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 N4P 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, slightly cheaper than the AMD $600 MSRP of the RX 9070 XT. At 1440p, with pure rasterization, without ray tracing or DLSS, we measured a 32% performance uplift over the RX 7900 GRE, which isn't monumental, but certainly decent. At 4K, the increase is 35%, which is considerably better than what NVIDIA is offering with most GeForce RTX 50 models. Overall performance is roughly similar to the RTX 5070 Ti, which is Team Green's 3rd strongest model in the lineup. Another comparison is that the card sits roughly in the middle between RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080—which I think is better than what most people expected. However, this means that AMD's strongest card this generation cannot catch last generation's flagship—the RX 7900 XTX remains 3% faster, at least without ray tracing.

While most titles will run well at 4K, I think RX 9070 XT should be considered 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. Compared to NVIDIA, RT performance is still a bit lower. For example, while it was trading blows with the RTX 5070 Ti without RT, with RT the 9070 XT is 14% behind—close enough I'd say. Compared to the RTX 5070, the XT is 10% faster, more at 4K, because it has 16 GB VRAM, while the 5070 has only 12 GB. Against RDNA 3, the performance gains are impressive: +58% vs RX 7900 GRE, +18% vs RX 7900 XTX. Good job, AMD!

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
Sapphire RX 9070 XT Nitro+ is a high-quality premium custom design model of the RX 9070 XT. It comes with a large triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution. I really like the new design theme, it's a refreshing change from black or shiny metal. The highlight for me is the magnetically attachable backplate, which is of excellent build quality and uses a foolproof attachment mechanism. Unlike most other RX 9070 Series cards, Sapphire opted for the 16-pin power connector that NVIDIA introduced. While it's controversial, it makes things very easy, because there's just a single cable that can be hidden well, thanks to the placement of the connector. While all NVIDIA cards have the cable sticking out right into your case side, Sapphire lets you route it to the motherboard very elegantly, and you can cover it with the backplate—love it.

Thermal performance is excellent, too. Under full load the cards runs at a whisper quiet 26 dBA. Temperatures are good, too, reaching 83°C on the hotspot. Our apples-to-apples noise normalized cooler comparison tests confirms that Sapphire's cooling solution is the most powerful of the four cards tested today, but the differences are relatively small.

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. Still, when it comes to gaming efficiency, nothing can beat NVIDIA, despite their older 5 nanometer production process. Energy efficiency of the Sapphire Nitro+ is roughly similar to last generation's RX 7900 XTX. It's a bit surprising that AMD hasn't made significant improvements here, but you have to consider that the Nitro+ is factory-overclocked. The non-OC Sapphire Pulse is around 10% more efficient, which helps, but isn't enough to catch NVIDIA. Still, overall PSU requirements are alright I'd say and heat/noise levels are fantastic, too, so this isn't much of an issue.

Overclocking
Overclocking worked very well on all RX 9070 Series cards. The Nitro+ gained 9% in real-life performance, which is more than we usually see. NVIDIA's competing Blackwell cards overclock a few percent better though. 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 can be 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 declared a $600 MSRP for the RX 9070 XT, which is very ambitious. At that price point it's the best option in its segment by far, unless your main focus is on DLSS multi-frame-generation, or you need CUDA for GPU computing. If you've followed the tech news in recent weeks, then you'll sure be aware of all the drama surrounding the 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 Nitro+ is such a model. According to Sapphire, the MSRP is $730, which is a 22% increase over the $600 starting price. In return, you get a fantastic cooler that's powerful and runs very quiet, RGB bling, a factory overclock and an increased power limit. I still find the price increase pretty steep. On the other hand, even at $730, the card is competitive compared to the rest of the market.

NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti is the closest competitor to the RX 9070 XT. It offers slightly better raster performance, a bit better RT performance, better efficiency and support for DLSS, especially multi-frame-generation. If there really was any stock available at NVIDIA's MSRP of $750, I'd say NV definitely has the edge here. But unfortunately not a single RTX 5070 Ti is in stock, and it's scalped to around $1000, making the RX 9070 XT the better choice, up to $800 I'd say. At that point you should consider similarly priced alternatives. It will be interesting to see what happens with RTX 5070 non-Ti pricing, which goes on sale today. Its initial MSRP is $550, but with lower overall performance in both raster and ray tracing than the XT.

Looking beyond that, we have RTX 5060 series and RX 9060 series on the horizon—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 the release date is completely unknown.

I'm definitely leaning to Editor's Choice for the Nitro+. Awards will be added after the cards go on sale, once we know more about pricing and the supply situation.