AMD Radeon RX 9070 Review

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 enters the graphics card market at an opportune moment. Following the release of Nvidia's latest generation, the $549 RX 9070 directly competes with the underwhelming GeForce RTX 5070. AMD easily wins this matchup, making the RX 9070 a compelling choice for 1440p gaming.

However, the situation is more nuanced due to AMD's own pricing strategy. The RX 9070 is only $50 less expensive than the superior Radeon RX 9070 XT. While this price difference aligns with the approximately 8% performance gap between the two cards, the marginal cost increase for significantly better performance makes the 9070 XT a stronger contender. Despite this, AMD's offerings remain highly competitive.

Purchasing Guide

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launches March 6th, with a starting price of $549. Expect variations in pricing across different models. To maximize value, prioritize models closest to the starting price, given its proximity to the RX 9070 XT's cost.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos

4 Images

Specs and Features

Like 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, resulting in 56 and 112 respectively. These improved Ray and AI Accelerators enhance ray tracing capabilities and enable FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, AMD's first AI upscaling technology.

The card boasts 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus, similar to the 7900 GRE, sufficient 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 showed peak consumption at 249W; a 600W PSU is recommended for safety.

Crucially, unlike previous generations, AMD isn't releasing a reference design. All RX 9070 cards 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 emergence, AI upscaling has become a vital performance enhancer. FSR 4 brings this capability to AMD GPUs for the first time. It uses previous frames and in-game data to upscale lower-resolution images, improving upon the temporal upscaling of FSR 3 by reducing artifacts.

FSR 4 does introduce a slight performance penalty compared to FSR 3 due to the AI processing. 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

11 Images

Performance

At $549, the RX 9070 surpasses the RTX 5070 in many benchmarks. At 1440p, it's 12% faster on average, and 22% faster than the RX 7900 GRE. This represents a significant improvement, especially considering the 30% reduction in cores.

Note that this review uses a factory-overclocked RX 9070 (Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC) with a 2700Mhz boost clock (approximately 7% overclock), contributing to performance gains.

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.

The RX 9070 performs well in 3DMark, exceeding the RTX 5070 in Steel Nomad (no ray tracing) by 20%. In games, it consistently outperforms the RTX 5070 and RX 7900 GRE, particularly in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Metro Exodus, and Red Dead Redemption 2. Performance is comparable in Total War: Warhammer 3 and Black Myth Wukong. Assassin's Creed Mirage and Forza Horizon 5 also show significant advantages for the RX 9070.

The RX 9070's superior performance and 16GB VRAM make it a more future-proof and value-driven option compared to the RTX 5070, even if their performance were perfectly matched.