AMD RX 9070 Review ft. Sapphire

1. Introduction2. Meet the Sapphire RX 9070 Pulse3. Testing Methodology4. Alan Wake II5. Black Myth: Wukong6. Cyberpunk 20777. Final Fantasy XVI8. Forza Horizon 59. Ghost of Tsushima10. Horizon Forbidden West11. The Last of Us Part 112. A Plague Tale: Requiem13. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 214. Starfield15. Total War: Warhammer III16. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)17. Cost Per Frame Analysis18. Ray Tracing: Alan Wake II19. Ray Tracing: Black Myth: Wukong20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: F1 2422. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart23. Ray Tracing: Returnal24. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Ray Tracing: Star Wars Outlaws26. Ray Tracing Performance Summary27. AI & Productivity Benchmarks28. Clock Speed29. GPU Temperatures30. Memory Temperatures31. Acoustics32. Power Draw: 1080p33. Power Draw: 1440p34. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)35. Performance per Watt: 1080p36. Performance per Watt: 1440p37. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)38. Total System Power Draw39. Closing Thoughts40. View All Pages

Ray tracing 8-game average FPS

Here we present frame rate figures for each graphics card, averaged across all 8 ray traced games on test today. These figures can disguise significant variations in performance from game to game, but provide a useful overview of the sort of performance you can expect at each resolution tested.

Overall then, there's no doubt that RDNA 4 has improved ray tracing performance significantly. It seems that the more ray tracing is done, the bigger the gains – as we saw in Alan Wake 2 and Black Myth: Wukong, where the 9070 was some 25-35% faster than the 7900 XTX.

Unfortunately, those are also the games where Nvidia shows its dominance in this segment, and as such the 9070 is still the slower card for ray tracing – losing out to the 5070 by 6% on average at 1440p. It's a heck of a lot more competitive than AMD has been previously, but Nvidia still holds the advantage here. Versus the 7900 GRE, we see a 32% generational gain, bigger than AMD's claimed 21% uplift.

Cost per frame, launch MSRP data

Please note this only compares ray traced performance and value.

Despite being slower overall, the 9070 has shown enough that it's actually now a real contender when it comes to ray tracing cost per frame, given value is in-line with the 5070 Ti, and only 6% behind the 5070. It's still not better than the 5070 in this regard, but this is still a huge turn around compared to RDNA 3, which was really nowhere for ray tracing value.

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