The RX 9070 XT Is AMD's Best Graphics Card In Years
Reviews for AMD's RX 9070 XT and 9070 graphics cards are now in, and the results are strong. The RX 9070 XT in particular shows impressive performance that rivals the RTX 5070 Ti at a much lower price, and both ray tracing and AI upscaling have been improved dramatically. The value proposition for the RX 9070 isn't as strong, but it still undercuts the Nvidia competition and will likely be price cut in the coming months.
TechPowerUp highlighted the huge generational improvements AMD has made in ray tracing and general rasterization, showing the 9070 XT trading blows with the RTX 5070 Ti and only falling slightly behind the last-generation AMD king, the RX 7900 XTX. GamersNexus heaped similar praise on the RX 9070 XT, showing it as competitive with the 5070 Ti and occasionally catching up to the RTX 4080 Super. It also praised AMD for honest marketing, drawing comparisons with Nvidia's hyperbolic claims about its RTX 50-series cards.
Eurogamer showed how the RX 9070 can also hold its own against the more expensive RTX 5070, especially when it can leverage FSR with or without frame generation. Our colleagues at PCMag tested the Sapphire Pulse version and said it showed greatly improved ray tracing performance over AMD's last-gen GPUs and praised its strong pricing. PCWorld called these new cards the new 1440p gaming champions, particularly highlighting that 16GB of VRAM in both cards makes them better for high-resolution play than the 12GB RTX 5070.
Paul's Hardware showed there are some games, like Black Myth: Wukong , where AMD still falls way behind Nvidia, but those are outliers. In general, it said, the 9070 XT and 9070 are strong contenders in this space, offering impressive performance and strong value for money. KitGuru said that these cards still struggle a little with heavy path-tracing games but offer excellent performance everywhere else.
Like most reviewers, HardwareUnboxed noted that the RX 9070 XT can draw quite a lot more power than it's rated for: up to 420W at times. However, these transient spikes aren't consistent, and the coolers effectively keep the cards chilled. It also showed the huge generational jump AMD has made in ray tracing performance, bringing it almost level with Nvidia's best alternatives.
Eteknix found the 9070 XT to be one of the fastest graphics cards ever in its testing, eclipsing all other AMD cards that came before it, and sitting right behind the RTX 4080 16GB. Even ahead of the 7900 XTX.
The low price RX 9070 XTs might be out of stock, but $700 ones are still available.Credit: Newegg
But what about pricing? Most of these reviews said that was the big caveat to all the results, but now with the cards on sale, we're modestly happy with the state of things. Although there are many RX 9070 XTs and 9070s out of stock at the time of writing, there are plenty still in stock, albeit at higher prices. The 9070 XT is available at around $740 at some retailers, which might be $140 over MSRP, but it's for an advanced third-party model. That's also far from the $2,000 RTX 5080s and $1,100+ 5070 Ti's we've been seeing from Nvidia's partners in recent weeks.
All in all, the RX 9000 series is off to a great start. If AMD can keep these cards in stock and maybe lower the price of the 9070 a little further, it looks like Team Red is going to take a big bite out of Nvidia's market share this generation.
