AMD launches the $549 Radeon 9070 and $599 9070 XT: Another fail or great success?

Scorpus · Feb 28, 2025

Highly anticipated: AMD has finally launched announced the Radeon RX 9000 series, headlined by the RX 9070 XT and its $599 MSRP. There are some interesting features and architectural details to explore, but we're a bit uncertain about the price based on what AMD has shown so far. On the surface, it looks more like a continuation of AMD's graphics card strategy rather than a significant shift toward providing better value.

Update (Mar 5): TechSpot's Radeon RX 9070 XT review is now live.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT will be available on March 6th at a $599 asking price. It comes with a fully unlocked Navi 48 die featuring 64 RDNA 4 compute units, a boost clock of up to 2.97 GHz, 16GB of GDDR6 memory, and a 304W TDP. While $600 isn't an outright terrible price for this model – thankfully, AMD didn't go with something even more extreme – it lacks a certain wow factor.

Radeon RX 9070 XT Pricing, Performance and Value

To understand the value proposition, we first have to look at how fast AMD claims the RX 9070 XT is. They state it's 42% faster on average than the RX 7900 GRE at 4K, though this overall average of 30 games includes both rasterized and ray-traced titles.

Looking at the average of the 11 raster examples on the left, we get a 37% uplift. For the nine ray tracing examples, we see an average improvement of 53% – in other words, RDNA 4 provides a bigger boost to ray tracing than rasterization, as widely rumored.

Compared to our benchmark results, a 37% improvement over the 7900 GRE would make the 9070 XT about 10% faster than the RX 7900 XT for rasterized gaming. With the 7900 XTX being 22% faster than the 7900 XT, the 9070 XT is therefore expected to sit between those two RDNA 3 models – roughly on par with or slightly below the RTX 5070 Ti, which we've measured as 14% faster than the 7900 XT at 4K.

For ray tracing, a 53% improvement in performance would place the 9070 XT about 10-15% above the RX 7900 XTX. However, it would still fall well short of the RTX 5070 Ti.

Based on our current data, this would put it slightly behind the RTX 4070 Super, which is expected to be similar in performance to Nvidia's RTX 5070 based on its hardware configuration. In the best cases, the 9070 XT might approach RTX 4070 Ti levels of ray tracing but would still be around 20% slower – or more – than the 5070 Ti.

At $599, AMD appears to be offering RTX 5070 Ti-level rasterization performance at a 20% lower price (MSRP vs. MSRP), with ray tracing performance likely to be 20%+ lower.

This is based on first-party data (AMD's benchmarks), which is likely cherry-picked to some degree. The Radeon 9070 XT does have FSR 4 going for it and a few other features, but a lot hinges on the quality of FSR 4 vs. DLSS 4 and the number of supported games.

Theoretically, a 20% better value than the 5070 Ti for rasterization isn't terrible, but it's also exactly what AMD has done previously with cards like the RX 7900 XTX versus the RTX 4080 and the RX 7800 XT versus the RTX 4070. Those cards were among the better models in AMD's lineup, offering around 20% lower cost per frame than their GeForce competitors, yet they didn't sell in large numbers.

This is why we concluded earlier this year that AMD probably needs to offer more than that level of value to convince current GeForce owners (the vast majority of PC gamers) to switch to Radeon with their next upgrade.

This also doesn't account for factors like ray tracing, which is a real consideration in this performance tier. It remains uncertain whether the 9070 XT or the 5070 Ti will offer better value in ray tracing, and if the Radeon model ultimately falls short in this area, it could be a deal-breaker for many gamers. If those interested in ray tracing continue to favor GeForce cards, AMD's approach may not be enough to shift the market.

The saving grace here would be if Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti cards remain in limited supply and continue to sell for around $900. From AMD's perspective, that's a risky bet – if Nvidia decides to increase supply and make the 5070 Ti broadly available at MSRP, the RX 9070 XT would become far less compelling.

Another major issue with this pricing is the direct comparison to the RX 7900 XT. While currently discontinued, the 7900 XT was available for almost all of 2024 at $700, with prices dropping to $650 between October and December.

This means that, for practical purposes, the 7900 XT's price was no higher than $700. With the 9070 XT, AMD is cutting just 14% off this price while offering around 10% more raster performance, improved ray tracing, and FSR 4. That amounts to a 22% reduction in cost per frame from one generation to the next – not exactly groundbreaking. It's slightly better than the generational value improvement from the 5070 Ti compared to the 4070 Ti Super, but not by much.

Radeon RX 9070 Pricing, Performance and Value

Then we have the Radeon RX 9070 starting at $549. This model is cut down to 56 compute units, with a reduced boost clock of 2.52 GHz and a lower 220W TDP. However, it still retains 16GB of GDDR6 memory.

AMD seems to be pricing this in line with their performance claims. With the 9070 XT slotting in 42% faster than the 7900 GRE and the 9070 at 21% faster than the GRE, that implies the 9070 is 15% slower than the 9070 XT, but it's only 8% cheaper.

When separating the raster and ray tracing numbers, AMD shows a 19% improvement in rasterized titles on average and a 26% improvement in ray tracing.

A 19% rasterization improvement over the 7900 GRE suggests the RX 9070 would fall short of RX 7900 XT performance based on our benchmarks of existing cards. It would likely be faster than the RTX 4070 Super (which is expected to perform similarly to the RTX 5070), possibly by around 10%.

A 26% improvement in ray tracing would place it between the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX, which in our testing is about 25% slower than the RTX 4070 Super.

With a price tag of $550, this seems underwhelming – just a 20% increase in value compared to AMD's own RX 7900 GRE, which also launched at $550. Relative to the upcoming RTX 5070 with its $550 MSRP, we could be seeing just 10% better raster value, with much worse ray tracing value.

Yes, the 9070 crucially comes with more VRAM at 16GB versus 12GB on the 4070 Super and 5070, but this does not exactly make it a must-buy.

Looking back at the RDNA 3 era, when AMD launched the RX 7800 XT at $500, its closest competitor was the RTX 4070 at $600. The 7800 XT was not only slightly faster than the 4070 but also $100 cheaper, resulting in a 21% lower cost per frame in our day-one review.

The RX 9070 priced at $550 suggests a card with worse cost per frame than RDNA 3 when compared to GeForce. That is not the direction we want to see.

In the face of limited graphics card supply and inflated pricing for GeForce GPUs, some people may see these prices as reasonable. And initially, sales might reflect that. But the real test will come if the GPU market stabilizes in the next few months. If availability improves, these cards may struggle to gain traction. And if AMD's performance claims turn out to be exaggerated, selling these GPUs will become even more difficult.