author and founder of PC Builder's Club. As a skilled IT engineer, he is very familiar with computers and hardware and has been a technology lover since childhood. He is mainly responsible for the news and our social media channels.

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