AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Review: Have They Finally Done It?

[Beerfloat]

Not sure what you were expecting then, because AMD said it was on parity with a 5070 TI, which it is.

It really isn't

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Hang on, you gave this card an 85 when it, like the 5070 (which got 60), also had inflated performance claims? It’s also got worse efficiency than the 5070 Ti and worse RT than a 5070. Like the 5070, it achieved only a 20% perf uplift at its price point. What gives?

I am assuming the price to performance ratio being better had a large influence on the scores. The 9700 XT performs close to a 5070 Ti but the 9700 XT msrp is $600 while the 5070 Ti msrp is $750. The 9700XT is the much better value despite the other issues.

 

[redgarl]

It's your test that's broken, Steve. Not AMD's. TPU obtained better figures than those presented by AMD;

Stalker
1440p +35% vs GRE
4k +40%
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9070-xt-nitro/27.html
Starfield
-1440p +26%
-4k +33%
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9070-xt-nitro/28.html
Dragon Age
-1440p +30%
-4k +31

Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ Review - Beating NVIDIA

AMD's new RDNA 4 GPUs are launching today. The Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ is a fantastic custom design with powerful cooling and whisper-quiet fans. In terms of FPS, the RX 9070 XT offers competitive performance with similarly priced NVIDIA options in both raster and ray tracing.

www.techpowerup.com

And it's no use saying that W1zzard tested in a light scenario, he always chooses the most GPU-intensive scenarios.

Your conclusion is misleading because as well as being far below the numbers of other reviewers, as I've already mentioned, it includes obviously broken or irrelevant games that run at 400fps.

HardwareCanucks also have some weird things with Alan Wake 2.

 

[redgarl]

It really isn't on par with a 5070 TI...

You are probably blind, just go take a look at...

Ohhh and hell, here you go...

 

[Joey Rakas]

Availability at or close to the $600 MRSP is the key for AMD’s success.

The performance is decent and a better step forward, especially in the areas of former weakness, over the previous AMD generation than Nvidia’s generational quasi-stagnation. It would be a pretty good, almost automatic buy for someone who was previously carefully weighing a 7900xt over a 4070 ti Super like I was.

For.The. Right. Price.

I’m also one of the undoubtedly many who are playing catch up with a pretty sizeable library of older games which run perfectly well on older configurations and sometimes several generations old GPUs. If AMD catches a bout of Nvidiatitis I will be perfectly content to run some of my library on my Media PC (GTX 1080 card), the more demanding titles on my PC ( RX 6800 card) and skip this generation (yet again) all together.

I was in a similar situation, and while I really wanted to wait for this release, I caught an XFX 7900 XT for $680 to my door. Really glad I did it, given there is still a level of uncertainty when it comes to what consumers will end up paying out of pocket for one of these. The 7900 XT was a HUGE uplift over the Titan Xp it replaced @4k. And I also have that peace of mind of more VRAM for running high res textures into the future.

I was really hoping the 9070 XT would have packed more VRAM. It would have really made an even more unique scenario in the GPU market. I personally had also considered the RTX 5080, but 16GB for a $1000 card in 2025 is just nonsense, and reinforced the reason(s) I stopped buying Nvidia gpu's. We can only hope AMD has a surprise launch of say a 9080 XT before years end, to bridge that gap.

Regardless, the 9070 XT is actually better than I had anticipated performance wise. I expected it to be close to the 7900 XT, so it was welcoming to see it actually outperform the 7900 XT in several instances, and even going toe-to-toe with the XTX a couple times. For what we can only hope is close to a $600-650 card, it offers a pretty awesome bang for the buck. Just not worth upgrading my primary systems 6900 quite yet, which is good considering the RX 6800/6900's can still max pretty much all my games out. So money saved. But, we will see what the real world price looks like. I am slightly concerned myself.

 

[PaladinNH]

I predict that the few base XT cards priced around $600 will sell out immediately, but the large number of OC cards with lights and other non-performance features are going to be asking too much and not sell. The top XT cards want a 25% price premium for an OC less than 5%. Overpriced cards sitting on the shelf is bad for AMD.

I've heard the Nitro's a nice cooler though and $730 doesn't sound unreasonable in this market for one. The Nitro XTX was typically $1030 and this card comes real close for $300 less.

 

[Cristallus]

A good PSU will last 10+years, I try to stress to people how important a quality PSU is. They aren't as exciting as a new GPU or CPU, but if they fail they can take your entire PC with them. Also, quality PSUs can handle things well beyond their rating. If you buy a good one you can basically add 20% to whatever it's rating is.

That's true. I'm still rocking the good old Corsair AX750 since 2011.

 

[mcnabney]

I've heard the Nitro's a nice cooler though and $730 doesn't sound unreasonable in this market for one. The Nitro XTX was typically $1030 and this card comes real close for $300 less.

Assume that inventory exists and retailers are selling at MSRP - why would you pay $730 for an AMD card juiced-up to the 5070ti which sells for $750? Saving $20 loses you a lot of RT performance, fake frames, better and wider used upscaling, and better AI/streaming tools. Oh, and quite a bit less power use.

 

[mcnabney]

If 95% of the inventory of 9070XT are priced in the $700-750 range the 9000 series is going to fail. Those OC'd cards have a pretty small boost - not even 5%. You don't pay $150 extra for 5% which is barely outside of the margin of error when testing.

 

[nnguy2]

Assume that inventory exists and retailers are selling at MSRP - why would you pay $730 for an AMD card juiced-up to the 5070ti which sells for $750? Saving $20 loses you a lot of RT performance, fake frames, better and wider used upscaling, and better AI/streaming tools. Oh, and quite a bit less power use.

Where can you buy a 5070ti for $750?

 

[mcnabney]

Where can you buy a 5070ti for $750?

We don't know how inventory will pan out. The 9000 series could sell out before noon tomorrow.
Now Nvidia has a ton of cash. If they want to increase production to maintain stock they can do that. They were enjoying making money while AMD was absent.

 

[b3rdm4n]

They didn't miss the opportunity this time

I'll hold my judgement for seeing what price they can actually be bought at. If there are plenty and I mean PLENTY at $599, then they nailed it. But if there's bugger all at MSRP and most are $700-800+.... a lot of this positive press and sentiment will evaporate.

 

[Vanderlinde]

That's true. I'm still rocking the good old Corsair AX750 since 2011.

Im still running with a Antec Truepower 850W from back in 2009 ~ 2011 era lol.

 

[Inthenstus]

SMH, too expensive for what you get. It’s unfortunate really, especially if what XDX said was true. At least the 1% lows are higher than most of the cards around similar FPS, something not mentioned in the article.

 

[Joey Rakas]

So I have a money mentality that I built up in the early 2000s. I know that our money is worth less now than it was then, but that doesn't change the fact(idea?) that $600 is lot of money. I don't look at things in terms of price, I look at them as the amount of hours I need to work and I don't really see trading ~13 hours of my time as a good value for what the product is offering. However, nVidia wants over 20 hours of my time for the same performance if you go by the market rate.

Is it a bad deal going by the market? No, but I'm free to think that the current market is garbage

I would 100% agree that the market is garbage in the respect that we simply are paying too much money for these products on a general basis. Much of technology, very much including other computer components have become much much cheaper over the years, while getting spoiled with advancements in technology at the same time. It was a win win. While owning a top-of-line GPU or now even a modest entry level GPU for modern games simply costs a lot more money. Bitcoin also has contributed greatly to the cost of GPU's in several different ways, making the GPU desirable to an even larger audience. Nvidia & AMD capitalized on this in a big way.

Regardless, not much we can do about it other than live with what we have or pay the piper. At least in regards to the hardware itself; What we get for a product in comparison to what we had 5, 10, 15+ years ago, is pretty dang impressive. I honestly never thought we would see a day where a GPU would pack 16GB of VRAM, let alone 32GB. We are all pretty spoiled in that sense.

 

[sreams]

RTX 5070 is essentially RTX 5060, while RTX 5070Ti and RTX9070 XT being 5060 Ti.

On the contrary, the 5070ti isn't that far behind the 5080.

 

[Liranan]

The actual RT improvements look pretty good. Shame AMD has decided to not release high end cards this generation.

Because you are trading significantly worse RT, a worse feature set (FSR vs DLSS) and worse efficiency for that lower price.

When Nvidia's efficiency tanks (ampere VS RX 6000) AMD gets significant praise. Pretty much everyone liked the RX 6000s.
"shill" gets thrown around like "fascist" in a reddit thread. Techspot's been accused of shilling for basically everyone, that's how you know their numbers are pretty accurate, because everyone who meatshields for their favorite corpo cant stand them.

The only 5XXX that might be worth it is the 5090, all others should get the score: DO NOT BUY!

GN have given the 5070 and 5080 the correct recommendation, but HU won't because they do shill hard for NVIDIA.

 

[noel24]

It's 6th of march. Sorry, but looks like paperlaunch. Not available anywhere in EU. Not even a single placeholder, while nVidia had like dozens in every shop week ahead. Those YT influencers must have grabbed all of them.

 

[Nobina]

Initial Ryzen didn't convert many folks over, 1st gen either. It just let them get their foot in the door. Took them over two years to get to Zen 2 after that, and they didn't *really* arrive until Zen 3 over 4 years later.

This wasn't a "we're better" volley. It's a "we're good enough to be viable when the monopoly is gouging you" effort. RTX 5000 is very much following the hallmarks of what was eventually Intel's 14nm++++ era.

You speak true. I just don't believe Nvidia will follow Intel's path and they are bigger too. I feel like AMD won't get another opportunity like this one. I'm checking prices in the Balkans right now and RX 9070 XT is close to $1000.

 

[maroon1]

It's your test that's broken, Steve. Not AMD's. TPU obtained better figures than those presented by AMD;

Because they tested irrelevant lighter GPU scenes. Steve tested the most GPU-intensive scenarios.

Stalker
1440p +35% vs GRE
4k +40%
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9070-xt-nitro/27.html
Starfield
-1440p +26%
-4k +33%
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9070-xt-nitro/28.html
Dragon Age
-1440p +30%
-4k +31

Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ Review - Beating NVIDIA

AMD's new RDNA 4 GPUs are launching today. The Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ is a fantastic custom design with powerful cooling and whisper-quiet fans. In terms of FPS, the RX 9070 XT offers competitive performance with similarly priced NVIDIA options in both raster and ray tracing.

www.techpowerup.com

And it's no use saying that W1zzard tested in a light scenario, he always chooses the most GPU-intensive scenarios.

In all the games you mentioned, Techpowerup was not using the GPU intensive area... The proof for that is that GPUs in techpower are getting higher fps compared to Steve test in all of those games you mention in all the GPU

Steve is the one who using the most GPU intensive spots in those games

 

[maroon1]

Providing a FULL tier of performance uplift at the same price as the 5070 is already a major win.

Not to mention, the 5070 only has 12GB of GDDR.

And you forgot to take into the fray, that Jensen CLAIMED that the 5070 was faster than the 4090...

Yet 12GB on 5700 was not problem on any of the games tested

The only problem is Indiana Jones using Full RT (path tracing) with max settings... But all AMD GPU including 9070XT was totally unplayable when using Full RT in that game anyway

 

[gdavid65]

Well, still very happy with my 4070ti Super bought nearly 6 months ago for not too much off the price of these.. and I _hate_ team green these days, but I just couldn't ignore the benefits.

"Have they done it?", errr no.. This very much does not excite me, unless the price was closer to $500 rather than $600.

Power draw is high also, meaning a tiny bit more $ per hour run, plus reduced longevity.

 

[Macar]

Undervolting can reduce 9070 xt power consumption from 340 to 280 watts.

 

[jbc029]

We don't know how inventory will pan out. The 9000 series could sell out before noon tomorrow.
Now Nvidia has a ton of cash. If they want to increase production to maintain stock they can do that. They were enjoying making money while AMD was absent.

I don't know about how much they can increase production. True they have just stupid amounts of cash, but you can't buy something that doesn't exist, available fab capacity.

They *will not* sacrifice data center production for consumer production. All of TSMCs available capacity is sold already. The only way they can increase their output of consumer cards is to cannibalize a more valuable revenue stream.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Best Buy had one 9070 XT at MSRP (which is with a $130 off "sale" lasting 16 hours!!!) and it just sold out instantly. I was fast enough to "get in line" on the site with the add to cart button, but not fast enough to get one. So much for "broad availability".

Edit: Looks like the $850 ones sold out too. I sure hope there were a lot of the expensive ones and the scalpers get burned trying to resell them.