amd RDNA 4 / 9000 Series Reveal

[Slaughtahouse]

 

9070 XT starting @ $599 USD

9070 starting @ $549 USD

 

Both cards will be available for purchase on March 6th, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-introduces-599-radeon-rx-9070-xt-and-549-rx-9070-rdna4-gpus

 

AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series Technical Deep Dive

WWW.TECHPOWERUP.COM

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AMD's next-generation of GPUs is launching very soon. We have all the details on the architecture and the new models. Our preview article...

 

Edited February 28 by Slaughtahouse

[Sir Beregond]

I've noticed the tech tubers are starting to say the same thing, but I've been saying it for a while now.

 

Blackwell has absolutely fumbled their launch:

• No supply/volume
• fake MSRPs
• Melting connectors again
• Missing ROPs / Quality control problem
• Bad drivers / black screens
• Dropped 32-bit Phys-X support
• Mediocre gen over gen performance increases

This is AMD's time to shine if they want to and that means the bean counters need to go sit the hell down because they usually always screw it up for Radeon at the start. They need to lead with their best possible price at the start and not the crap "Nvidia's MSRP minus $50" they usually do which never wins over anyone outside their niche 10% of the market. And then inevitably they drop the price to what it should have started with but by that time it is too late and the market conditions have changed.

 

Really hope they are aggressive here to really give Nvidia a black-eye. If they are not, it's more of the same. They lost market the last 2 gens so...

[Kaz]

I think the problem is that both of them can operate at a near loss, even affording to take a loss when selling older stock off.  They have shown that they will undercut each other, so in order to prevent printing cards for pennies we have price fixing.  Price fixing favours Nvidia because they have spent more developing Ray tracing, DLSS, and now fake frames.  Nvidia seems to partner with gaming companies to favour their hardware.  Indiana Jones and the Great Circle came out as ray tracing only.  This is the stuff that makes teenagers tell their parents, I want the good card that can play everything.  It has to be Nvidia!

 

I'd rather boycott some games, but that's just me.  Nvidia lost me as a customer when they screwed with the GTX 970 memory controllers.  When I was using that card FSR worked and DLSS didn't because Nvidia chose to lock out older cards.

 

I'm team red and I don't regret it.  I did when I was team green.

[Slaughtahouse]

  On 27/02/2025 at 23:53, Kaz said:

I think the problem is that both of them can operate at a near loss, even affording to take a loss when selling older stock off.  They have shown that they will undercut each other, so in order to prevent printing cards for pennies we have price fixing.  Price fixing favours Nvidia because they have spent more developing Ray tracing, DLSS, and now fake frames.  Nvidia seems to partner with gaming companies to favour their hardware.  Indiana Jones and the Great Circle came out as ray tracing only.  This is the stuff that makes teenagers tell their parents, I want the good card that can play everything.  It has to be Nvidia!

 

I'd rather boycott some games, but that's just me.  Nvidia lost me as a customer when they screwed with the GTX 970 memory controllers.  When I was using that card FSR worked and DLSS didn't because Nvidia chose to lock out older cards.

 

I'm team red and I don't regret it.  I did when I was team green.

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I think most kids these days are asking for hardware to play GTA Online, PUBG, Minecraft etc. All of which run fine on the 6600 XTs and 3060s. Maybe Black Myth Wukong is that title since it seriously favours Nvidia and was extremely popular but I get what you’re throwing down.

 

I’d love to say I always favoured the underdog but the truth is I don’t care. I just want hardware with what I deem is good value for my time and money. 

 

AMD was that provider when I last upgraded (7900 XTX) but it still wasn’t an ideal purchase. It just had the least amount of caveats I was willing to accept. Expensive, disappointing RT but great performance, healthy VRAM, and a normal form factor. The launch was also an issue, with faulty vapour chambers and poor launch pricing.

 

I’d gladly go back to Nvidia if they competed with Blackwell but instead they chose to stay status quo. Here’s hoping AMD will make the market a bit more competitive but I ain’t holding my breath. I believe they will continue to price fix and only an obtainable $550 or less 9070 XT would really change my mind. 

 

My bet is $550 9070 and $650 9070 XT “MSRP” but you’ll have a hard time finding cards at those prices for the first few months.

[Kaz]

  On 28/02/2025 at 00:20, Slaughtahouse said:

I’d gladly go back to Nvidia if they competed with Blackwell but instead they chose to stay status quo. Here’s hoping AMD will make the market a bit more competitive but I ain’t holding my breath. I believe they will continue to price fix and only an obtainable $550 or less 9070 XT would really change my mind.

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Would you replace your 7900 XTX if the 5090 was good?  I'm planning to get 8 years out of my XTX...  I think the only thing that would change my mind is VR performance.

[Slaughtahouse]

  On 28/02/2025 at 01:01, Kaz said:

 

Would you replace your 7900 XTX if the 5090 was good?  I'm planning to get 8 years out of my XTX...  I think the only thing that would change my mind is VR performance.

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I would have gone to a 5080 if it had ~4090 level performance, 24Gb of VRAM, better RT, at less than 350W. A side grade with access to latest “software features” just to stay up to date.

 

90 series is out of my price range. All other Blackwell fell flat. I’ll likely wait until the next gen (UDNA / Rubin) and see where they go with 3nm. Also not much motivating me to upgrade. XTX is worst case only doing 40fps at 4K in the most demanding titles.

 

[Kaz]

  On 28/02/2025 at 01:19, Slaughtahouse said:

XTX is worst case only doing 40fps at 4K in the most demanding titles.

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At 40 FPS I immediately downgrade shadows!  I learned a long time ago that shadows are a pretty big hit to GPUs and my brain doesn't look for detail in shadows.  If there's a shadow that's good enough for me.  I guess that's an old tendency and I could be looking to enable up scaling instead.  (I downgrade shadows before up scaling). 

[pio]

  On 28/02/2025 at 02:07, Kaz said:

At 40 FPS I immediately downgrade shadows!  I learned a long time ago that shadows are a pretty big hit to GPUs and my brain doesn't look for detail in shadows.  If there's a shadow that's good enough for me.  I guess that's an old tendency and I could be looking to enable up scaling instead.  (I downgrade shadows before up scaling). 

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I tend to turn on FSR or similar features instead of dropping graphics settings.  I do it for a good reason though, most of my gameplay I'm recording these days.  So it doesn't matter if I lose a little fidelity with the resolution, youtube compression will ruin it anyway.

[Kaz]

Somewhere I read a report about up scaling moving aimed shots off by a pixel.  It's probably not a noticeable difference, but competitive first person shooter (fps) games are where frames per second (fps) matters!  FPS matters for FPS, imagine that!  I also remember reading that on older graphics cards with limited v-ram, on games like pubG, shrubs aren't drawn in when it's a longer distance, which is why you should never hide in the grass for cover!  #FirstWorldProblems, my graphics card is too good!

[Slaughtahouse]

Thread updated with pricing info. I'll add additional sources and deep dives as they become available  Pricing is fairly promising. Not as low as they needed but much better than the -$50 approach. 

 

 

[schuck6566]

The sad thing about this is that I have been using Nvidia for all new graphics for 20years. This has me looking at bundle deals to go from am4 to am5 and a Intel b580 for less than the cost of a 5070ti.

[Sir Beregond]

$599 is decent for the 9070 XT. $549 would have been more aggressive, but it's not the DOA like I think it would have been at $699. If the performance claims shake out decently in line with what they are showing, then its looking like a great alternative to both the 5070 and 5070 Ti. Though it remains to be seen what the bulk of the AIB offerings will actually be price wise.

 

As for the 9070 at $549, it repeats the same mistake the 7900 XT did at launch in it's pricing. At $549, it's 9% cheaper than the $599 9070 XT. Yet it has ~14% fewer CUs at 56 vs 64. 38% lower stock power target (220W vs 304W), so in all likelihood this will be a 15-20% worse performing card against the XT. At an only 9% discount for 15-20% worse performance, this thing is going to be justifiably trashed on review day, give AMD bad press in the review cycle, and inevitably drop to the $450ish it should have been a few months down the road as they sit on shelves and people either buy 5070's or spend the extra $50 for the XT.

 

Outside the hardware, just remains to be seen is FSR4 against DLSS4.

Edited February 28 by Sir Beregond

[Slaughtahouse]

  On 28/02/2025 at 22:04, Sir Beregond said:

$599 is decent for the 9070 XT. $549 would have been more aggressive, but it's not the DOA like I think it would have been at $699. If the performance claims shake out decently in line with what they are showing, then its looking like a great alternative to both the 5070 and 5070 Ti. Though it remains to be seen what the bulk of the AIB offerings will actually be price wise.

 

As for the 9070 at $549, it repeats the same mistake the 7900 XT did at launch in it's pricing. At $549, it's 9% cheaper than the $599 9070 XT. Yet it has ~14% fewer CUs at 56 vs 64. 38% lower stock power target (220W vs 304W), so in all likelihood this will be a 15-20% worse performing card against the XT. At an only 9% discount for 15-20% worse performance, this thing is going to be justifiably trashed on review day, give AMD bad press in the review cycle, and inevitably drop to the $450ish it should have been a few months down the road as they sit on shelves and people either buy 5070's or spend the extra $50 for the XT.

 

Outside the hardware, just remains to be seen is FSR4 against DLSS4.

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Depends if the 9070 XT actually sells at MSRP. If AIBs and demand drive price up, you may see 9070 sit at $550. Keep in mind Nvidia 5070 is at the same price with only 12GB vram.

 

Unless Nvidia responds by lowering prices and demand is satisfied, we may not see AMD react. Time will tell. It’s hard to gauge how much interest there is with all this artificial scarcity from Nvidia.
 

Actual revenue dropping from these companies in gaming segments make me believe there is less demand but who knows if that’s accurate. Could just simply be Nvidia / AMD redirecting inventory and wafers to different markets (data centres).

Edited March 1 by Slaughtahouse

[Sir Beregond]

  On 01/03/2025 at 00:41, Slaughtahouse said:

 

Depends if the 9070 XT actually sells at MSRP. If AIBs and demand drive price up, you may see 9070 sit at $550. Keep in mind Nvidia 5070 is at the same price with only 12GB vram.

 

Unless Nvidia responds by lowering prices and demand is satisfied, we may not see AMD react. Time will tell. It’s hard to gauge how much interest there is with all this artificial scarcity from Nvidia.
 

Actual revenue dropping from these companies in gaming segments make me believe there is less demand but who knows if that’s accurate. Could just simply be Nvidia / AMD redirecting inventory and wafers to different markets (data centres).

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Possible. Another thing I hadn't thought of is the fact they 9070 and 9070 XT have the same die. If yields are pretty good, then maybe the 9070 was simply an outlet to sell the dies that didn't make it, but the 9070 XT is going to be most of what's actually supplied. 

 

As for the XT, will have to see what the AIB models end up at since there's no reference cards.

[GanjaSMK]

Reviews / NDA not lifted yet right? 

[Slaughtahouse]

  On 03/03/2025 at 23:52, GanjaSMK said:

Reviews / NDA not lifted yet right? 

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I think the schedule goes:

 

- 5070 reviews tomorrow (March 4th)

- 5070 launch and 9070 / 9070 XT reviews on Wednesday (March 5th)

- 9070 / 9070 XT launch on Thursday (March 6th)