Something to look forward to: AMD has yet to release full technical specifications for its upcoming Radeon RX 9000-series graphics cards. However, the company recently revealed more about the lineup’s intended performance profile and market segment. If the price is right, the new GPUs might compare favorably to Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 5070 Ti, 5070, and 5060 early next month.
AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed that the company’s new Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT GPUs will launch in early March. She indicated that the two products aim to make high-quality 4K gaming possible at mainstream prices.
During a recent fourth-quarter earnings call, Su reiterated AMD’s promise that its new RDNA 4 architecture significantly improves ray tracing performance – where Radeon cards lag far behind Nvidia. AI-accelerated upscaling through FSR 4 is the lineup’s other lynchpin.
Although RDNA 4’s ray tracing capabilities remain untested, a CES demonstration established FSR 4’s superior image quality compared to FSR 3.1. The new protocol closely resembles Nvidia DLSS and will likely be a crucial component in AMD’s promise to bring high-end 4K gaming to the masses.
Mid-range products like RTX xx60 or xx70 GPUs and Radeon x700 cards typically struggle in 4K unless users significantly reduce graphics settings. They are usually promoted for 1080p and 1440p gaming. Positioning the RX 9070 and 9070 XT – deliberately named for comparison with Nvidia’s xx70 GPUs – as 4K products marks a significant perspective shift.
Hardware specifications remain unclear, but the 9070 XT should be based on the Navi 48 GPU, featuring 4,096 cores, a 2.97GHz boost clock, 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus, and 640 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Rumors indicate that the 9070 will include 16 GB of VRAM, potentially giving it a significant advantage over the upcoming RTX 5070, which features only 12 GB of GDDR7 memory.
The 9070 came within spitting distance of the RTX 4080 Super in a Call of Duty Black Ops 6 benchmark at CES last month. More comprehensive testing will require a broader range of titles, particularly games that extensively utilize hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
AMD will price the RX 9070 and 9070 XT competitively against the $549 RTX 5070 and $749 5070 Ti. The 5070 Ti may launch on February 20, while the 5070, 5060 Ti, and 5060 should emerge later, possibly in March, like the RDNA 4 GPUs. The lower-priced RX 9060 and 9050 are also coming later this year.
Su justified Team Red’s retreat from the high-end and flagship segments by describing mainstream graphics cards as the highest-volume portion of the market. Steam hardware surveys support this assertion, showing that Nvidia xx60 GPUs dominate usage statistics. AMD is expected to follow RDNA 4 with UDNA, the likely choice for the PlayStation 6, which could see the company return to the enthusiast GPU market like RDNA 2 did after the mainstream-focused RDNA 1.
