Radeon RX 9070 undervolting yields surprising performance, still beats RTX 4070 Ti Super

AMD Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs can hold their own against the Nvidia RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti in gaming performance, and they clearly offer better value when it comes to price-to-performance. However, they are more power hungry than their Nvidia counterparts. The RX 9070, in particular, offers great value and now it looks like it delivers about the same performance even when undervolted. This means at reduced power consumption, the performance loss is insignificant and it can deliver a solid gaming experience in AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077.

Well-known overclockers Der8auer and Alva Jonathan have been testing the Radeon RX 9000 series, and their most recent test was with the RX 9070. Jonathan found that undervolting the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 Steel Legend GPU resulted in minor performance loss, but at a noticeable drop in power consumption. A similar result was noted with the Radeon RX 9070 XT.

Using Cyberpunk 2077 as the benchmark, the tester noted 54 FPS at default settings with the RX 9070. Following an undervolt through the AMD Adrenalin software of -100mV and reducing power by 30%, the GPU delivered 50 FPS in the same scenario in game. The RX 9070 was still able to hold a clock speed of just over 2.4GHz. This was about a 10% performance loss compared to stock settings. Though the RTX 5070 Ti outperformed (58 FPS) the Radeon RX 9070 at stock and undervolted settings, the AMD offering still beat the RTX 4070 Ti Super’s 46 FPS at stock settings. 

Notably, the RX 9070 when overclocked to 3GHz, was able to outperform the stock RTX 5070 Ti by about 2 FPS. 

The test also shed a spotlight on how capable the Radeon RX 9070 is with some additional power. The tester gave the GPU 10% additional power and a -100mV undervolt to find that it can push 60 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077, which is about an 11% increase compared to stock settings. In terms of pricing, the RX 9070 (ASRock Steel Legend) can be found for $640 while the RTX 4070 Ti Super is being listed at over $1000. The RTX 5070 Ti can be found for around $750 but is mostly listed way over its MSRP.