AMD Radeon RX 9070 /9070 XT Reviews and Benchmarks

NVIDIA’s dominance over the latest generation of graphics cards is now over. AMD may have surrendered to the high end of the GPU market, but its new $549 Radeon RX 9070 and $599 RX 9070 XT look to bring NVIDIA back to reality, at least in the middle.

After a disappointing $549 RTX 5070, $749 RTX 5070 TI Nearly impossible to buy something $899, and one more $1,999 RTX 5090 The only competition for AMD’s next-generation GPUs is other NVIDIA cards that look perfect and offer performance and price.

The RX 9070 is 17% faster than the NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 in 4K without enabling upgrades, cruising Nvidia’s cards at the same price. The RX 9070 XT is as fast as the RTX 5070 TI, with $150 less.

These cards are key, especially Only 10% GPU sales are currently from AMD. If you want to regain the ground from NVIDIA, the company’s latest generation of cards requires a big win, and the RX 9070 series may be exactly what the GPU market needs.

AMD hasn’t created a reference card for the RX 9070 series yet, so the end result is a design from a loading board partner that looks very similar to what was used by previous generation Radeon GPUs. The Gigabyte RX 9070 I’ve been testing is longer and more bulky than the RTX 5070.

The XFX 9070 XT I’ve been testing is also a 3.5 card, so in the case it takes up more space than the two plugged RTX 5080 or 5090 Founders Edition or even 2.5-Slot RTX 5070 TI cards. I like the reference design AMD used in the past, and the RX 9070 series cards are big and bulky in comparison. AMD also sticks with the two 8-pin PCIE power connectors from the RX 9070 series, rather than switching to 12VHPWR. This does mean you need to run two PCIE connectors to the RX 9070 and 9070 XT, but you don’t have to worry about PSU compatibility or Risk of melting of 12VHPWR connectors.

Both the RX 9070 and 9070 XT boats have 16GB of VRAM, which is great at these prices. NVIDIA only has 12GB of VRAM on its $549 RTX 5070, so you’ll surely get the value of the $549 RX 9070 from here, especially if you’re looking for 4K gaming with higher VRAM demand.

I’ve been testing AMD’s RX 9070 and 9070 XT cards, which include the AMD Ryzen 9 9800x3d processor and Asus’s 32-inch 4K OLED PG32UCDP. I put the RX 9070 and 9070 XT on NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 TI, as well as the existing RX 7900 XT and XTX GPUs.

I tested various games on 1440p and 4k, including more required titles Black Myth: Wukong and the favorites of benchmarks Cyberpunk 2077 and Shadow of tombstone. All games have been tested in very high or super settings and I enabled ray tracing some titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exit Egypt Learn what AMD’s latest GPUs can offer there.

The RX 9070 comfortably beats Nvidia’s RTX 5070 with 4K and 1440p. 17% faster at 4K and nearly 20% faster at 1440p. It’s not even close. In some games, like Horizon Zero Dawnthe RX 9070 is more than 30% faster, with or without FSR enabled.

The $599 RX 9070 XT competes with NVIDIA’s 749 RTX 5070 TI, with an average frame rate difference of less than 1% and none of the nine games we tested have upgraded. The difference between these two cards does depend on a single game, the RX 9070 XT is less than 5% after the RTX 5070 TI return and Metro Exodus enhances.

The RX 9070 XT is not far from AMD’s previous flagship $999 RX 7900 XTXany one. I found that the XTX was less than 2% faster on 4K and 1440p tests without the need to enable the size. This is a small performance gap considering the price difference between these cards.

I think the RX 9070 makes the most sense at 1440p, and if you want to move to 4K gaming, the RX 9070 XT is definitely worth $50. Given the smaller price gap, it’s worth paying an extra $50 for better 1440p performance.

AMD’s 9000 series GPUs are built on top of the company’s RDNA 4 Architecture, and AMD says it has twice the performance of rasterized graphics per compute unit.

exist Metro Exodus enhances With Ultra Ray Tracking enabled, the RX 9070 XT is almost 7% faster than the RX 7900 XTX, but nearly 4% from the RTX 5070 TI. Nvidia still holds supreme rule Cyberpunk 2077 However, with ray tracing enabled at 4K and upgrade enabled, the RTX 5070 Ti ti leads the RX 9070 XT.

The RDNA 4 architecture also includes a new version of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), which now uses dedicated AI Accelerator hardware to improve frame rate and image quality, just like NVIDIA’s DLSS. FSR 4 is unique to these new RX 9070 graphics cards and is available in all games with FSR 3.1 integration. All you have to do is shoot the switch in AMD software, and the FSR 4 will be automatically enabled in supported games.

With FSR 4, AMD did not follow NVIDIA with the generation of multiple frameworks of NVIDIA, but instead focused on improving image quality for high-scale games. I tested FSR 4 in both Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Horizon Zero Dawn Remade.

exist Black Ops 6the progress is immediately obvious. Current FSR 3.1 implementations usually result in softer or blurry images, which is particularly noticeable in text on slightly further away walls or objects. FSR 4 makes the overall image look sharper, and in some cases, even better than the native 4K output. The police car has a fuzzy numbering board and logo in FSR 3.1 quality mode. However, in FSR 4 quality, it’s in a correct magnitude, so the whole car looks clear. Details about the building are also clearer, even enemies use FSR 4 to look more detailed. None of this has obvious performance, which is great.

FSR 4 improvements are not obvious Horizon Zero Dawn RemadeI tried hard to notice any difference between FSR 3.1 quality and FSR 4 quality mode. While this might suggest that your mileage may vary with FSR 4 quality, I was able to use the Ultra Performance FSR 4 and got surprising visual quality and higher frame rates.

Apart from gaming, the RX 9070 card can perform AI workloads. In Procyon’s AI XL (FP16) test, the RX 9070 XT is more than 40% faster than the RX 7900 XTX, but it lags behind the AI ​​performance of the RTX 5070. AI performance of RX9070. The RX9070 also had 40% faster AI in the AI ​​XL test than the RX 7900 iST flaster in the rts the rts flost in 40%, but the rts int ax in ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int ax int a.

I usually use Pugetbench’s Davinci to solve the benchmark video editing feature, but it tests about 20% and crashes on AMD’s GPU.

It’s great to see AMD’s lower power demand and the latest Radeon GPU with power. AMD recommends supplying 750 watts of power to the RX 9070 XT for the total power supply of the 304 watt board. I found it can provide performance near the RX 7900 XTX while using 40 watts of power to reduce 4K. During my testing, the 9070 XT averaged 303 watts, while the 7900 XTX averaged 346 watts.

For the RX 9070, this is the same story. AMD recommends providing 650 watts of power for this card, 100 watts less than the 750 watts recommended for the 7900 XT. In my tests, the RX 9070 averaged 244 watts, while the 7900 XT averaged over 307 watts. This is a big efficiency improvement, with a power attraction of only 34 watts compared to the RTX 5070, which is the obvious performance gap between these two 549 cards.

The RX 9070 also hits a maximum temperature of 60 degrees Celsius on my open test bench, while the RX 7900 XT also hits a maximum temperature of 70c. In my tests, the RX 9070 XT only hit 55C, while the RX 7900 XTX hit 71C. NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 Founders Edition card hits 77C in the same test and MSI’s Ventus 3 RTX 5070 TI hits 68C.

AMD’s latest generation of Radeon GPUs are more efficient and cooler than the previous generation, and they run cooler than NVIDIA’s direct competitors. This is a clear win for AMD.

AMD is indeed very aggressive in pricing its RX 9070 series cards, especially the $599 RX 9070 XT is $150 cheaper than the RTX 5070 TI. The $549 RX 9070 is the same price as NVIDIA’s RTX 5070, but it’s over 5070 in every game I’ve tested, sometimes larger.

If AMD manages to have stock at these prices, it will shake the important mid-stage of the GPU market.

The question is whether it can evade Nvidia’s dominance. In addition to (or due to) its 90% market share, NVIDIA also has more games than FSR’s DLSS games. DLSS is so popular that 80% of RTX owners Activate it in the game. FSR 4 improves image quality to compete more closely with DLSS, but AMD still needs game developers to implement it. NVIDIA allows you to force DLSS 4 only in the game, so you don’t have to wait for developers at all.

The stickiness of DLSS may attract PC gamers to spend more money to align with NVIDIA, and I haven’t seen enough of FSR 4 to know if it can compete with NVIDIA with DLSS 4.

NVIDIA’s game ready-made drivers are also an advantage. The company works with developers to optimize game drivers before launching, and AMD has long had driver issues with various games. I didn’t have any problems testing the RX 9070 series, but I can’t guarantee that it will be the case when a new game is released. Although AMD says it has been working hard to improve the drivers, only time will tell.

Either way, AMD’s RX 9070 series cards clearly show that it doesn’t bring the entire GPU market to NVIDIA. It is willing to compete on performance and price, and if AMD manages to control those prices, it will be a winning formula.

Tom Warren / Photography at the Edge