AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Review: Performance Benchmarks

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 enters the graphics card market at an interesting juncture. Hot on the heels of Nvidia's latest generation, this $549 card directly competes with the underwhelming GeForce RTX 5070. Currently, AMD easily surpasses Nvidia in this matchup, making the RX 9070 a compelling choice for 1440p gaming. However, the picture isn't entirely straightforward.

AMD's own Radeon RX 9070 XT presents a challenge. A mere $50 more expensive, the XT offers significantly better performance. While the price difference aligns with the approximately 8% performance gap between the two cards, the incremental cost for enhanced performance is difficult to ignore. Nevertheless, the choice between these two AMD cards presents a strong win for Team Red.

Purchasing Guide

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launches March 6th, with a starting price of $549. Expect variations in pricing across different models. Prioritize purchasing a model as close to the starting price as possible, given its proximity in cost to the superior Radeon RX 9070 XT.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos

Specs and Features

Like the Radeon 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 boasts 56 Compute Units, each with 64 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), totaling 3,584 shaders. Each compute unit includes one Ray Accelerator and two AI Accelerators, for a total of 56 and 112 respectively. These improvements, particularly to ray tracing and AI acceleration, allow the card to compete effectively in ray-traced games. The enhanced AI Accelerators enable FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, marking the debut of AI upscaling on AMD graphics cards.

Similar to the 9070 XT, the RX 9070 features 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus—a configuration comparable 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 cost.

AMD recommends a 550W power supply, with a card power budget of 220W. Testing showed peak consumption at 249W, suggesting a 600W PSU is advisable for safety.

Unlike previous generations, AMD isn't releasing a reference design for the RX 9070. All versions will be from third-party manufacturers. This review utilizes the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC 16G, a triple-slot card with a factory overclock.

FSR 4

Since DLSS's rise in 2018, AI upscaling has become crucial for performance enhancement without significant image quality loss. Previously largely an Nvidia domain, FSR 4 brings AI upscaling to AMD GPUs. It utilizes previous frames and in-game data, processed through an AI model, to upscale lower-resolution images to native resolution. This differs from FSR 3's temporal upscaling, which lacked AI detail refinement, leading to artifacts. While FSR 4 introduces a slight performance penalty compared to FSR 3 due to AI processing, the Adrenalin software allows users to choose between the improved image quality of FSR 4 or the slightly better performance of FSR 3.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 – Benchmarks

Performance

Priced at $549, the RX 9070 directly competes with the RTX 5070, consistently outperforming it. At 1440p, it's 12% faster on average, and 22% faster than the RX 7900 GRE. This is a significant improvement, especially considering its 30% fewer cores. Note that this review uses a factory-overclocked version with a reported boost clock of 2,700MHz (approximately a 7% increase). Testing was conducted using public drivers (Nvidia: 572.60, AMD: 24.12.1, and review drivers for the 9070, 9070 XT, and RTX 5070).

3DMark tests show a strong start for the 9070, with near parity in Speed Way (ray tracing enabled) and a 20% lead in Steel Nomad (no ray tracing). In *Call of Duty: Black Ops 6* (1440p, FSR 3 Balanced), the 9070 achieves a 26% lead over the 5070 and a 15% lead over the 7900 GRE. *Cyberpunk 2077* (1440p, Ray Tracing Ultra) shows a small but significant 3% advantage. *Metro Exodus* (1440p, no upscaling) shows an 11% lead. *Red Dead Redemption 2* (1440p, max settings, Vulkan) shows a 23% lead. *Total War: Warhammer 3* shows a significant lead at 4K, but the difference diminishes at 1440p. *Assassin's Creed Mirage* (1440p, Ultra, FSR Balanced) results in an 18% lead. *Black Myth Wukong* (1440p, Cinematic) is a near tie. *Forza Horizon 5* (1440p) shows a 12% lead over the 5070 and 25% over the 7900 GRE.

The RX 9070's success against the RTX 5070 at the same price point is impressive. Its 16GB of VRAM provides better future-proofing than the RTX 5070's GDDR7, further solidifying its value proposition.