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 directly competes with the underwhelming GeForce RTX 5070. AMD decisively wins this matchup, 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 superior performer, sits only $50 higher. While the 9070's approximately 8% lower performance aligns with its 9% lower price, the small price difference makes the 9070 XT a difficult card to ignore. Despite this, AMD's offerings present a strong showing for Team Red.

Purchasing Guide

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launches March 6th, starting at $549. Expect variations in pricing across different models. Prioritize purchasing a card as close to the starting price as possible, given its proximity in price to the more powerful 9070 XT.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos

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Specs and Features

Like the RX 9070 XT, the RX 9070 utilizes the RDNA 4 architecture. This results in significant performance gains, surpassing 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 improved ray tracing and AI acceleration capabilities 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.

Similar to the 9070 XT, 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus is included. This configuration, comparable to the 7900 GRE, should suffice 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, citing 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 from third-party manufacturers. This review utilized 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. Utilizing previous frames and in-game data, an AI model upscales lower-resolution images to the native resolution. This differs from FSR 3's temporal upscaling, which lacked the AI detail refinement, leading to artifacts.

The AI processing introduces a slight performance penalty compared to FSR 3. For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at 1440p (Extreme preset) saw a drop from 165 fps (FSR 3) to 159 fps (FSR 4). Similarly, Monster Hunter Wilds at 4K max settings with ray tracing experienced a drop from 81 fps to 76 fps. The Adrenalin software allows users to choose between FSR 3 (performance) and FSR 4 (image quality).

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 – Benchmarks

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Performance

At $549, the RX 9070 directly challenges the RTX 5070, frequently emerging victorious. At 1440p, it's on average 12% faster than the RTX 5070 and 22% faster than the RX 7900 GRE. This represents a substantial improvement, especially considering the 30% reduction in cores. Note that this review used a factory-overclocked version (approximately 7% boost clock), resulting in a 4-5% performance increase.

Testing utilized current public drivers (Nvidia 572.60, AMD 24.12.1, and review drivers for the RX 9070, 9070 XT, and RTX 5070).

3DMark results highlighted the 9070's potential. Speed Way (ray tracing enabled) showed a near tie with the RTX 5070, while Steel Nomad (no ray tracing) yielded a 20% advantage for the 9070.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (1440p, FSR 3 Balanced) showed the 9070 achieving 165 fps, compared to 131 fps (RTX 5070) and 143 fps (7900 GRE).

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p, Ray Tracing Ultra) surprisingly favored the 9070 by 3%, a significant win for AMD in a traditionally Nvidia-favored game.

Metro Exodus (no upscaling) showcased an 11% lead for the 9070 in raw ray tracing performance.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (1440p, max settings, Vulkan) resulted in a 23% performance advantage for the 9070.

Total War: Warhammer 3 showed a significant 4K lead for the 9070, but a near tie at 1440p.

Assassin's Creed Mirage (1440p, Ultra, FSR Balanced) resulted in an 18% lead for the 9070.

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p, Cinematic preset) showed a near tie.

Forza Horizon 5 (1440p) yielded a 12% and 25% lead over the RTX 5070 and 7900 GRE, respectively.

The RX 9070's performance advantage over the RTX 5070 at the same price point is remarkable. The 16GB VRAM further enhances its long-term value, even considering the RTX 5070's GDDR7 memory. Superior performance and larger VRAM make the RX 9070 the clear winner.