When they claimed it was 1.7x (70%) faster than a 6950XT which would've placed it roughly around the performance of a 4090...Where did they say this, as that comes off as one of those random rumours that became *insert company name* said this or that after a few months. I remember an AMD rep saying they could have built a card to compete with 4090 on raster but power requirements would be too high, the quote in the article was via google translate as it was a foreign article in the first place.
And it turned out to only be 35% faster which placed it closer to the 4080.