AMD has finally revealed the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 GPUs, and the first question we have is an obvious one: how do these compare to Nvidia’s RTX-50 series?
It’s clear that they have the same AI-infused gaming performance intentions in mind, but Team Red and Team Green are going about doing it differently. Let’s get into the specs and talk about what they mean, and where the 9070 and 9070 XT are placed in this ever-growing tapestry of the GPU silicon smackdown.
Tale of the tape
Instead of prolonging this with a lot of build-up text to keep the Google search engine overlords happy, let’s just get into the specs table.
So, as AMD has made clear and you can see for yourself, RX 9070 and XT are not gunning for the top of the line here. Nvidia’s domination on super beefy GPUs continues and it’s not worth challenging that.
Team Red is gunning for the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti here — the cards that most people will buy given the (frankly) monstrous pricing of more expensive GPUs. But you may notice a couple other cutbacks in the video memory (GDDR6 over GDDR7 memory) and the drop in total cores. That reveals an intent in the direction AMD is going with its GPUs.
The focus is AI
Like I said, the raw horsepower is only half the story here, and not AMD’s primary focus. Instead, Team Red is rolling the dice and going all in on AI (as you can see by the total AI TOPs).
The company’s 4th gen FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 4) and Hypr-RX tech are a huge overhaul of how it approaches frame generation and upscaling — moving more towards the onboard AI style of things like DLSS 4.
And the RDNA 4 architecture doubles down on it with 8x faster AI performance, but also recognizes that ray tracing could be better with third-gen accelerators to provide 2x better RT. This Machine learning-powered upscaling is coming to over 30 games at launch, including:
- Alters
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Call of Duty: Warzone
- Creators of Ava
- Dynasty Warriors Origin
- God of War Ragnarök
- Horizon: Forbidden West
- Horizon: Zero Dawn
- Hunt Shadows
- Kingdom Come Deliverance II
- The Last of Us Part I
- Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
- No more Room in Hell 2
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
- Marvel Rivals
- Smite 2
- Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2
- Spider-Man Remastered
- Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Spider-Man 2
- Until Dawn
Unsurprisingly, given we got kind of a glimpse of this AI acceleration with the PS5 Pro’s PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) tech, a lot of these are Sony titles. But over 75 more are coming by the end of the year, and if AMD is going to stand a chance, this number needs to go up fast.
For context, 75 games supported DLSS 4 on the 50-series’ launch. Game support has become increasingly crucial to a purchase decision, so AMD’s got some catching up to do. But that’s not the main reason people are holding out here…
That price screams "game on, Nvidia!"
Following the event, we now know the RX 9070 starts at $549, while the 9070 XT starts at $599. This is going to be the big number people are paying attention to.
It’s clear that with the RDNA 4 architecture, AMD is able to somewhat match some of the high frame rates in 4K gaming that Nvidia is capable of — and that price matches with the RTX 5070. And while the raw hardware grunt may not be as big as the 50s, there is enough for smooth 4K gaming (which is what everybody wants anyway).
Team Green are a little vulnerable right now with low stock at high prices. A true undercut like this could do the trick in giving AMD a fighting chance. Game on, Nvidia.
