Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+

[Divide Overflow]

Strong performance and amazing value. Nice to see some competition in this segment of the GPU market!

 

[Vya Domus]

What's with the aweful 30C hotspot difference on the ASUS model? Trash coldplate?

82-55 = 27 ?

It's in line with other AMD cards since RDNA2.

 

[TSiAhmat]

Make the 9070xt 700 € in Europe & my money is yours.

The pure & pulse are looking sweet!

 

[SilentPeace]

In the UK it looks like a similar price to the 5070 Ti so no particularly compelling reason to get it over that.

 

[Shou Miko]

What's with the aweful 30C hotspot difference on the ASUS model? Trash coldplate?

I know that Sapphire advertising PTM7950 for all their RX 9070/9070 XT cards but I do not know if this have something to do with it and Asus yet again cheaped out and just letting users pay extra for their "name" instead of bringing a good product to marked.

 

[cvearl]

Between you guys and Hardware Unboxed, it is so much easier to make a choice these days. Thanks for the review! I have a 5070ti new in box I got from presale locally. Roughly $800 USD. Waiting for the local guys to get 9070XT in stock and if it is indeed more than $150 less I might just grab it. I know Black Myth and Indiana Jones maxed RT was a let down here but is it really that much better on a 5070ti. Based on what I see here, I would likely be turning that down regardless of which of these 2 cards I decide to go with. The 7090XT is 50% faster at RT than my 7900XT and that is pretty impressive for $200 less than I paid for that card 2 years ago!

 

[jmeistr]

I'm disappointed that the cooler (shroud) isn't made of metal like on the 7900 XTX Nitro+

 

[Delta6326]

Absolutely beautiful card, Sapphire really hit the ball out of the park on this one! Love the hidden connector design and only using one cable, definitely enough headroom that there should be no issues. My 1080 TI is definitely looking for a upgrade this generation.
Sadly though, this Nitro is to expensive, the 7800 XT and 7900 GRE Nitro's were only $50 more and the 7900 XTX was $100 more, $130 more for this is definitely a bit much. I'll be curious to know the price of that ASUS tuf card.

 

[Vya Domus]

I know that Sapphire advertising PTM7950 for all their RX 9070/9070 XT

I have a water cooled 7900XT with PTM and the temperature delta is still about 20C sometimes, all GPUs since RDNA2 have similar deltas.

 

[mxthunder]

Glad they priced it reasonably. Hope they hit shelves near MSRP. $130 markup for this card seems insane. I remember when non reference cards were $10-30 over MSRP.

 

[Nater]

@W1zzard
In the Noise/Power sections, any chance you could add what core/mem/voltages the cards are running at in these situations?

Go a long way for me in deciding WHICH 9070XT I want. Right now the Pulse is looking like the winner for me if the price is closer to MSRP. But then I see those XFX Merc numbers...cooler, yet louder, and higher power. Is it clocked way higher? (meaning, it possibly has a much better cooler than the Sapphire cards, XFX is just pushing it harder) It's something I'd consider if I can just turn it down a notch to make it quieter.

 

[Denver]

Really though? Card is slower than a 5070ti and approaches the power draw of a 4090.

Power consumption is irrelevant. Aside from the three buggy games (CS2, Silent Hill, and Elden Ring) that drag down AMD GPUs' average performance, they're neck and neck, with AMD even leading in some of my favorite games. So for my use, AMD comes out on top.

If scalpers don't take over the entire supply, it's a win.

 

[TomasK]

Shame that you only have Nitro+ reviewed as that version is 26% more expensive than the Pulse, making it overpriced. I wanted to see the performance of something that's more sanely priced...

 

[Roboyt0]

@W1zzard

Any specifics on how the 12VHPWR is implemented per chance?

Has Sapphire set this up how RTX 3000 was where load can be distributed in pairs of pins?

 

[mb194dc]

Decent product, nice OC headroom as well. If its available in volume, some scalpers going to take a major bath on 5070/80 they try to sell for thousands.

A lot better than I expected.

 

[EatingDirt]

Lots of people talking about value, but this Nitro isn't a significant increase in value over the 5070 Ti, that's if we ever see a 5070 Ti at MSRP. Difference is only $20 between this and the 5070 Ti MSRP. Sure, we don't see any 5070Ti's at MSRP right now, but if we start seeing reasonable stock in the future, they might very well drop.

Looking forward to reviews of 9070XT's closer to the MSRP of $600. Would hope the Sapphire Pulse would come in between $600-675.

Also looking forward to FSR comparisons with the new FSR4.

 

[njshah]

How is anyone calling this a win lol? aint NO ONE buying this card at partner prices like 730usd , this card barely beats the 3090ti in ray tracing in most titles and even loses out to the 5070 in some, has inferior software stack, raster performance is roughly matching the 4070ti super.

this is not a 5070ti competitor , it needs to be selling strictly at 599 or lower

 

[geniekid]

Nice review! My thoughts:

• I appreciate the GPU Compute section and wonder if we might not see encoding (and possibly decoding) benchmarks in this section in the future.
• I like what's been done with the Performance per dollar section. It really highlights how important actual market pricing is when it comes to judging how much of "a win" this card is.
• Silent Hill 2 does not look nearly as good enough to justify given its poor performance across the board.
• Regarding this specific card - the noise profile is great!

Of course, everything really hinges on what the actual market for these cards looks like going forward. Fingers crossed.

 

[Assimilator]

LMAO we gonna see all the AMD fanboys love the 12V2x6 connector now!

Trolling aside, I like the design of this card. I do not like that it is 3 slots, nor that Sapphire wants $130 over MSRP for a different cooler and some magnets (how do they work?), but scalpers gonna scalp (and that includes AMD).

Power consumption is still bad compared to NVIDIA but I reckon a 9070 XT undervolted to 9070 levels will perform nicely. At least they fixed non-gaming power.

How is anyone calling this a win lol? aint NO ONE buying this card at partner prices like 730usd , this card barely beats the 3090ti in ray tracing in most titles and even loses out to the 5070 in some, has inferior software stack, raster performance is roughly matching the 4070ti super.

this is not a 5070ti competitor , it needs to be selling strictly at 599 or lower

That would be true if the NVIDIA cards were available in any quantity... but they're not.

 

[BigMack70]

$730 seems much too steep.

I'm guessing that's a signal that AMD expects that it can't supply enough GPUs to satisfy prices near MSRP and that it cares more about short term profits than overall market share.

In my mind, that's a complete failure. I know it's a bit Apples to oranges, but the 9800x3d sells out instantly for months - supply just can't meet demand - yet the price stays the same MSRP. There's no reason AMD couldn't do that here with RDNA 4. They could sell these cards at $600 if they wanted to beat nvidia in this market.

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

Really Xcitement 9070 Xtreme Technology


nice, it's reminds me to RX580 and RX 6800 XT, big leap performance improvement from previous generation
way to go AMD

 

[btarunr]

@W1zzard

Any specifics on how the 12VHPWR is implemented per chance?

Has Sapphire set this up how RTX 3000 was where load can be distributed in pairs of pins?

It's a 12V2x6 (H++). The included cable meets this spec, too.

 

[cyberloner]

This is exactly what we needed. I will be buying one.

do you dare to use with 650 watt psu?

 

[LittleBro]

Good performance uplift, unreal prices. RX 9070 XT is already listed at some shops here for insane 1150-1200 € incl. 20% VAT. 5070 Ti listed for 100 € more.

So much for MSRP.

I did not expect for 9070 XT to be next to 7900 XTX with just 2/3 of compute units. But as you can see, their frequency is much higher and in terms of power draw RX 9070 XT matches 7900 XTX.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Awesome to see AMD finally competing and hopefully there is decent stock it's just a shame it took the worst Nvidia generation in over a decade for it to happen.


Hopefully this is the start of a trend and not a one off generation.