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Launching alongside the RX 9070 XT, today we have also put AMD's new RX 9070 (non-XT) through its paces. This is a curious GPU, one that manages to simultaneously beat its GeForce competition by a significant margin, while also proving somewhat of a disappointment in other areas.
Let's start with the good news, though, and that begins with rasterisation performance. At 1440p, the RX 9070 is comfortably faster than the RTX 5070, by a 15% average margin in my testing. That makes it just 2% slower than the RX 7900 XT and it's in the same ballpark as the 4070 Ti Super. Compared to the RX 7900 GRE, which launched the same $549 price about a year ago, the RDNA 4 GPU offers an 18% uplift. I also encourage our readers to check out as many reviews as possible, given performance versus the GeForce competition can vary dramatically from game to game, so other outlets may well find different overall margins.
Still, there's no question this is a highly capable GPU, and I think it's best paired with a high refresh-rate 1440p monitor. It can stretch to 4K gaming, but coming in 13% slower than the RX 9070 XT means it isn't quite so effective at the higher resolution. It's certainly manageable, you may just want to tweak image quality settings a touch, or enable upscaling in the form of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), but more on that in just a moment.
Ray tracing performance has also come on hugely, with AMD making several architectural tweaks to improve matters in this area. We saw performance improve by 9% on average over the RX 7900 XT, but certain titles showed gains of up to 58%, which is a huge generational improvement. It seems like the more ray traced effects a game deploys, the bigger the uplift versus RDNA 3.
However, those sorts of scenarios are also the games where Nvidia proves strongest, as the 9070 still trails the RTX 5070 by up to 43% in path traced titles, including Alan Wake 2 and Black Myth: Wukong. The gap is just 6% in Cyberpunk 2077 using RT Ultra settings though, though we also saw wins for the 9070 in F1 24 and Star Wars Outlaws. Ultimately I still feel that Nvidia remains the stronger choice if you want to enable high fidelity ray tracing, especially considering the increasing number of path traced games hitting the market, but RDNA 4 has made huge strides in this area.
I also looked at FSR 4 upscaling as part of this review, with AMD's new ML-based algorithm delivering substantial improvements to image quality when compared to FSR 3.1. It even holds its own against Nvidia's DLSS 4 Transformer model in the few examples I looked at, though further analysis is required beyond what I was capable of today. AMD does need to continue to work hard to improve game support, though – it's great that titles supporting FSR 3.1 can be ‘upgraded' to FSR 4 via the Adrenalin driver, but that's still a relatively small proportion of games out there, especially when you compare the number of titles that support DLSS Super Resolution.
As for power draw, AMD officially rates the RX 9070 for 304W TBP. Given there's no MBA card, I tested an Sapphire Pulse model today, and this runs at both reference clock speed and power draw, drawing an average of 218.7W at 1440p in my testing. That means the 9070's performance per watt is highly competitive, edging out the RTX 5070 by 8% and marking a 37% improvement in efficiency over the RX 7900 GRE. In fact, at 4K resolution, it's the most efficient GPU we've ever tested, so that is another great showing for the RDNA 4 architecture.
That's all sounding pretty positive for the RX 9070 but, unfortunately, things are undone when looking at the pricing and positioning of this card. $549 is simply not the right price for this GPU, and there's two reasons for that. The first is it simply makes no sense when compared against the $599 RX 9070 XT, given that GPU is 14% faster yet just 9% more expensive, so the more expensive option offers the better value. This is exactly what we saw when comparing the RX 7900 XTX to the 7900 XT at launch, and when looking at the 7800 XT versus 7700 XT – it feels like I'm stuck in some sort of a time loop! AMD, let's be clear – your cheaper GPU needs to offer better value than the next tier up! $499 would make a lot more sense, and I'd wager it won't be long before we see pricing drop to that sort of level.
The other issue with pricing the RX 9070 at $549 is that it's a direct match for the RTX 5070. As good as the 9070 is, going head-to-head with Nvidia feels like an uphill battle for AMD, given Nvidia’s dominance in both mind share and market share. My concern is that the average consumer – someone who doesn’t closely follow GPU reviews or market trends – will see two xx70-class cards at the same price and simply default to Nvidia because it’s the much more established brand. Even though the 9070 offers more VRAM, better rasterisation performance, and significantly improved ray tracing, AMD needs to undercut the 5070 if it wants this GPU to stand a real chance.
There's certainly potential for a good card here – just as there was with the RX 7900 XT before its own inevitable price drop. Maybe by the time RDNA 5 rolls around, AMD will have figured things out and the lower tier SKUs will launch at the correct prices right off the bat. We can only live in hope…
A final word on the Sapphire Pulse card we used for our testing today. It runs cool and quiet without compromising on its compact design. Memory temperatures could be lower, but we will have to see how other partner cards compare. Sapphire also told us the Pulse has an MSRP of £524.99 here in the UK, which should make it one of the cheapest RDNA 4 options on the market.
You will be able to buy the AMD RX 9070 and 9070 XT from tomorrow, March 6th.
Pros
- Strong 1440p performance, can also do the job for entry-level 4K gaming.
- Handily beast the RTX 5070 for raster performance, at the same price.
- Offers more VRAM than the competition.
- High efficient at 1440p and market leading at 4K.
- Ray tracing is significantly more viable than with RDNA 3.
- FSR 4 looks very promising.
Cons
- Makes no sense at $549 compared to the $599 RX 9070 XT.
- Needs to be cheaper than the RTX 5070 to help AMD turn the tide.
- Still struggles in more demanding ray traced/path traced games.
- FSR, while significantly better, lacks the near-universal game support of DLSS.
- Nvidia has the edge when it comes to AI.
KitGuru says: AMD's RX 9070 is a good graphics card that is poorly priced out of the gate. We expect to see it down around $499 before too long.
