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 picture isn't entirely straightforward. AMD's own Radeon RX 9070 XT, only $50 more expensive, presents a tough competitor. While the price difference aligns with the 9070's roughly 8% lower performance, the extra $50 buys a significant performance boost, making the upgrade tempting. Nevertheless, Team Red boasts a strong showing with both cards.
Purchasing Guide
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launches March 6th, with a starting price of $549. Expect variations in pricing across different models. Prioritize models closest to the starting price, given its proximity in cost to the superior RX 9070 XT.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos
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Specs and Features
Like its sibling, the RX 9070 XT, the RX 9070 utilizes the 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 features 56 Compute Units, each with 64 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), totaling 3,584 shaders. Each compute unit includes one Ray Accelerator and two AI Accelerators (56 and 112 total, respectively). These improvements, particularly to ray tracing and AI acceleration, allow the card to compete effectively in ray-traced games. The enhanced AI Accelerators enable FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, marking AMD's first foray into AI upscaling.
The card pairs 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a 256-bit bus—a configuration similar to the 7900 GRE, sufficient for 1440p gaming for several years. While GDDR7 would have been a welcome addition, it likely would have increased the price.
AMD recommends a 550W power supply, with a 220W power budget. Testing showed peak consumption at 249W; a 600W PSU is recommended for safety.
Importantly, unlike previous generations, AMD isn't releasing a reference design for the RX 9070. All versions will be from third-party manufacturers. This review uses the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC 16G, a triple-slot card with a factory overclock.
FSR 4
Since DLSS's rise in 2018, AI upscaling has become a key performance enhancer. FSR 4 finally brings this capability to AMD GPUs. It uses previous frames and in-game data, processed by an AI model, to upscale lower-resolution images to the native resolution. This differs from FSR 3's temporal upscaling, which lacked AI detail refinement, leading to artifacts.
The AI processing introduces a slight performance penalty compared to FSR 3. Testing showed a minor frame rate drop when switching from FSR 3 to FSR 4 in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Monster Hunter Wilds. The Adrenalin software allows users to choose between FSR 3 (better performance) and FSR 4 (better image quality).
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 – Benchmarks
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Performance
At $549, the RX 9070 directly challenges the RTX 5070, consistently outperforming it at 1440p by an average of 12%. It also boasts a 22% lead over the RX 7900 GRE. This is a significant improvement, especially considering the 30% reduction in cores.
Note that the review unit was a factory-overclocked version (Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC), with a reported boost clock of 2,700MHz (approximately a 7% increase). This contributes to the performance advantage.
Testing used public drivers (Nvidia Game Ready driver 572.60 and AMD Adrenalin 24.12.1) and AMD-provided review drivers for the RX 9070, RX 9070 XT, and RTX 5070.
3DMark benchmarks showed a near tie with the RTX 5070 in the ray-traced Speed Way test, but a significant 20% lead in the non-ray-traced Steel Nomad test.
Game benchmarks revealed substantial performance advantages in various titles. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 showed a 26% lead over the RTX 5070 and a 15% lead over the 7900 GRE. Cyberpunk 2077 (with ray tracing) showed a small but significant 3% advantage. Metro Exodus (raw ray tracing performance) showed an 11% lead. Red Dead Redemption 2 showed a 23% lead. Assassin's Creed Mirage showed an 18% lead. Forza Horizon 5 showed a 12% lead over the RTX 5070 and a 25% lead over the 7900 GRE. Total War: Warhammer 3 showed a negligible difference at 1440p. Black Myth Wukong resulted in a near tie.
The RX 9070's strong performance against the RTX 5070 at the same price point is impressive. Its 16GB of VRAM also provides a longer lifespan compared to the RTX 5070's GDDR7 memory. Even with a hypothetical performance tie, the superior VRAM would make the RX 9070 the better value. Combined with its superior performance, the RX 9070 is a clear winner.
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