AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Review

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is one of the first RDNA4 graphics cards to launch as part of the Radeon 9000 lineup. Gamers and builders have been waiting for AMD to release some form of competition as NVIDIA continues to saturate the market with its RTX 5000 series. However, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT may be the answer we’re looking for, with AMD announcing a $599 MSRP for this GPU, putting it directly in the sights of the RTX 5070.

AMD graphics cards have been second-best to NVIDIA GPUs for quite some time. As we saw in 2024, AMD GPU sales plummeted by 59% YoY (year-on-year), while NVIDIA continued to gobble up revenue in the gaming and enterprise spaces due to the popularity of their graphics cards and the all-important AI buzzword. However, 2025 may entail a paradigm shift that AMD needs. With NVIDIA’s RTX 5000 range continuing to disappoint, if the RX 9070 class provides a noticeable performance uplift compared to the previous generation, we could see the market favour AMD. However, we’ll leave the speculation until later on.

This is contingent on what RDNA4 is like as an architecture and whether the competitive pricing is just a bid to redeem consumer trust. But this is precisely what we’ve investigated and analysed in this review of the RX 9070 XT. This is the upper tier of the 9070-class boasting performance designed to compete head-on with the RTX 5070 Ti, a rather ambitious claim.

In today’s review, we’ll explore the specs, architecture, and design of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, but most crucially, its gaming performance. We’ve provided several comparative graphs that compare performance versus RTX 5000 and RX 7000 cards to see where this GPU lies.

Specification

The first thing to note about the Radeon RX 9070 XT is its price. With an MSRP of $599, this card is $50 more expensive than the RTX 5070, $100 more than the RX 7800 XT (which I’d argue is its equivalent), but $150 less than the RTX 5070 Ti. As we’ve alluded to in the introduction, this puts AMD in a highly unique position, whereby the RX 9070 XT could dethrone the RTX 5070 Ti if the performance matches up across 1440p and 4K gaming. If the 4K performance is anything like the RTX 4070 Ti, it’ll be a hands-down win for the RX 9070 XT.

Moving onto the specs, the 9070 XT offers 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit memory bus. We’re unsurprised about the capacity, mainly because AMD tends to be more liberal with its VRAM offerings. However, what is interesting to note is that AMD is still using GDDR6. NVIDIA has jumped to GDDR7, a first in the PC gaming space, but AMD seems to be sticking to the same spec of VRAM they’ve been using for the past two generations.

I don’t feel this is a limitation of the RX 9070 cards, especially as PCI-E 5.0 is a requirement, but for future generations, AMD will likely need to make the jump to GDDR7, as NVIDIA have done. As for the rest of the specs, the RX 9070 XT is relatively similar to the RX 7800 XT on paper. The former offers 64 compute units, ray accelerators, and 4096 stream processors. The ray accelerators and compute units are entirely new, specific to RDNA4, allegedly enhancing RT performance across the board.

As mentioned above, the specs are fairly similar to the RX 7800 XT. It is worth noting that power consumption has increased with the RX 9070 XT. This card has a total consumption of 304W versus the 263W TGP of the RX 7800 XT. I don’t think the wattage increase will require a PSU upgrade for most builders, but those sitting on the cusp of their total wattage may need to consider picking up something with a bit more juice. AMD recommends a 750W PSU as a minimum for this card.

Design

Regarding design, AMD kindly sent us the Gigabyte AORUS Elite model of the RX 9070 XT. This isn’t an MSRP card, so it will be pricier than the critical $599 price point discussed in this review. But by paying a bit extra, you’re gaining access to a more standout design, with cards like the AORUS Elite offering more than a black shroud.

This model is a triple-fan graphics card with a dark shroud and plenty of RGB. The front of the card offers some contrasting dark livery, adding depth to the design. Underneath each fan is a halo of RGB LEDs, which can be configured using Gigabyte Control Center. We had trouble getting this card to pick up in SignalRGB, but this may work later with some driver updates.

It’s worth noting that the RGB LEDs don’t look great until the fans start to spin up more. Slower fans create almost a strobe-like effect, which can be offputting. We recommend turning up the fans using Gigabyte Control Centre if this is something you’re not a fan of.

The top and the back of the AORUS Elite feature strips of RGB text, which light up when the card is powered on. It’s nice to see additional lighting across the entire card instead of being limited to just one area.

The rest of this graphics card’s design is fairly basic. Gigabyte has kept the colouring consistent, bar the rear of the card, which is a slightly lighter contrasting grey. Furthermore, the rear of the GPU features a sturdy backplate, providing additional rigidity for the card and reinforcing its structural integrity.

Regarding power, the RX 9070 XT uses three standard eight-pin PCI-E connectors. AMD hasn’t made the jump to the 12VHPWR connector yet. Using three PCI-E connectors might detract from the look of your build to a degree, but some cable extensions will make things look better.

Architecture

RDNA4 is the architecture that powers the Radeon 9000 series of graphics cards. AMD claims RDN4 is a breakthrough for graphics architecture with enhancements to compute units, ray tracing and AI acceleration to improve your gaming experience. With AMD bowing out of the enthusiast market, their goal was to provide an excellent value GPU under the $700 mark, and RDNA4 allowed them to do this.

The RDNA4 compute units drive improvements for raster and compute workloads, offering major uplifts to efficiency and, more importantly, performance. Regarding ray tracing, the RX 9070 XT uses third-generation ray tracing accelerators to improve performance in ray tracing-supported games. Additionally, RX 9000 also uses second-generation AI accelerators. While AMD doesn’t market the use of AI as heavily as NVIDIA, the Radeon 9000 lineup offers uplifts to AI-based performance, making them better for workstation usage.

Under the hood, AMD has also brought about improvements to their FSR technology, which is Team Red’s competitor to NVIDIA’s DLSS technology. However, it’s worth highlighting that FSR does not work similarly. FSR is not AI-backed in any way and uses a complex algorithm to upscale the current anti-aliased frame, creating a crisper image. FSR has been notably weaker than DLSS for quite some time, mainly because it doesn’t use AI to upsample images. However, Team Red have constantly changed FSR to make it a more viable option in modern games.

FSR is also a GPU-agnostic technology, which means it works the same regardless of whether you have an NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel graphics card. FSR is coded directly into your game’s engine, making it accessible to everyone.

However, this doesn’t apply to Fluid Motion Frames. AMD’s FMF technology, with the 2.1 update, reduces ghosting and artifacts but makes gameplay much smoother by injecting additional frames between frames using interpolation.

While not as strong as DLSS and Frame Gen, FSR and Fluid Motion Frames are critical technologies for AMD. While it’s difficult to see what RDNA4 truly brings to the table until we look at the benchmarks, it’s great that AMD is still pushing to compete with NVIDIA by offering ways to alleviate performance overhead and increase visual fidelity with minimal caveats.

Performance

As always, all of our benchmarking and testing is done by our in-house benchmarker, Harry Coleman, who has worked tirelessly to gather all the data needed for our RX 9070 content. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and a range of competitor graphics cards have been tested in our primary benchmarking system paired up with the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D to provide the best framerates possible across all of the titles we tested. The games featured in this benchmarking section provide a mix of AAA games and modern Esports titles to see how the RX 9070 XT holds up in a range of games.

Cyberpunk 2077

Settings: 4K, Shadow Quality High, Indirect Lighting High, Reflections High, Crowd Density High, Particle Quality High, Volumetric Lighting High, Motion Blur off, GTAO Quality High, Grass Quality High, Contact Shadows High VSync Off, DLSS: On/Off, Ray Tracing: On/Off, Textures: High

The first game we decided to run was Cyberpunk 2077, in which the resolution was set to 4K, and the rest of the settings were set to high. In this particular benchmark, the RX 9070 XT offered a highly impressive showing, sitting in fifth place with an average of 79FPS. The RX 9070 XT doesn’t quite beat the RTX 5070 Ti at 80FPS, but a 1FPS difference will be negligible. What’s impressive here is that this is a 4K benchmarking run. So, the fact that the RX 9070 XT can stay on par with the 5070 Ti at $150 less is an impressive metric.

After switching on FSR, ray tracing, and AMD’s Frame Gen technology, the RX 9070 XT jumped up to 99FPS, beating out the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 4080 SUPER by a small margin. For quite some time, AMD has struggled to match NVIDIA regarding ray tracing. Still, this benchmark indicates that their cards are becoming much stronger with the aid of FSR and Frame Gen. What’s even more impressive is that this card is just $50 more than the RTX 5070 and absolutely blows it out of the water.

Alan Wake 2

Settings: 4K, Post-Processing High, Texture Resolution High, Texture Filtering High, Volumetric Lighting High, Global Illumination Quality High, Shadow Detail High, Terrain Quality High, Ray-Tracing: Enabled, Ray Tracing Preset High, DLSS: On/Off, Frame Generation: On/Off

In Alan Wake 2 at 4K high settings, the RX 9070 XT performed reasonably well in this rasterised benchmark. With an average output of 60FPS, this run was more than playable, albeit choppy at times in certain intense areas. Again, the RX 9070 XT beats the RTX 5070 Ti by about 9FPS. Because the overall framerates are pretty low, 10FPS is a decent jump between laggy and smooth, so the RX 9070 XT is definitely the more favourable of the two.

When ray tracing and FSR were switched on, performance significantly shifted in favour of NVIDIA. While Cyberpunk 2077 told a different story, it’s clear that without the assistance of Frame Gen, AMD falls flat with ray tracing switched on. The RX 9070 XT offered a meagre 11FPS in this benchmark, followed by the RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX at 24FPS and 28FPS, respectively.

NVIDIA graphics cards come out on top in this particular run, but with support for AMD Frame Gen at a later date, there’s a possibility we may see performance improvements.

Marvel Rivals

Settings: 4K, Graphics Quality High, Global Illumination Lumen GI- High Quality, Reflection Quality Screen Space Reflections, Model Detail High, Post-Processing High, Shadow Detail High, DLSS On/Off, Frame Gen On/Off

In the hit Esports title Marvel Rivals at 4K high settings, the RX 9070 XT offered a substantial output of 87FPS, sitting just below the RX 7900 XTX at 88FPS, but yet again, above the RTX 5070 Ti at 82FPS. Marvel Rivals isn’t a particularly hard title to run, but we’re blown away with how well the RX 9070 XT is holding its own at 4K, especially without the assistance of settings like FSR and Frame Generation.

Once we switched on DLSS and Frame Gen, the RX 9070 XT surged up to 177FPS, putting it in second place compared to the other cards we tested. This puts it above everything else, barring the RTX 5090, a highly impressive metric.

COD Black Ops 6

Settings: 1440p/4K, Graphics Preset Custom, Texture Resolution High, Depth of Field On, Detail Quality High, Particle Resolution High, Shader Quality High, Shadow Quality High, Screen Space Shadows High, DLSS On/Off, Frame Gen On/Off

In COD Black Ops 6, we played two different runs at 1440p and 4K. In the 1440p run, the RX 9070 XT averaged 164FPS, yet again beating out the RTX 5070 Ti and RX 7900 XT. This is a pure rasterised benchmark, so the RX 9070 XT isn’t receiving any extra help from FSR or AMD Frame Gen. Again, this is quite impressive, and seeing such solid performance at 1440p is excellent.

After increasing the resolution to 4K, performance dropped slightly, but the RX 9070 XT again proves its strength at 4K. With an average of 112FPS, it easily beats the RTX 4080 and is even on par with the RTX 5080.

Hogwarts Legacy

Settings: 4K Effects High, Material High, Fog High, Sky High, Foliage High, Post Process High, Shadows High, Textures High, View Distance High, Population High, Anti Aliasing TAA High, Windowed Fullscreen

The last AAA game we ran was Hogwarts Legacy at 4K high settings. In this benchmarking run, the RX 9070 XT hit 94FPS, 1FPS below the RX 7900 XTX and 7FPS above the RTX 5070 Ti. Yet again, the RX 9070 XT shows that it’s an incredibly strong competitor at this resolution, easily beating out the vast majority of the alternatives. So far, it’s clear that this card is a worthwhile pickup for some buttery smooth 4K gaming.

Apex Legends

Settings: 1440p, Anti-aliasing TSAA, Texture Filtering 8X, Model Detail High, VSync Disabled, Effects High, Ambient Occlusion Quality High

In Apex Legends at 1440p, the RX 9070 XT is just below the game’s framerate cap of 296FPS. The vast majority of modern cards that we’ve benchmarked in Apex Legends at 1440p get close to the max framerate, so it’s no surprise that the RX 9070 XT, based on our other benchmarks, does so well in this title. It does lose out to the RTX 5070 Ti by 2FPS, but at framerates this high, the difference in performance isn’t going to be visible.

Fortnite

Settings: 1080p, Competitive, View Distance Far, FPS Unlimited, VSync Off, Anti-Aliasing TAA, Shadows Off, Reflections Off, Textures Low

The last game we ran to benchmark the RX 9070 XT was Fortnite. The resolution is set to 1080p, and the rest of the settings are dialled to low to ensure we can hit the highest framerates possible. The RX 9070 XT was one of the strongest cards we tested in this benchmark. With an output of 475FPS, it places second, 5FPS below the RX 7900 XTX. What’s more, this card’s 1% and 0.1% lows are still incredibly playable, demonstrating how strong the RX 9070 XT is across a massive range of games and settings.

Conclusion