AMD has lastly lifted the lid on the quickest new gaming GPU in its RDNA 4 lineup, with a surprisingly aggressive worth, and the corporate is making some huge claims about its efficiency too. In keeping with the GPU maker, the brand new AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is, on common, 42% quicker than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, with significantly huge features seen in ray tracing efficiency, and it additionally brings assist for AMD’s new FSR 4 AI upscaling tech.
That GPU would possibly seem to be a little bit of a bizarre card for comparability however, as we present in our Radeon RX 7900 GRE evaluate, this mid-range AMD chip was surprisingly potent for its worth, touchdown it a spot on our information to the perfect graphics card. AMD has traditionally at all times lagged behind Nvidia with regards to ray tracing, however the firm claims the brand new 9070 XT’s ray tracing efficiency improves by 66% in comparison with the 7900 GRE in Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 24. That’s a giant deal for AMD, as the corporate’s GPUs have actually struggled with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 because the begin.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT launch date
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT launch date is Thursday, March 6, 2025, coming only a day after the launch of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, and shortly after the RTX 5070 Ti launch as effectively. AMD guarantees “large availability” on this date, and there will probably be no AMD-made reference mannequin, with playing cards as an alternative coming from a number of third-party producers, together with Acer, Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, PowerColor, XFX, and Sapphire.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT worth
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT worth is $599, which is critically aggressive if it lives as much as AMD’s efficiency claims. That’s simply $50 greater than the 12GB RTX 5070, and $150 lower than the RTX 5070 Ti.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT specs
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT specs embrace 16GB of VRAM, 64 compute models, and 128 AI cores.
| AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT specs | |
| Structure | AMD RDNA 4 |
| Compute models | 64 |
| RT cores | 64 |
| AI cores | 128 |
| Stream processors | 4,096 |
| RT cores | 64 |
| Infinity cache | 64MB |
| Peak AI TOPS | 1,557 |
| Sport clock | 2.4GHz |
| Increase clock | 2,970MHz |
| VRAM | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Reminiscence interface | 256-bit |
| Interface | 16x PCIe 5.0 |
| Energy draw | 304W |
AMD has made a number of key enhancements to its core GPU structure with RDNA 4. This features a new compute unit design, which may run at increased clock speeds than earlier than, and which AMD additionally says is extra environment friendly than its predecessor. There are 64 compute models within the 9070 XT, which is simply a bit of greater than the 60 discovered within the Radeon RX 7800 XT and far decrease than the 80 within the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. Nevertheless, whereas the 7800 XT clock velocity solely boosts to 2,430MHz, the 9070 XT can enhance all the way in which to 2.97GHz.
That new compute unit additionally incorporates a brand new ray tracing core design with RDNA 4, which AMD claims doubles the ray tracing throughput per compute unit in comparison with RDNA 3. AMD additionally says its new GPUs at the moment are able to working path tracing in video games, which was an actual battle for the corporate’s last-gen GPUs.
In our assessments, even with body gen and FSR upscaling enabled, the Radeon RX 7800 XT can solely common 46fps with path tracing at 1440p in Cyberpunk 2077, for instance, in contrast with 93fps for the RTX 4070 Ti and 72fps for the 4070. In the meantime, new demanding video games reminiscent of Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle don’t even run path tracing on AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs. There are 64 of AMD’s new RDNA 4 ray accelerator cores within the Radeon RX 9070 XT, in comparison with 60 within the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 80 within the Radeon RX 7900 GRE.
One other key a part of the spec is the 16GB of VRAM, which is identical quantity discovered within the Radeon RX 7800 XT, however doubtlessly provides this card and its smaller sibling an edge over the 12GB GeForce RTX 5070. The latter may need Multi Body Gen at its disposal, however that’s no use in conditions the place the GPU doesn’t have sufficient VRAM to render the unique frames easily within the first place. In our assessments, for instance, we’ve discovered that 12GB is a critical bottleneck on a GPU if you happen to max out the trail tracing in a demanding recreation reminiscent of Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle.
AMD additionally claims to have made strides in its AI efficiency with this new GPU structure, due to a brand new matrix core design (like Nvidia’s Tensor cores). The corporate cites a peak AI efficiency determine of 1,557 TOPS, in comparison with a claimed 1,406 TOPS for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.
Till now, AMD hasn’t actually used its matrix cores in video games, however the introduction of FSR 4 sees the corporate lastly utilizing machine studying and AI {hardware} for decision upscaling, and it regarded nice once we had an opportunity to attempt it for our FSR 4 check at CES.
AMD says that FSR 4 will probably be supported in 30 video games at launch, together with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Marvel Rivals, Name of Obligation Black Ops 6, and Area Marine 2, with over 75 extra video games supporting the brand new tech 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 regarded actually promising once we examined neural rendering in Half-Life 2 RTX at CES.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT efficiency
AMD is making some daring claims in regards to the Radeon RX 9070 XT’s ray tracing efficiency, and it’s fascinating to see that it’s pitching this ostensibly mid-range GPU at 4K gaming, in addition to 1440p gaming. In keeping with the corporate, the 9070 XT is, on common 42% quicker than the 7900 GRE at 4K, and 38% quicker at 1440p.
Particularly, the largest leaps are seen in ray tracing, the place AMD says the GPU is wherever from 36% to 66% quicker than the 7900 GRE at 4K, with the largest jumps seen in F1 24 and Cyberpunk 2077. With out ray tracing, the efficiency advantages are nonetheless there, however a bit extra muted, starting from a 23% enhance in F1 24 to a 48% enchancment in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K.
It’s fascinating that AMD hasn’t offered a lot in the way in which of comparability with new Nvidia GPUs with regards to efficiency, although. In keeping with AMD, the RX 9070 XT is 26% quicker than the RTX 3090 throughout its 30 check video games, however that GPU is 2 generations outdated now, even when it was a high-end chip then, and it’s a little bit of a weird level of comparability – we’ll be rather more to see how the 9070 XT squares as much as the RTX 5070 Ti.
In the end, although, you at all times should take AMD’s cherry-picked figures with a grain of salt. We’ll have to attend and see how the 9070 XT performs in our personal assessments earlier than we are able to say for sure whether or not it lives as much as AMD’s claims or not. If it could possibly provide this quantity of energy for $599, although, and AMD can present first rate inventory of the brand new GPU, then it appears to be like set to offer a critical risk to Nvidia.
Within the meantime, try our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 evaluate to see how the competitors’s new $999 (if you could find it in inventory) GPU performs.
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