Positioning & Architecture
Finally! AMD is launching their new RDNA Radeon RX 9070 Series. Originally, the plan was to announce these cards at CES, but AMD changed their mind last-minute, to wait and see what NVIDIA is offering with their Blackwell architecture. Now that NVIDIA has launched four SKUs, it's AMD's turn with the release of the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070. As expected, AMD is not fighting for the performance crown, i.e. there will not be a competitor to the RTX 5090. According to AMD, their focus is on providing affordable GPUs to a wide range of gamers in important market segments.

Both cards launched today are based on the Navi 48 graphics processor, which introduces the company's new RDNA 4 graphics architecture. Compared to RDNA 3 there has been an increased focus on ray tracing performance. The Compute Units have undergone enhancements to boost their performance, and the machine learning cores have been upgraded, too, one highlight is support for the FP8 data type. While NVIDIA has switched to GDDR7 memory for Blackwell, AMD continues to use GDDR6 memory, same as on last generation. The RX 9070 XT comes with 4096 GPU cores, the RX 9070 non-XT has 3584 (a 13% difference). Both cards feature 256-bit 16 GB VRAM and 128 ROPs, the number of RT cores is 64 and 56 respectively. As fabrication process, AMD is using TSMC's 4 nanometer node, while Blackwell is still on the same 5 nm process as Ada.

AMD is not producing any reference design cards for the RX 9070 Series and provided us with ASUS TUF OC cards instead, which are factory overclocked. This means that our performance results are slightly higher than the baseline models. As soon as sales go up, I will buy non-OC cards, to ensure we report the best data going forward.

Performance
We upgraded our test system in preparation for this wave of GPU launches, which is now built on AMD technology with the outstanding Ryzen 7 9800X3D. We've updated to Windows 11 24H2, complete with the newest patches and updates, and have added a selection of new games. Making a gen-over-gen comparison is slightly complicated by the fact that AMD has changed their naming scheme with this generation, to better align with the competition, which makes a lot of sense I think. I'd say the closest comparison would be RX 7900 GRE, which launched at $550, too. At 1440p, with pure rasterization, without ray tracing or DLSS, we measured a 15% performance uplift over the RX 7900 GRE, compared to the next-smaller SKU, the RX 7800 XT, the increase is 27%, which isn't monumental, but certainly decent. At 4K, the increase is 30%, which is better than what NVIDIA is offering with most GeForce RTX 50 models. Overall performance is roughly similar to the RTX 5070, a little bit higher, actually. Another comparison is that the card sits roughly in the middle between RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Ti Super, almost matching the RX 7900 XT.

The RX 9070 non-XT is a fantastic card for 1440p gaming that has enough horsepower to explore gaming 4K, possibly with upscaling or slightly lowered settings.

Ray Tracing
While NVIDIA has been a pioneer when it comes to the introduction of the ray tracing technology, AMD hasn't really been pushing things here. This changes with RDNA 4. The new GPU is considerably faster at ray tracing, which fixes one of the biggest drawbacks of RDNA 3. While the RX 9070 was a little bit faster than the RTX 5070 non-Ti without ray tracing (+5%), with ray tracing it is a little bit slower (-4%), but the differences are so small I'd call it even. Would you have expected this? When it comes to 4K, then the RX 9070 beats the 5070, because NVIDIA's card runs out of VRAM, resulting in a 10% win for AMD. It's impressive to see that the RX 9070 matches the RT performance of last-generation's AMD flagship, the RX 7900 XTX.

VRAM
AMD has equipped both RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT with 16 GB of VRAM, which is the right memory size in this segment. NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti has 16 GB, too, but the RTX 5070 non-Ti has only 12 GB, which becomes an issue in some titles at 4K with ray tracing and frame generation enabled. Also, looking ahead, I am convinced that future titles will come with higher VRAM requirements, which means you'll have to dial settings down a bit on the GeForce RTX 5070 (which isn't unreasonable). Still, 16 GB gives you peace of mind when it comes to VRAM.

FSR 4
With RDNA 4, AMD is introducing FSR 4—the newest version of their upscaling technology. The new tech is supported in a good number of games already, and it will come to all games supporting FSR 3.1 through a driver override mechanism. In my testing this worked well, and the UI is easy to use. I like how the in-game overlay tells you when FSR 4 is active, or warns you when you forgot to enable FSR 3.1 in the game. Image quality is greatly improved, the image stability is fantastic, almost on par with DLSS Transformer, which still remains the better option though. Rendered details in textures are much better now, too, and FSR 4 in Quality mode is comparable to native, sometimes better. Just to clarify, AMD has not made any improvements to frame generation, you still get the option to double your framerate. With Blackwell, NVIDIA has introduced multi-frame generation. This feature allows you to triple or quadruple the framerate with good results. Thus, NVIDIA still possesses a superior capability when it comes to upscaling and frame generation. However, this advantage has become much smaller. I believe the main challenge for both vendors now will be game support.

Physical Design, Heat & Noise
We've seen the ASUS TUF design on many cards before, and it looks fantastic. I love the thick metal, which gives the impression of great build quality, the color theme should go well with any case, too. Cooling performance is outstanding, with just 26 dBA, the card runs whisper quiet, even under full load. Temperatures are excellent, too, just 65°C on the hot spot. Want even quieter? ASUS has you covered, the optional quiet BIOS slows the fans down even more, which results in a nearly inaudible 22 dBA—wow! Temperatures aren't that much higher, too.

PCI-Express 5.0
Just like NVIDIA Blackwell, AMD RDNA 4 has support for PCI-Express 5.0. This increases the available PCIe bandwidth to the GPU, yielding a small performance benefit. Of course PCIe Gen 5 is backwards compatible with older versions, so you'll be able to run the cards even in an older computer.

Just like we've done over the years, we took a detailed look at PCI-Express scaling in a separate article, using GeForce RTX 5090. I don't expect that results for AMD will be vastly different, so the data should be a good indicator of what to expect. Testing includes x8 Gen 5, for instances when an SSD is eating some lanes. The popular x16 4.0 was tested, which is common on many older CPUs and entry-level motherboards. Finally, some additional combinations were run, down to PCIe x16 1.1. The results confirm that unless you are on an ancient machine, PCIe bandwidth won't be a problem at all.

Power Consumption
The biggest news here for me is that AMD has finally fixed the increased power consumption in multi-monitor and video playback. In an unexpected reversal, NVIDIA is failing here now, with their top three Blackwell GPUs showing higher than expected power consumption in non-gaming states. AMD has given the RX 9070 non-XT a very low power limit, which means the card will run at relatively low voltage and frequency, which means it operates closer to its maximum efficiency. While the RX 9070 XT ran at similar efficiency as last-gen, the 9070 is able to match NVIDIA's best cards, except for the RTX 5080. With just 240 W in gaming, any half-decent PSU should be able to power the RX 9070—important for gamers upgrading an older computer.

Overclocking
Overclocking worked very well on all RX 9070 Series cards. The TUF gained 11% in real-life performance, which is much more than we usually see. NVIDIA's competing Blackwell cards overclock similarly, though. Raising the power limit adds a few percent extra performance, which is nice, but also confirms that the 9070 non-XT is a little bit power-starved, but you do get better efficiency in return. While OC isn't completely trivial it's easy enough to do, once you know what to look out for. I also like that AMD continues giving us the Hot Spot thermal sensor, which is crucial to diagnose issues with thermal paste or cooler alignment. Also, the OC slider limits are high enough to not result in any artificial limitations.

Pricing & Alternatives
AMD has set an MSRP of $550 for the Radeon RX 9070 non-XT, which is very close to the $600 RX 9070 XT. To me this makes little sense, and it seems AMD is focusing on the upsell to the XT model. This is the same strategy that they used for the RX 7900 XT/XTX, and it made the XT an unpopular step-child that really didn't sell well until AMD adjusted its pricing much too late in the cycle. NVIDIA handles this better, with better segmentation between their cards. Why not price it at $500—it would make the card very interesting to the $499, sub-$500 gamers. At this point AMD needs to improve their market share and win back the hearts of gamers, I doubt another $50 in their pocket will make as much of a difference. Also, at $550, NVIDIA's RTX 5070 non-Ti offers strong competition, with similar performance, less VRAM, but better brand recognition and support for DLSS 4 with multi-frame-generation. If you've followed the tech news in recent weeks, then you'll surely be aware of all the drama surrounding MSRP. Right now not a single GeForce 50 card is in stock anywhere in the world, and scalpers are selling them at hugely inflated pricing. Given AMD's competitive pricing I'm afraid the same will happen here. Let's just hope that AMD stockpiled enough cards in the past months, to ensure a constant and steady supply. Another concern is that custom designs from the various board partners will end up much more expensive than the baseline card. The TUF OC is such a model. Just the fact that ASUS was unable to provide any pricing today, the day before sales go live, suggests that pricing will be high and not anywhere close to $550. For now, I've estimated a $650 price point, which would be a +18% increase. In return, you get a fantastic cooler that's powerful and runs extremely quiet, a small RGB element, a factory overclock and an increased power limit. I still find the price increase pretty steep, and if you can find a RX 9070 XT at similar pricing then that would be my choice, even with a weaker cooler. The extra performance will make much more of a difference.

In the coming weeks and months we have RTX 5060 series and RX 9060 series—I doubt that these will be able to make any difference for buyers interested in strong 1440p cards. Maybe Intel has an ace up their sleeves, their bigger Arc Battlemage cards could add more competition, but their release date is completely unknown.

Awards will be added after the cards go on sale, once we know more about pricing and the supply situation.