Reviews for the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are great. They show them taking on Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti & RTX 5070 at much lower prices.
After months of waiting, AMD had finally announced the AMD Radeon RX 9000 series of graphics cards a few days ago. Starting with AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and AMD Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards.
With them launching tomorrow, the reviews for them are out today. The reviews show them taking on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 Ti & RTX 5070 graphics cards at much lower prices. Both of them have released to bad reviews thanks to bad gen-to-gen performance uplift and really high prices.
While AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 launch with an MSRP of $599 and $549 respectively, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti & RTX 5070 are priced at $749 and $549 respectively. With real pricing of the Nvidia’s versions being far higher than the MSRP. Not to forget major availability issues with Nvidia cards. All thanks to Nvidia diverting all the GPU supply towards the datacenter GPUs, leaving gamers with very fewer units.
So the reviews are basically concentrating on these graphics cards. But before them, lets check out the specs.
RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 Specs
| Graphics Card | RX 9070 XT | RX 9070 |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | Navi 48 | Navi 48 |
| GPU Size | 357mm² | 357mm² |
| GPU Transistors | 53.9 billion | 53.9 billion |
| Architecture | RDNA 4 | RDNA 4 |
| Process | 4nm | 4nm |
| Compute Units | 64 | 56 |
| Ray Accelerators | 64 | 56 |
| AI Accelerators | 128 | 112 |
| Stream Processors | 4,096 | 3,584 |
| GPU Clock (Gaming) | 2400 MHz | 2070 MHz |
| GPU Clock (Boost) | 2970 MHz | 2520 MHz |
| ROPS | 128 | 128 |
| VRAM Capacity | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| VRAM Speed | 20Gbps | 20Gbps |
| Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| AMD Infinity Cache | 64MB | 64MB |
| PCIe Version | PCIe 5.0 x16 | PCIe 5.0 x16 |
| Total Board Power | 305 W | 220 W |
| Recommended PSU | 750W | 650W |
| Power Connector | 2 x 8pin | 2 x 8pin |
| MSRP | $599 | $549 |
In terms of cost and price, AMD Radeon RX 9070 series is somewhat similar to the Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics cards.
Reviews
Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware reviewed both AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 graphics cards. They called them – Excellent value, if supply is good.
They found RX 9070 XT’s 4K and 1440p raster performance in gaming to be:
- 3% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.
- 5% slower than AMD RX 7900 XTX (which is great).
- 7% slower than Nvidia RTX 4080 Super.
- 7% faster than AMD RX 7900 XT.
- 14-15% faster than AMD RX 9070 non-XT.
They found RX 9070 non-XT’s 4K and 1440p raster performance in gaming to be:
- 8-12% faster than Nvidia RTX 5070.
- 3-5% slower than AMD RX 7900 XT.
- 3-5% slower than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super.
- 2-6% faster than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti.
- 24-28% faster than AMD RX 7800 XT.
In ray tracing performance at 4K and 1440p, they found RX 9070 XT in gaming to be:
- 9-14% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.
- 11% faster than AMD RX 7900 XTX.
- 20-22% slower than Nvidia RTX 4080 Super.
- 26-28% faster than AMD RX 7900 XT.
- 15-18% faster than AMD RX 9070 non-XT.
In ray tracing performance at 4K and 1440p, they found RX 9070 non-XT in gaming to be:
- 1% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 non-Ti.
- 10% faster than AMD RX 7900 XT.
- 17-20% slower than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super.
- 9% slower than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti.
- 30-36% faster than AMD RX 7800 XT.
In power usage, both RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 to use around 300W and 220W respectively at both 4K and 1440p. Making them more efficient than RX 7000 series. However, while RX 9070 is more efficient than RTX 5070, the RX 9070 XT uses more power than RTX 5070 Ti.
TechSpot
TechSpot’s Steve Walton posted a written review for AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.
In raster performance in gaming at 4K and 1440p, RX 9070 XT was found to be:
- 1-6% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.
- 28-35% faster than AMD RX 7900 GRE.
- 2-9% faster than AMD RX 7800 XT.
- 10-14% slower than AMD RX 7900 XTX.
In ray tracing performance in gaming at 4K and 1440p, RX 9070 XT was found to be:
- 20-26% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.
- 54-57% faster than AMD RX 7900 GRE.
- 35-42% faster than AMD RX 7800 XT.
- 23-26% faster than AMD RX 7900 XTX.
The total computer power consumption was found to be in similar range as RX 7900 XT, which is far higher than most, but lesser than Nvidia RTX 3080 and AMD RX 7900 XTX.
The review mentions how AMD’s claims are not completely true. While the performance improvement is big, it’s not as big as what AMD claimed.
Another thing it mentions is that $599 price might only be for initial buyers. Restocks might and could be about $50 more. But even then, thanks to higher stocks, AMD RX 9070 XT alone might get sold far more than the whole Nvidia RTX 50 series combined.
TechPowerUP
TechPowerUP reviewed both AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and AMD Radeon RX 9070 individually.
TechPowerUp found RX 9070 XT’s 4K and 1440p raster performance in gaming to be:
- 3% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.
- 5% slower than AMD RX 7900 XTX.
- 7% slower than Nvidia RTX 4080 Super.
- 9% faster than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super.
- 11% faster than AMD RX 7900 XT.
TechPowerUp found RX 9070 non-XT’s 4K and 1440p raster performance in gaming to be:
- 5-7% faster than Nvidia RTX 5070.
- 2% slower than AMD RX 7900 XT.
- 3% slower than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super.
- 2-6% faster than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti.
- 31-33% faster than AMD RX 7800 XT.
In ray tracing performance at 4K and 1440p, TechPowerUP found RX 9070 XT in gaming to be:
- 14-18% slower than Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.
- 3% faster than Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti
- 15-17% faster than AMD RX 7900 XTX.
- 20-22% slower than Nvidia RTX 4080 Super.
- 26-29% faster than AMD RX 7900 XT.
In ray tracing performance at 4K and 1440p, TechPowerUP found RX 9070 in gaming to be:
- 10% faster than Nvidia RTX 5070 non-Ti at 4K, 4% slower at 1440p.
- 1-2% faster than AMD RX 7900 XTX.
- 15-16% faster than AMD RX 7900 XT.
- 20-23% slower than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super.
- 6% faster than Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti at 4K, 14% slower at 1440p.
- 35-36% faster than AMD RX 7800 XT.
In power consumption in gaming, RX 9070 XT used 351W, whereas RX 9070 used 242W. Which is not massively efficient, but not bad either.
Conclusion
There you have it. In our opinion, AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card is one of the best graphics card released in recent times. Not only it has big raster performance improvements over the previous-gen, but more importantly, it has massively improved ray tracing performance increase across all the tests. While it’s still not a match for Nvidia, its ray tracing performance has increased massively over the RX 7000 series.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 isn’t bad either. It, too, has similar performance increase like the XT model. But we think it’s priced too higher. In our opinion, $500 would have been better than $550.
As for availability and actual price, VideoCardz and Club386 report that a single retailer alone has more than a thousand graphics cards of a single model of a single brand. Which strongly suggests that availability isn’t going to be an issue for the RX 9000 graphics cards. This is unlike Nvidia’s recently released RTX 50 series, which can hardly be found anywhere for purchasing.
While there are strong suggestions that graphics cards makers aren’t really interested in selling these cards at MSRP, the price isn’t going to be that big an issue as Nvidia currently.
This isn’t alone, reviews show (YouTube) that the FSR 4 that launched as an RX 9000 series exclusive, is a massive upgrade in quality over FSR 3.1.
So basically, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 ARE all set to make sure that AMD increases its graphics card market share.
