The AMD Radeon RX 9070 enters the graphics card market at an interesting juncture. Nvidia's latest generation has just launched, pitting AMD's new $549 card directly against the underwhelming GeForce RTX 5070. This competition is one AMD easily wins, making the Radeon RX 9070 a compelling choice for 1440p gaming.
However, the situation isn't quite so straightforward. AMD's own Radeon RX 9070 XT, a mere $50 more expensive, presents a tough competitor. While the price difference aligns with the 9070's roughly 8% lower performance, the extra $50 for significantly better performance is hard to ignore. Nevertheless, choosing between these two AMD cards is a win for Team Red.
Purchasing Guide
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launches March 6th, with a starting price of $549. Expect variations in pricing across different models. Prioritize purchasing a model as close to the starting price as possible, given its proximity in price to the superior Radeon RX 9070 XT.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos
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Specs and Features
Like the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, the RX 9070 utilizes the new RDNA 4 architecture. This results in substantial performance gains, significantly surpassing the previous generation's Radeon RX 7900 GRE despite having 30% fewer compute units.
The Radeon RX 9070 boasts 56 Compute Units, each containing 64 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), totaling 3,584 shaders. Each compute unit includes one Ray Accelerator and two AI Accelerators, resulting in 56 and 112 respectively. While SMs handle the bulk of processing, improvements to Ray and AI Accelerators enable the card to compete effectively in ray-traced games. Enhanced AI Accelerators also facilitate the introduction of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, bringing AI upscaling to AMD GPUs for the first time.
Similar to the 9070 XT, the RX 9070 features 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus—a configuration comparable to the 7900 GRE, sufficient for 1440p gaming for years to come. While GDDR7 adoption would have been beneficial, it likely would have increased the price.
AMD recommends a 550W power supply, with a 220W power budget. Testing revealed peak consumption at 249W; a 600W PSU is recommended for safety.
Crucially, unlike previous generations, AMD isn't releasing a reference design for the RX 9070. All versions will be manufactured by third-party board partners. This review utilized the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC 16G, a triple-slot card with a factory overclock.
FSR 4
Since DLSS's emergence in 2018, AI upscaling has become a significant performance enhancer without substantial image quality loss. Previously an Nvidia-exclusive solution, FSR 4 now brings AI upscaling to AMD GPUs.
FSR 4 utilizes previous frames and in-game data through an AI model to upscale lower-resolution images to the native resolution. This differs from FSR 3's temporal upscaling, which lacked an AI algorithm for detail refinement, leading to artifacts.
The AI processing introduces a slight performance penalty compared to FSR 3. For example, in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at 1440p with Extreme settings, FSR 3 achieved 165 fps, dropping to 159 fps with FSR 4. Similar results were seen in Monster Hunter Wilds.
The Adrenalin software allows users to toggle between FSR 3 and FSR 4, prioritizing either performance or image quality.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 – Benchmarks
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Performance
Priced at $549, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 directly competes with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, consistently outperforming it at 1440p by an average of 12%, and exceeding its AMD predecessor, the RX 7900 GRE, by 22%. This improvement is notable considering the 30% reduction in cores.
Note that testing involved a factory-overclocked RX 9070 (Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC) with a reported boost clock of 2,700MHz (approximately a 7% increase). This contributes to the performance gains.
Testing utilized public drivers: Nvidia Game Ready driver 572.60 and AMD Adrenalin 24.12.1 (RX 9070 and 9070 XT used AMD review drivers, as did the RTX 5070).
3DMark benchmarks showed near parity with the RTX 5070 in ray-traced tests, but a significant 20% lead in non-ray-traced tests.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 demonstrated a 26% performance advantage over the RTX 5070 and a 15% lead over the 7900 GRE at 1440p.
Cyberpunk 2077, typically favoring Nvidia, showed a small but significant 3% advantage for the RX 9070 with ray tracing enabled.
Metro Exodus (raw ray tracing performance) yielded an 11% lead for the RX 9070.
Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan) resulted in a 23% performance advantage.
Total War: Warhammer 3 showed a significant lead at 4K, but negligible difference at 1440p.
Assassin's Creed Mirage yielded an 18% lead for the RX 9070.
Black Myth Wukong showed near parity.
Forza Horizon 5 showed a 12% lead over the RTX 5070 and 25% over the 7900 GRE.
The Radeon RX 9070's superior performance and 16GB VRAM compared to the RTX 5070 make it the better value proposition, even if performance were equal.
Test System:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
- Motherboard: Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero
- RAM: 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo @ 6,000MHz
- SSD: 4TB Samsung 990 Pro
- CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360
The Radeon RX 9070's strong performance against the RTX 5070 at the same price point, combined with its larger VRAM capacity, makes it a compelling choice for gamers.
