AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT target '4K gaming at a 1440p price'

The lengthy wait is over. After kinda-sorta-teasing the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT at CES 2025, AMD is lastly pulling again the curtain on its next-generation graphics playing cards at present, forward of a March 6 launch date. Meet the rival to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50-series.

AMD shuffled Radeon’s branding this era to reflect Nvidia’s; the Radeon RX 9070 XT will thus compete with the RTX 5070 Ti, whereas the Radeon RX 9070 takes intention on the 9070.

Normally, I’d infuse this preview with evaluation and commentary, however AMD declined to share 9070 pricing with press in a pre-announcement briefing. It’ll be revealed within the firm’s Radeon RX 9070 stream this morning. Since pricing is so essential to the story of the Radeon RX 9070, I’ll skip most deeper evaluation under and as a substitute focus merely on sharing the {hardware} and software program data AMD offered press.

Let’s begin with an outline of the enhancements present in AMD’s new RDNA 4 graphics structure, earlier than shifting onto particulars in regards to the Radeon RX 9070 collection particularly, and what’s coming with FSR 4 and Hypr-RX.

Meet AMD’s RDNA 4

One factor revealed in AMD’s CES teaser: The Radeon 9000-series is constructed from the bottom up for an AI future.

Until now, AMD principally used conventional GPU options for its FSR upscaling expertise, whereas Nvidia’s AI-powered DLSS saved advancing each efficiency and picture high quality. No extra. The Radeon RX 9070’s new RDNA 4 graphics structure was designed from the bottom as much as incorporate a heavier AI focus, which works hand-in-hand with AMD’s new FSR 4 expertise (extra on that later) to carry the warmth to Nvidia. You can see the block diagram and high-level efficiency claims for RDNA 4’s second-gen AI accelerators above.

AMD

AMD additionally invested closely in enhancing Radeon’s ray tracing efficiency, which has all the time lagged behind Nvidia (and not too long ago, Intel). The firm says RDNA 4’s compute items (the constructing blocks of Radeon GPUs) ship twice the ray tracing throughput of the RDNA 3 CUs inside at present’s graphics playing cards. AMD additionally modified the Radeon RX 9070 XT’s reminiscence subsystem to extra effectively course of ray tracing duties.

That doesn’t essentially imply Radeon RX 9000-series ray tracing might be twice as quick because the 7000-series — RT efficiency is extra sophisticated than that — however it ought to be considerably higher than earlier than.

AMD

You can see above how the third-gen ray tracing cores and second-gen AI accelerators match into RDNA 4’s new compute items. AMD instructed reporters that RDNA 4’s compute items are 40 % quicker than RDNA 3’s. RDNA 4 additionally consists of an enhanced media engine, promising as much as 20 % increased visible high quality for content material creators.

Meet the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT

Now that you realize in regards to the RDNA 4 structure, it’s time to see how AMD is placing it to work. AMD says the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are constructed for 4K gaming at a 1440p value.

AMD

As per AMD custom, the Radeon RX 9070 is a barely cut-down model of the top-end 9070 XT, operating at noticeably decrease clock speeds (and considerably much less energy). Both 9070 playing cards supply 16GB of GDDR6 reminiscence paired with a 256-bit bus, PCIe 5.0 assist, commonplace 8-pin energy connectors, HDMI 2.1b, and DisplayPort 2.1a.

Now, let’s peek at efficiency.

AMD claims the Radeon RX 9070 XT will ship 51 % extra efficiency than the flagship Radeon GPU of final final era, the Radeon 6900 XT. In a briefing with reporters, AMD representatives instructed the press that the 9070 XT is fairly just like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4080 in conventional “raster” gaming efficiency. That ought to put it roughly on par with the new GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.

The Radeon RX 9070, in the meantime, ought to be 38 % quicker than the Radeon RX 6800 XT, and 26 % quicker than the uber-popular RTX 3080. AMD instructed reporters it expects the 9070 to look “really strong” in comparison with Nvidia’s $550 GeForce RTX 5070, which launches subsequent week.

FSR 4 FTW?

RDNA 4 was constructed to work hand-in-hand with FSR 4, the primary iteration of AMD’s performance-boosting upscaling and body era software program designed to leverage AI. Previously, virtually all FSR duties ran on conventional GPU {hardware}.

Doing so lets AMD mirror Nvidia’s DLSS claims: AMD says FSR 4 delivers giant efficiency boosts with picture high quality that may match and even surpass native visuals (relying in your Quality settings, after all). While the proof lies in how FSR 4 runs in movement, AMD launched some screenshots exhibiting its visible high quality in particular zoomed-in particulars…

While Nvidia pushed DLSS 4’s Frame Generation feature to insert as much as three AI-generated photos between conventional frames, AMD’s FSR sticks to inserting a single generated body between commonplace frames. It nonetheless offers an enormous enhance in visible smoothness.

Better but, you’ll be capable to use FSR 4 in a pretty big variety of video games proper out of the gate. Integrating new options like this often takes months and months of effort, with only some key associate titles accessible at launch to showcase the expertise. Not FSR 4.

AMD

FSR 4 builds atop AMD’s present FSR 3.1 framework, which permits builders to in a short time combine the brand new expertise. (Nvidia’s DLSS 4 was equally designed.) That means not one, not two, however 30+ video games will assist FSR 4 proper at launch, with the variety of supported video games anticipated to develop to 75+ by the top of the yr. That’s one of many greatest, quickest expertise adoptions in historical past.

And there are some heavy hitters in there, too. AMD makes the chip powering the PlayStation 5, and several other Sony video games crack FSR 4’s debut lineup, together with God of War: Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part I, Horizon: Forbidden West, and the Spider-Man collection. Beyond that, blockbusters like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6/Warzone, Marvel Rivals, Warhammer 40Okay: Space Marine II, and Kingdom Come Deliverance II make the lower.

FSR 4 is unique to RDNA 4-based graphics playing cards, beginning with these Radeon RX 9070 choices; older GPUs might want to use FSR 2 or 3 as a substitute, that are supported over 400 video games.

Hypr-RX and AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2.1

AMD can also be introducing a brand new replace for its driver-based body era expertise, AMD Fluid Motion Frames, which may add body gen to just about any recreation. AFMF model 2.1 affords “improved frame generation image quality with reduced ghosting and better temporal tracking” on Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs or later.

AFMF is a part of AMD’s Hypr-RX suite of options. Hypr-RX combines and prompts a number of Radeon options in a single fell swoop, together with driver-based body era and upscaling, Radeon Anti-Lag, and Radeon Boost. In unison, these applied sciences can drastically increase body charges whereas decreasing latency for ultra-fast efficiency.

Image high quality can typically degrade a bit utilizing driver-based upscaling, particularly round UI components, however Hypr-RX can ship beautiful velocity enhancements in hundreds of video games. AMD appears to be positioning it towards Nvidia’s much-improved DLSS 4 expertise with Multiple Frame Generation; MFG appears to be like higher, however Hypr-RX works on hundreds of video games and several other generations of Radeon graphics playing cards.

My take? I’m glad they’re each round. Each is great in its personal means.

The next-gen battle begins quickly

AMD

So there you may have it: The Radeon RX 9070 collection, the RDNA 4 expertise behind it, and the FSR 4 options the {hardware} helps allow.

Will AMD’s next-gen GPU handle to upset Nvidia? Lots of PC avid gamers are fairly irritated in regards to the RTX 50-series’ sky-high costs and lackluster efficiency positive factors, so AMD positively has a gap right here — however it must nail each efficiency and worth to grab the benefit. The Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT launch March 6, so we’ll know the place the chips fall before later.