AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT assessment: RDNA 4 fixes a whole lot of AMD’s issues

Even when they arrive with a efficiency hit, new upscaling algorithms can nonetheless enhance efficiency by making the lower-resolution presets look higher. We run all of our testing in “High quality” mode, which typically renders at two-thirds of native decision and scales up. But when FSR 4 working in Balanced or Efficiency mode seems to be the identical to your eyes as FSR 3.1 working in High quality mode, you may nonetheless find yourself with a internet efficiency enchancment in the long run.

RX 9070 or 9070 XT?

Simply $50 separates the marketed value of the 9070 from that of the 9070 XT, one thing each Nvidia and AMD have achieved prior to now that I discover a bit annoying. When you have $549 to spend on a graphics card, you may nearly definitely scrape collectively $599 for a graphics card. All else being equal, I might inform most individuals making an attempt to decide on one among these to simply spring for the 9070 XT.

That mentioned, availability and retail pricing for these is perhaps everywhere. In case your decisions are an everyday RX 9070 or nothing, or an RX 9070 at $549 and an RX 9070 XT at any value increased than $599, I might simply seize a 9070 and never sweat it an excessive amount of. The 2 playing cards aren’t that far aside in efficiency, particularly in case you bump the 9070’s TBP up a bit bit, and video games which are playable on one will likely be playable at related settings on the opposite.

Fairly near nice

We have loads of goal knowledge in right here, so I do not thoughts saying that I got here into this assessment form of wanting to love the 9070 and 9070 XT. Nvidia’s 50-series playing cards have principally upheld the established order, and for the final couple of years, the established order has been sustained excessive costs and really modest generational upgrades. And who would not like an underdog story?

I believe our take a look at outcomes principally justify my priors. The RX 9070 and 9070 XT are very aggressive graphics playing cards, helped alongside by a very mediocre RTX 5070 refresh from Nvidia. In non-ray-traced video games, each playing cards wipe the ground with the 5070 and are available near competing with the $749 RTX 5070 Ti. In video games and artificial benchmarks with ray-tracing results on, each playing cards can often match or barely beat the equally priced 5070, partially (if not completely) addressing AMD’s longstanding efficiency deficit right here. Neither card comes near the 5070 Ti in these video games, however they’re additionally not priced like a 5070 Ti.