AMD announces Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT: Everything to know about these GPUs

AMD recently announced the all-new Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs to compete with Nvidia's RTX 50-series graphics cards. However, unlike the Radeon 7000 series, the new 9070 series will compete in the mid-range only. Moreover, the new Radeon series sports a number naming scheme to better compete with the RTX 5070 series.

The two GPUs in the Radeon RX 9070 series — Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, are designed to offer 1440p and 4K gaming experiences. AMD also announced the new AI-powered FSR 4 with this series.

In this article, we will explain everything you need to know about the new Radeon RX 9070 series of graphics cards.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect only the writer's opinion.

The all-new AMD RDNA 4 architecture

The Radeon RX 9070 Series GPUs are powered by the new RDN4 architecture, which brings enhanced 3rd Gen Ray tracing, an optimized cache system, a better command processor, a 3rd Gen Matrixx Acceleration engine, and more. All these changes allow it to perform 40% better on average in computational tasks compared to RDNA 4.

Ray tracing is significantly increased in RDNA 4 by introducing a dual ray intersection engine, better traversal stack management, advanced RT features, and more. This will help AMD close the gap with Nvidia in ray tracing performance, an area where the former had previously struggled.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series GPUs: Everything you need to know

AMD introduced two new GPUs: Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT for 1440p and 4K gaming. Thanks to the performance improvements in the RDNA4 architecture, the two new AMD graphics cards deliver a level of performance close to the Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX at much lower price tags.

Here's everything you need to know about the new Radeon GPUs:

AMD Radeon RX 9070

The Radeon RX 9070 is AMD's latest GPU for ultra 1440p gaming. Powered by a cut-down Navi 48 XL die, it comes with 56 compute cores, 56 ray tracing accelerators, and more.

Here's the full list of specs of the Radeon RX 9070:

Specifications	Details
Architecture	RDNA 4
Shader cores	3,584
RT cores	56
ROPs	128
AI cores	112
Game clock speeds	2070 MHz
Boost core clock speeds	Up to 2520 MHz
Memory capacity	16 GB
Memory bus width	256-bit
Memory bandwidth	640 GB/s
Manufacturing node	5nm
Total board power (TBP)	220W

According to AMD, the new Radeon RX 9070 is around 21% faster on average than the previous generation Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 4K resolution and around 20% faster at 1440p. These performance figures combine both rasterization and ray tracing performance improvements.

Ray tracing performance seems to have increased as well, which is in line with what the leaks predicted earlier.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

The Radeon RX 9070 XT uses the full Navi 48 XT die, so all 64 compute cores with 64 ray tracing accelerators are active here. This GPU is designed for 4K gaming and will compete directly with the Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti.

Here's the full list of specs of the Radeon RX 9070 XT:

Specifications	Details
Architecture	RDNA 4
Shader cores	4,096
RT cores	64
ROPs	128
AI cores	112
Game clock speeds	2400 MHz
Boost core clock speeds	Up to 2970 MHz
Memory capacity	16 GB
Memory bus width	256-bit
Memory bandwidth	640 GB/s
Manufacturing node	5nm
Total board power (TBP)	304W

According to the official AMD presentation slides, the new Radeon RX 9070 XT is 42% faster than the older Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 4K and around 38% faster in 1440p resolution. AMD also compared it to Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti and showed the two GPUs perform similarly on average when tested in a range of titles.

Pricing and availability of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series GPUs

AMD Radeon 9070 Series pricing and availability (Image via AMD)

The pricing is where AMD has a big advantage with the Radeon RX 9070 Series GPUs. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is priced at $599, and the regular Radeon RX 9070 will cost $549, which is $50 lower than the XT model.

At $599, the Radeon RX 9070 XT undercuts the Nvidia RTX 5090 by $150 while delivering a similar performance, at least according to the first-party benchmarks from AMD. Third-party testing will reveal a more accurate picture, but we will have to wait for that.

Both GPUs will be available for purchase on March 6, 2025, from all major vendors, including Acer, ASUS, ASRock, Sapphire, GIGABYTE, and more.

AMD FidelityFX FSR 4

AMD FSR 4 compared to FSR 3.1 and native 4K (Image via AMD)

AMD has also announced that FSR 4 is coming to over 30 games at launch and 75+ games throughout the year. Although the AI-powered FSR 4 will be available exclusively on the Radeon RX 9070 series for now, it might arrive in the Radeon 7000 series in the future. However, that's just speculation on our part.

AMD only showcases one example of FSR 4 in Space Marine 2, and the image quality improvements over FSR 3.1 are clear here. However, how well it is implemented in other titles remains to be seen.

Edited by Arundhoti Palit