The AMD Radeon RX 9070 enters the graphics card market at an interesting juncture. Hot on the heels of Nvidia's latest generation, this $549 card finds itself directly competing with the underwhelming GeForce RTX 5070. In this matchup, AMD emerges victorious, making the RX 9070 a compelling choice for 1440p gaming.
However, the situation isn't entirely straightforward. AMD's own Radeon RX 9070 XT, a mere $50 more expensive, presents a tough competitor. While the price difference aligns with the RX 9070's approximately 8% lower performance, the incremental cost for significantly better performance is hard to ignore. Despite this internal competition, AMD's offerings present a strong showing 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 more powerful RX 9070 XT.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos
4 Images
Specs and Features
Like its sibling, the RX 9070 XT, the RX 9070 utilizes the new RDNA 4 architecture. This results in substantial performance gains, significantly outperforming the previous generation Radeon RX 7900 GRE despite having 30% fewer compute units.
The 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, for a total of 56 and 112 respectively. These improvements, particularly to ray tracing and AI acceleration, allow the card to compete effectively in ray-traced games. Furthermore, the enhanced AI Accelerators enable FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, marking AMD's first foray into AI upscaling.
The card features 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus, mirroring the 7900 GRE's configuration and providing ample memory 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 a peak consumption of 249W, suggesting a 600W PSU is a safer bet.
Importantly, unlike previous generations, AMD isn't releasing a reference design for the RX 9070. All versions will be produced by third-party manufacturers. This review utilizes the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC 16G, a triple-slot card with a factory overclock.
FSR 4
Since DLSS's emergence, AI upscaling has become a crucial performance enhancer. FSR 4 brings this technology to AMD GPUs for the first time. It leverages previous frames and in-game data through an AI model to upscale lower resolution images to the native resolution, offering a significant improvement over the temporal upscaling of FSR 3.
The AI processing introduces a slight performance penalty compared to FSR 3. However, the Adrenalin software allows users to toggle between FSR 3 and FSR 4, prioritizing either performance or image quality depending on individual preferences and game type.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 – Benchmarks
11 Images
Performance
Priced identically to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, the RX 9070 consistently outperforms it, particularly at 1440p. It achieves a 12% average performance advantage over the RTX 5070 and a 22% lead over the RX 7900 GRE. This represents a significant improvement, considering the 30% reduction in cores.
It's crucial to note that this review used a factory-overclocked RX 9070 (Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC), boasting a 2,700MHz boost clock (approximately 7% higher). While not directly translating to a 7% performance increase, it likely contributes a 4-5% frame rate boost.
Testing utilized public drivers (Nvidia Game Ready driver 572.60 and AMD Adrenalin 24.12.1, with review drivers for the RX 9070, RX 9070 XT, and RTX 5070).
3DMark benchmarks show a near-tie with the RTX 5070 in ray-traced tests, but a substantial 20% lead in non-ray-traced scenarios.
Game benchmarks highlight the RX 9070's strengths across various titles. Significant leads are observed in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Metro Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and Forza Horizon 5. While some titles like Black Myth Wukong show a closer competition, the overall performance advantage remains consistent.
The RX 9070's superior performance, coupled with its 16GB VRAM, positions it as a more future-proof option compared to the RTX 5070, even if the latter utilizes GDDR7 memory. The combination of better performance and greater VRAM makes the RX 9070 a compelling choice.
