The primary full particulars of the brand new AMD Radeon RX 9070 gaming GPU have simply been formally revealed, and if AMD’s claims maintain as much as scrutiny, it might severely threaten the brand new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, which has the identical MSRP. In response to AMD’s personal figures, the brand new graphics card makes large strides in relation to ray tracing efficiency, and it helps AMD’s new fine-looking FSR 4 upscaling tech to enhance body charges with out making your video games seem like a blurry mess.
AMD’s personal figures cite the Radeon RX 7900 GRE and RTX 3080 as some extent of comparability, which on isn’t notably useful on the face of it. Nevertheless, in our Radeon RX 7900 GRE evaluation, we discovered this last-gen AMD GPU supplied formidable efficiency for the value, even when it couldn’t compete with Nvidia on ray tracing and AI efficiency, touchdown it a spot on our greatest graphics card information. That every one seems to be set to vary with the brand new Radeon RX 9070, which we’re hoping shall be considerably cheaper than the 7900 GRE, with AMD saying the brand new GPU is 33% faster in Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 launch date
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launch date is Thursday, March 6, 2025, that means it’s going to straight battle the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, which comes out in the identical week. AMD says there shall be “vast availability” of the brand new GPU on this date, nevertheless it received’t be making its personal reference card with playing cards as an alternative coming from a number of producers, together with ASRock, Gigabyte, Acer, PowerColor, Asus, Sapphire, and XFX.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 value
The Radeon RX 9070 value is $549, which is precisely the identical as the value of the 12GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070. With extra VRAM at its disposal, and AMD making some daring claims in regards to the 9070’s efficiency, the brand new GPU seems to be set to noticeably threaten the 5070. Nevertheless, the value can be solely $50 lower than the Radeon RX 9070 XT value, which suggests it’s additionally threatened by AMD’s personal top-end chip.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 specs
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 specs embody 16GB of VRAM, 56 compute items, and a 2.54GHz increase clock pace.
| AMD Radeon RX 9070 specs | |
| Structure | AMD RDNA 4 |
| Compute items | 56 |
| RT cores | 56 |
| AI cores | 112 |
| Recreation clock | 2.1GHz |
| Enhance clock | 2.54GHz |
| VRAM | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Infinity cache | 64MB |
| Reminiscence interface | 256-bit |
| Peak AI TOPS | 1,165 |
| Interface | 16x PCIe 5.0 |
| Energy draw | 220W |
This new lineup of GPUs sees AMD transferring to the brand new RDNA 4 GPU structure, which AMD says not solely improves ray tracing and AI efficiency, however also can hit increased clock speeds than equal last-gen GPUs. The 9070 comprises 56 of AMD’s new RDNA 4 compute items, in comparison with 64 within the 9070 XT.
That’s 4 fewer than the 60 compute items within the Radeon RX 7800 XT, nevertheless it’s hoped that the substantial enhancements to the compute unit design will make up this shortfall. At inventory pace, the RX 9070 additionally has a prime increase clock of two.54GHz, which is a good method beneath the two.97GHz of the 9070 XT, however nonetheless increased than the two.43GHz of the 7800 XT.
One of many key new components with this GPU design is, in fact, the brand new ray tracing core, which AMD says is considerably faster than the previous RDNA 3 design, apparently doubling the ray tracing throughput. This era additionally sees AMD correctly discussing path tracing in its advertising and marketing supplies, that means this new GPU might probably allow you to activate all of the lighting eye sweet in video games similar to Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle, with out efficiency slowing to an unplayable crawl.
Importantly, in contrast to the RTX 5070, the Radeon RX 9070 additionally comes with 16GB of VRAM. It’s not GDDR7, however in our assessments we’ve discovered that VRAM capability is changing into increasingly essential as you begin enabling superior options similar to path tracing, even in video games which are out already. As a living proof, you’ll be able to’t max out the settings in Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle on a 12GB card, such because the RTX 4070 Ti, even at 1080p, because it pushes the VRAM to its restrict and body charges fall off a cliff. The state of affairs could also be completely different with the Radeon RX 9070.
As some extent of comparability, with body gen and FSR upscaling enabled, the Radeon RX 7800 XT can nonetheless solely common 46fps in Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing at 1440p, whereas the RTX 4070 can hit 72fps. The Radeon RX 9070 has one RT core per compute unit, so that you get 56 of them within the new GPU. That’s decrease than the 60 within the Radeon RX 7800 XT, however the brand new RT core design will hopefully make up for the shortfall in numbers.
The opposite key new function with RDNA 4 is an apparently greatly-improved AI core structure, with AMD introducing a brand new design of its matrix cores (AMD’s equal of Nvidia’s Tensor cores). Going face to face with Nvidia, AMD cites a peak AI efficiency determine of 1,165 TOPS, in comparison with 988 for the RTX 5070, although it’s at all times greatest to take corporations’ personal claims for these figures with a grain of salt till we will correctly check them.
The massive deal right here for avid gamers is the introduction of AMD’s first decision upscaling tech primarily based on machine studying, and requiring the usage of AMD’s new matrix cores within the 9070 and 9070 XT. It’s referred to as FSR 4, and it massively improves picture high quality in comparison with FSR 3, with a considerably sharper picture, and far much less ghosting and blurriness. You may learn our FSR 4 check, the place we performed with the tech in Ratchet and Clank at CES, for extra details about it.
FSR 4 is probably an enormous deal for AMD. Traditionally, FSR has severely lagged behind DLSS in relation to picture high quality, notably now it’s up towards Nvidia DLSS 4 with the brand new transformer mannequin, and FSR 4 seems to be set to shut that hole.
All of it will depend on sport help, although, and AMD says that FSR 4 shall be supported in 30 video games at launch, together with Marvel Rivals, Name of Responsibility Black Ops 6, and Area Marine 2, with over 75 extra FSR4 video games promised to come back later in 2025. AMD says that its new AI cores are additionally “neural rendering prepared” and cites neural radiance cache for instance – a tech that appeared actually promising once we examined neural rendering in Half-Life 2 at CES.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 efficiency
The primary space the place the Radeon RX 9070 seems to be set to enhance efficiency is ray tracing, with the corporate citing a 38% efficiency increase in F1 24 at 1440p in comparison with the Radeon RX 9700 GRE with ray tracing enabled, and a 33% enchancment in Cyberpunk 2077.
There are efficiency boosts with out ray tracing elsewhere, similar to 26% in Dragon Guard Veilguard, for instance, however the good points seem like extra muted. F1 24 efficiency solely will increase by 9% in F1 24 with out ray tracing, for instance, in response to AMD’s figures.
As with the 9070 XT figures, although, it’s attention-grabbing that AMD hasn’t supplied any comparability figures with the RTX 4000 collection, not to mention the RTX 5000 collection, which makes us fear that the brand new Radeon RX 9070 may not be that aggressive. The brand new Nvidia GPUs additionally help multi body gen to spice up efficiency massively in video games that help it, and AMD doesn’t have an equal of this tech. We’ll have an interest to check the brand new GPU towards the RTX 5070 when it arrives.
As at all times, although you at all times need to take AMD’s cherry-picked figures with a grain of salt anyway. We’ll have to attend and see how the 9070 performs in our personal suite of sport benchmarks earlier than we will say for sure whether or not the RX 9070 is any good or not. With a aggressive value of simply $549, although, it definitely has potential.
Within the meantime, in case you’re in search of extra GPU energy, you’ll be able to learn our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 evaluation to see how the newest graphics card from staff Jensen performs.
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