The AMD Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT Review – Featuring the Sapphire NITRO+

The wait is over, and boy was it worth it.

Almost announced at CES 2025, later pre-announced, announced, and now launching, it’s time for RDNA 4! And the new Radeon RX 9070 Series is everything AMD needed to do to finally start getting some market share back from NVIDIA, all wrapped up in one monolithic package. RDNA 4 has muscle, with raw raster performance that may surprise you – and it has real ray tracing hardware this time, which means it can slice through even thick DXR titles with ease. Why did they wait so long??

This is the kind of launch that gamers have been hoping for. Truly, graphics card launches have become an exercise in frustration in recent years, with the pricing/availability problem robbing each successive release of any actual excitement, regardless of how good or bad some of the hardware might be. And while the pricing and availability problem could eventually take center stage (yet again) with the RX 9070 Series, we are going to choose to ignore that and just focus on some great hardware today.

AMD didn’t just refine their previous architecture with RDNA 4, as a high-level look at their new GPU shows that it has little to do with RDNA 3. The chiplet experiment is over, and we have a traditional monolithic GPU design this generation.

A big change is the use of AMD’s 3rd Gen Raytracing Accelerators, as AMD has gotten serious about real-time ray tracing (and isn’t simply relying on programmable shaders). This is just a more modern GPU architecture in every way – and there even also some more powerful AI stuff that some people will probably be very excited about.

Sadly, we don’t have an 80+ Compute Unit GPU with RDNA 4 (at least not yet), as the chip tops out at 64 CUs with the RX 9070 XT.

The RX 9070 XT provides 4096 shaders, with 256 TMUs and 128 ROPs. The RX 9070 (non-XT) has 3584 shaders, with 224 TMUs and the same 128 ROPs. Both cards feature 16 GB of 20 Gbps (effective) GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, good for ~645 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

The Sapphire NITRO+ Card

Our featured card today is from Sapphire, and once again we get to go hands on with the latest in the NITRO+ line. It is quite large, occupying 3.2 slots and measuring 330.8 mm (L) x 128.5 mm (W) x 65.68 mm (H).

Subjectively, I think this card looks great, with a grey structural design that manages not to look boring (has the appearance of magnesium to me) – and there’s a tasteful RGB light bar along the top as well. But the star of the show is actually at the back of the card, which includes a magnetically attached metal backplate.

Would you believe that this AMD card is using a 12VHPWR power connector? No? Well, what if I told you it was actually a 12V-2×6 connector? Not only does the NITRO+ use the NVIDIA-type connector, but it implements it better than I have seen from any other card to date. Very impressive.

Performance Testing

Here’s what we’ve all been waiting for, independent benchmark results! Even a jaded curmudgeon like me got excited after seeing the results to follow, and that’s saying something.

3DMark Results

We begin with 3DMark, and these tests are usually a good barometer for game performance in different categories. Both the older Time Spy Extreme and newer Steel Nomad benchmarks provide pure raster performance numbers, while Speed Way is the DXR benchmark.

• Time Spy Extreme – 3840×2160, DirectX Feature Level 11
• Steel Nomad – 3840×2160, DirectX 12 Feature Level 12
• Speed Way – 2560×1440, DirectX 12 Feature Level 12_2

Impressive is an understatement. What AMD has done with RDNA 4 is remarkable, not only relative to NVIDIA’s RTX 40 and RTX 50 Series, but especially considering the (theoretical) MSRPs of these cards.

2560×1440 Benchmarks

And now some game benchmarks, run at 1440/max settings. Just for some background, AMD told us to expect the RX 9070 XT to be just behind the RX 7900 XTX in raster, and ahead of it in DXR. I think you will find that this was accurate. Good job, AMD.

Cyberpunk at its “Ultra” preset, but with all resolution scaling turned off, is an excellent raster test:

That is a great example of Radeon RX 9070 XT performance: our Sapphire NITRO+ sample was just 2 FPS behind the 7900 XTX at these settings. And let us not overlook the RX 9070, which is effectively tied with the RX 7900 XT.

I really wish we could compare these cards based on price, because in the theoretical world in which all cards were available at MSRP, the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are doing some serious damage to NVIDIA offerings in the $749+ range (and up to the $999 range in the charts to follow).

We now proceed to a test that was unkind to previous Radeon cards, the Enhanced Edition of Metro Exodus:

I just want to stop for a moment and admire the fact that the RX 9070 is actually faster than the RTX 4070 Ti Super – oh, and it’s effectively tied with the RTX 5070 Ti. I guess this is a $749 card at heart (foreshadowing?).

No slouch by any means, the RX 9070 non-XT  pulls ahead of the older 7900 XT here, and it won’t let up in the more ray tracing-heavy tests to follow. Also, how bad does the RTX 5070 look in comparison to this new Radeon card at the same MSRP?

Well, the Radeon RX 9070 (orange bar) beats the snot out of the RTX 5070 here. But you may not have noticed that right away, as the red bar indicates the RX 9070 XT NITRO+ being just 5 FPS away from an RTX 5080 in this test. This is all very impressive stuff.

Age of Mythology: Retold is a new addition to the test suite this year, and, while it is a pretty demanding test, it clearly favors NVIDIA hardware. In fact, in this test the RTX 5070 actually looks decent, out-performing the RX 9070 for the first time!

I was going to add results from at least one racing game here, but our GPU testbed crashed (and kept crashing), and after at least three hours of component swaps and software troubleshooting I gave up as there’s no time to spin up a whole new platform with deadlines looming. (I hope it isn’t related to recent Ryzen 7 9800X3D issues…hopefully just the motherboard, which we have a replacement for on hand.)

Final Thoughts

We are at the very beginning of our Radeon RX 9070 Series coverage, with more cards to review and new software features to explore. But I don’t think it’s too early to call this launch a success, regardless what will probably be higher street prices than we would like to see. And yes, I fear that pricing will be an issue with this new family of Radeon cards.

I don’t have specific information about the Acer Radeon RX 9070 card we received from AMD, but the Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT will have an MSRP of $729 USD. Considering the fact that AMD is not offering any MBA (made by AMD) cards for this generation, the market will end up deciding on actual pricing.

Regardless of price, and probably availability as well, the Radeon RX 9070 Series is really impressive. Now I want to see a big RDNA 4 GPU… I know we probably won’t see it this generation, but if the architecture scales at all we could finally see competition at the very top of the gaming segment for the first time in years.

And the award goes to…

Before signing off on this review, I must give the Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT its due. It is a fantastic card design, with – of all things – the best implementation of a 12V-2×6 connector we have seen to date.

In addition to its handsome industrial design, there are useful touches like padding near the power connector to protect the heatsink fins, and a magnetic backplate which completely hides the rear-mounted power input. It’s just a fantastic card.