AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070: 4K capable cards at 1440p prices with significant performance gains over RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT

We have detailed some of the salient aspects of the RDNA 4 architecture in a dedicated article. While the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT were aimed at 4K gamers, and the RX 7900 GRE catered to 1440p, AMD is aiming to offer a good 4K gaming experience at "1440p pricing" with the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9070.

The top-end RX 9070 XT offers 64 compute units (CUs) with a peak INT4 with Sparsity 1,557 AI TOPS. Both cards offer a 256-bit 20 Gbps 16 GB GDDR6 memory with a bandwidth of 640 GB/s.

Thanks to the new RDNA 4 architecture, the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9070 get 3rd generation ray accelerators and AI accelerators. While the RX 9070 XT can boost up to 2.97 GHz at a total board power (TBP) of 304 W, the 56 CU RX 9070 boost up to 2.52 GHz with a 220 W TBP.

Both cards feature a PCIe Gen 5 x16 interface and sport the latest DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b outs.

According to AMD, the Radeon RX 9070 is 38% and 26% faster than the $649 RX 6800 XT and the $699 GeForce RTX 3080 at 4K. In comparison with the RX 7900 GRE, the RX 9070 is on an average 21% faster, with up to 28% higher performance in native 4K while being up to 34% faster in ray tracing tasks.

At 1440p, the RX 9070 is shown to be up to 26% faster than the RX 7900 GRE while ray tracing can be up to 38% higher.

AMD is pitching the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT as being 51% faster than the $999 RX 6900 XT and 26% faster than the $1,499 RTX 3090. Once again, the company paints a comparison with the RX 7900 GRE, showing up to 28% gains in native 4K and up to 34% gains in ray tracing.

In 1440p, the RX 9070 XT achieves more or less an identical uplift in native and ray tracing like the RX 9070.

All games were tested on an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D system with 32 GB of DDR5-6000, according to the fine print.