Paper launch.
I was beating up on AMD for not showing more of RDNA4 at CES, but I might have to eat my words and say them waiting is making more sense by the day. Don't get me wrong...they still have to execute it correctly for it to fully make sense, and they can screw it up, but if:
9070 XT can match 4080 / 5070 Ti in raster, then the marginal increase in the 50-series over the 40-series is a win for AMD in this situation as that means they remain competitive in current market segments
If they catch up to 4070 Ti'ish levels of RT, then they are not that far behind Nvidia anymore like RDNA2 and RDNA3 were.
If FSR4 is a rock solid advancement that can rival DLSS.
If they price it correctly. Quit with this "Nvidia price minus $50 BS"
If they have a real release with real volume.
If all that is true, then AMD wins here for the mainstream, exactly what they were going for.
The 50-series specs for the hardware below the 5090 just looks flat out phoned in for this generation with at best ~5% increases in shaders over their 40-series counterparts. And the 5080 reviews show how that's working out. I don't see how anyone looks at the 5080 and below and isn't ultimately massively disappointed. AMD has a prime opportunity here to appeal to that. They usually never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but at the same time they didn't rush out a launch like they usually do. Maybe they're learning. I'm cautiously optimistic.