AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU Review & Benchmarks vs. 5070 Ti, 5070, 7900 XT (Sapphire Pulse)
jimmy_thang
March 6, 2025
We analyze the 9070 XT’s gaming performance, ray tracing, power consumption, and efficiency against many other video cards
The Highlights
- The 9070 XT uses AMD’s new RDNA 4 architecture, has 64 CUs, and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory
- While the 9070 XT has made a lot of gains in ray tracing, it still often falls behind NVIDIA’s cards
- AMD offers real competition against NVIDIA, particularly against the noticeably more expensive 5070 Ti
- Original MSRP: $600
- Release Date: March 6, 2025
Table of Contents
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Intro
There’s real competition now. The answer you’re here for is that the 9070 XT and 5070 Ti go back-and-forth a lot (depending on the game).
At 4K and rasterized (without RT), the 9070 XT and 5070 Ti were within 6% of each other (on either side) in F1, Cyberpunk, Resident Evil 4, Starfield, Total War: Warhammer 3, and Dragon’s Dogma 2. At 1440p and 1080p, we saw similar results depending on the game. Sometimes the 9070 XT can close the gap a little bit if it’s behind; sometimes it’s able to pull ahead a little bit. It depends on the situation. Because the 5070 Ti (read our review) is basically an RTX 4080 in a lot of games, which is basically an RTX 4080 Super, that means the 9070 XT is often close to the 4080 Super (read our review) in these games as well.
Editor's note: This was originally published on March 5, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.
Credits
Test Lead, Host, Writing
Steve Burke
Testing
Mike Gaglione
Efficiency QC
Jeremy Clayton
Camera, Video Editing
Vitalii Makhnovets
Camera
Tim Phetdara
Writing, Web Editing
Jimmy Thang
In ray tracing, it’s all over the place. This is sort of the downside to the card. AMD has got some real strengths, but it’s also got some real downsides. The 9070 XT improves massively on AMD’s prior generation, but NVIDIA remains fiercely competitive still. AMD gets crushed in tests like Black Myth: Wukong with RT, but is actually competitive now in more mixed load RT games (AKA more medium-weight RT).
NVIDIA’s biggest strengths remain in its feature set generally, ray tracing, and efficiency in particular. Its power consumption is pretty effective for what’s output. The features get difficult to measure. For example, do we measure MFG as multi-frame generation or as…multi-failure generation…
That’s the fastest possible version of the recap. NVIDIA has had a busy 3 months destroying the hype it built for the 50 series. They’ve had ups and downs -- actually, it’s mostly been downs. Not that many, though. Just the 12VHPWR burning. And the paper launch. And the prices not being real, even from first-party partners. And the missing ROPs. And the missing ROPs on the card they didn’t initially disclose them on. And the lying on stage about the 5070 vs. the 4090. And, well, we’ll be here all day if we keep listing all of the issues.
Let’s just move on to the 9070 XT review.
AMD RX 9070 XT Overview & Specs
AMD’s RX 9070 and 9070 XT launch the day after this story goes up. We already posted a video going into the specs and architecture of the cards, but the quick recap is this:
AMD has made major changes architecturally for the RDNA 4 generation, which the 9070 XT uses. There are 2 cards: the 9070 and 9070 XT. There’s probably going to be another card later that's at the lower end. The basic specs of the cards today might feel familiar to the Vega era, though: The cards are divided by a 56 compute unit (CU) model and 64 CU model with today’s review focusing on the 64. No, not that one. We’ll also have the 9070 review up shortly.
For TDP, AMD markets them at 220W and 304W, with board partners having room to scale higher. We’ll test this in our review. AMD is using GDDR6 memory at 16GB capacity at 20 Gbps and on a 256-bit bus for both cards. The VRAM alone will be advantageous in heavier RT workloads, which is something we talked about in our 5070 review.
The architecture’s biggest overhaul that we’re aware of has been in ray tracing. AMD has doubled the ray intersection rate, moved to two RT accelerator blocks with a shared 128KB memory, moved to BVH8, and introduced oriented bounding boxes to reduce or eliminate false positives in ray-triangle and ray-box intersections. AMD also introduced a dedicated ray transform block to help with transformation. This is all stuff that AMD needs to improve upon because NVIDIA has successfully sort of manufactured a category it’s really good at, which is real-time ray tracing.
All of this helps with ray tracing performance, where AMD had fallen behind not only NVIDIA, but even Intel Arc in some situations last generation.
AMD RX 9070 XT Pricing
For our review of the card built entirely on lies and bullshit, the RTX 5070, we showed that Newegg only had a single GPU model in stock, sold by Newegg, that wasn’t refurbished when searching from $450 to $650. It was the 7800 XT.
This is madness.
There’s just nothing there. The 9070 XT and 9070 both should be within this range, but they are also likely to get scalped. What may help is that there are rumors of greater supply than the 50-series, and likewise, they may be less desirable by the AI-at-home segment than the upper-end 50-series cards, like the 5090.
Because these reviews go up before the cards launch, we can’t know where the pricing will land. We do intend on following it up immediately though with a report on how the launch shook-out.
Either way, we’d normally dedicate an entire section talking about all the various alternatives at the same price, but the reality is just that there aren’t any other than used cards.
We’re trying to keep this one simple today, so let’s just get straight into the numbers.
AMD RX 9070 XT Game Benchmarks
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Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 4K
Dragon’s Dogma 2 at 4K is a remarkably strong showing for the RX 9070 XT. In this benchmark, the 9070 XT ran at 70 FPS AVG, landing it between the RTX 4080 (read our review) and RTX 3090 Ti. That means that even taking MSRP at face value for both cards, the $600 9070 XT is achieving 95% of the performance of the $750 RTX 5070 Ti Prime, but at 80% of its MSRP. We want to caution that this result doesn’t always happen -- sometimes a 9070 XT is worse than a 5070, so it depends on the game. But this is a great start.
The frametime pacing is also comparable, meaning that the frame-to-frame interval is not noticeably different to a human player.
The 9070 XT leads the 7900 XT by 14.8% here. The lead over the 5070 is 24%, at 70 FPS to 56 FPS.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1440p
At 1440p, the RX 9070 XT nearly ties the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti, the latter of which only leads by 3%. It’s measurable, but you’d never notice this difference. The lows are also within variance. Because a 5070 Ti is basically an RTX 4080 V3 or V4, that means the 9070 XT is also punching close to RTX 4080 Super levels. The 4080 Super was a $1,000 MSRP card that replaced a clinically insane $1,200 MSRP card before it, giving us some perspective.
The last-gen flagship makes us wish AMD had something one step higher as well: The 7900 XTX still leads the new 9070 XT, holding an 8% advantage here.
Against the new RTX 5070, the 9070 XT leads by 21%. The 7900 GRE posts an even larger gap to the 9070 XT. As for owners on cards like the 2070 or 2070 Super here, this might be a good upgrade.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1080p
At 1080p, the RX 9070 XT maintained its relative positioning against the 5070 Ti. It’s now at 145 FPS AVG to the 151 result on the $750 MSRP NVIDIA model, available on sale for only $150 more. We’ve never seen an inverse sale where the price goes up…
The 7900 XT ran at 134 FPS average in this benchmark at 1080p, giving the 9070 XT an uplift of 8%. As for the 7900 XTX, it’s still technically ahead of the new flagship RDNA 4 card, but only by 8%.
FFXIV 4K
FFXIV is up now. A quick disclaimer: The results here appear to be outliers in our dataset. They are repeatable and we re-tested both cards multiple times, ultimately coming to the same data set. They are lower than AMD’s own findings; however, we’re not sure if AMD is using the Dawntrail test like we are, and it’s also possible that the test area is different (as we capture a specific scene). Regardless, we’ll continue looking into these and wanted to disclaim that they are outliers from the rest of the rasterized data set, but the results did repeat in our testing.
At 4K, the 9070 XT landed at 68 FPS AVG. Unfortunately for AMD, that means that the 9070 XT is worse than the RTX 5070 here. The 5070 leads the 9070 XT by 13.6% with its 78 FPS AVG; the 5070 Ti leads by a staggering 43%, at 97 FPS to 68. Whereas Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a strong position for AMD, it’s weak in this game. It all depends on the game itself.
FFXIV 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT ended up only 2 FPS above the 7900 GRE (read our review). Architecturally, the improvements just aren’t helping it here. The 5070 Ti ends up at 187 FPS AVG, leading the 9070 XT by 34%. The 5070 leads it by 10%.
Resident Evil 4 - 4K
Let’s show how much of a tennis match this really is.
Resident Evil 4 swings it back the other way: At 4K, the RX 9070 XT now holds a 103 FPS AVG, landing it nearly tied with the RTX 4080 Super. That’s a great spot for AMD’s card, which it needs after that Final Fantasy showing we just saw.
The 9070 XT leads the 7900 XT marginally and leads the 5070 by 31%. The 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT by 3.5%, with the 7900 XTX (read our review) 23% ahead.
Resident Evil 4 - 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT continues to rank alongside NVIDIA: The 9070 XT is about 5 FPS short of the 5070 Ti, making for a measurable but undetectable difference to a human; that is, assuming the 5070 Ti has all the ROPs. If it doesn’t, we’d see anywhere from 6-12% more of a performance swing.
The RTX 4080 Super leads the 9070 XT by 5% here. The 7900 XTX was also once a $1,000 card and itself leads the 9070 XT by 20% with its 232 FPS result.
Against the new RTX 5070, the 9070 XT holds a 27% advantage.
Resident Evil 4 - 1080p
At 1080p, the RX 9070 XT clocked higher framerate than the 7900 XT and landed just below the 5070 Ti. The 5080 leads the 9070 XT by 15%, which isn’t all that much when considering we’ve all been gaslit into thinking a 5080 takes the place of a 1080 Ti or something.
Black Myth: Wukong - 4K
Since we just alternated to a title where the XT looked better, let’s bring it back maybe the other way.
Black Myth: Wukong tends to favor NVIDIA, both with and without RT enabled. We’ll see if that remains true on the new architecture.
At 4K, the 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT by 12% here. That’s not as big of a gap as it could be. Against the 5070, the 9070 XT is at least ahead by 14%. Compared to the prior generation, the 9070 XT is about the same as a 4070 Ti Super. The 7900 XTX is a few percent higher framerate than the 9070 XT.
Black Myth: Wukong - 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT’s 83 FPS AVG result is matched with good pacing on the 1% and 0.1% lows. It’s not better than its neighbors in a meaningful way, but is keeping pace properly.
The 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT by 5% and the 5080 (read our review) leads it by 17%, probably calling the 5080’s existence into question more than anything -- and again, that’s one with all the ROPs.
The 5070 ran at 72 FPS AVG, so the 9070 XT is about 10 FPS higher. That also had the 5070 above the 7900 XT, which the 9070 XT has now vaulted past.
Black Myth: Wukong - 1080p
At 1080p, the scaling shifts the 9070 XT closer to the 7900 XTX. The two are functionally equal in all 3 metrics. The 5070 Ti outranks the 9070 XT on a technicality, but not in an observable way. 1080p seems to squish all of these together.
Starfield - 4K
Starfield is up now. This one flips it again: At 4K, the 9070 XT leads the 5070 Ti by about 2 FPS. Just like we’ve said elsewhere, this is a measurable but irrelevant difference. You wouldn’t notice the 2 FPS. You probably would notice the cost difference, though.
The 9070 XT actually roughly equals the 4080 Super here and isn’t that distant from the 5080. Both the 5070 Ti and the 9070 XT are a threat to the 5080’s already questionable existence.
Starfield - 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT is again between the 5070 Ti and 4080 Super, roughly tying the latter. The 7900 XTX has a 6% lead over the 9070 XT here. The 5070 non-Ti, which is still not equivalent to an RTX 4090, continues to not be equivalent to a 4090. Truly wondrous technology. We never could have predicted that…
Starfield - 1080p
At 1080p, the 9070 XT now holds a 127 FPS AVG with lows at 68 and 46. That plants it right between the 7900 XTX and 5070 Ti. There’s not much difference between these three in this test. The 4080 Super isn’t that different, either, and the 5090 (read our review) shows that we do have a little more CPU headroom.
So does the 4090, for that matter, which continues to not be a 5070.
Dying Light 2 - 4K
Dying Light 2 is up next. This is one of the heavier games in our test suite.
At 4K, the 9070 XT ran at 62 FPS AVG, which has it just ahead of the 3090 Ti. It’s also 11% ahead of the 5070. The 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT by 12% in this test, which matches its gain in other tests where it held an advantage.
In other words, the 9070 XT achieves 89% of the performance at 80% of the listed MSRP. We’re reviewing this before the 9070 XTs go on sale, so we can’t know how much to adjust for street price yet.
Dying Light 2 - 1440p
At 1440p, the 5070 Ti beats the 9070 XT at 130 FPS to 118, or about a 10% uplift to the 5070 Ti. The 4080 Super is a few frames above that. The 5070 is down at 106 FPS AVG, resulting in an advantage for the 9070 XT of 11%. It’s equidistant between them.
AMD has also improved on its 7900 XT model. The 6700 XT is way down at 61 FPS AVG, so users on that tier of hardware could experience nearly a doubling in framerate in some tests.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 4K
We’ve been rerunning Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty on a newer version for all tests, so this chart is sparse.
The 9070 XT ran at 53 FPS AVG, giving it a lead over the 5070 Ti’s 50 FPS result of 5.8%. Against the 5070, the 9070 XT is ahead by 29%. Maybe more noteworthy is that the 9070 XT technically is ahead of the 4080. The 7900 XTX remains about 9% higher framerate than the 9070 XT.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT climbs to a playable 109 FPS AVG. This is without upscaling or frame generation -- just organic, farm fresh frames. The 9070 XT ends up basically tied with the 5070 Ti, slightly leading the 4080, and notably leading the 5070. We haven’t re-run AMD’s older stuff in this one yet.
AMD RX 9070 XT Ray Tracing Benchmarks
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Time for ray tracing. This is where AMD will really need to prove itself. AMD spent a lot of time talking about its improvements to ray tracing blocks in its recent press briefings, so they’re clearly aware of the deficit.
Ray Tracing - Black Myth: Wukong 4K
We’ll start with the worst-case scenario. Black Myth: Wukong has worked best on NVIDIA hardware since its launch, especially in ray tracing. At 4K with upscaling and ray traced, the 9070 XT ran, with our settings, at 29 FPS AVG. Playability doesn’t matter right now, just the relative scaling. We’ll get to lower resolutions down below.
With these settings, the RTX 5070 ends up ahead by a large 38% at 40 FPS to 29. The 5070 Ti is 78% ahead of the 9070 XT. This is AMD’s absolute worst-case scenario. Against last generation, AMD is posting large gains: The 9070 XT outperforms the 7900 XTX by 45%, climbing from 20 FPS to 29. That is a substantial gain, especially considering the XTX was often slightly ahead of the 9070 XT in raster but obviously, there are situations like this where you’ll have to just heavily weigh NVIDIA if RT and this type of game matters a lot to you. Against the 7900 XT, there was an enormous 84% uplift in performance. It’s undeniable that AMD is improving in RT.
Ray Tracing - Black Myth: Wukong 1440p
At 1440p upscaled, the 9070 XT ran at about the levels of the RTX 3090. The 5070 now is 37% ahead, so about the same as the previous resolution, with the 5070 Ti 66% ahead, reduced from before. The gain in the 9070 XT over the 7900 XTX is 45%, so the same.
Ray Tracing - Black Myth: Wukong 1080p
At 1080p upscaled, the 9070 XT held 73 FPS AVG and climbed past the 3090. It’s now approaching the 3090 Ti, which came out 3 years ago and had no formal MSRP at launch. It just sold for whatever in that period, which typically was close to $2,000, but occasionally $1,500.
The 5070 is now 33% ahead, down from 37% before. The 5070 Ti is down to 53% ahead -- still huge, but a gradual reduction from the 4K upscaled gains of 78%.
Ray Tracing - Dragon’s Dogma 2 4K
Let’s look at something more balanced. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a game that we’d play with ray tracing enabled, as we do think it looks better, but it’s not nearly as heavy an implementation as Cyberpunk or Black Myth.
In Dragon’s Dogma 2 with ray tracing and at 4K, the RX 9070 XT ran at 61 FPS AVG. This has it ahead of the RTX 5070’s 49 FPS result by 26%. The 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT marginally and by 2 FPS, or 3.6%. The 7900 XTX is about 5 FPS ahead of the 9070 XT.
Definitely a healthier position than Black Myth, but also not as impressively heavy.
Ray Tracing - Dragon’s Dogma 2 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT ran at 103 FPS AVG and tied the 5070 Ti almost exactly. Again, this is heavier on raster than RT, but this is a better result than historically for AMD. Previously, the 7900 GRE was below the new 5070, with the 7900 XT about the same as a 4070 Ti Super (read our review).
Ray Tracing - Dragon’s Dogma 2 1080p
1080p puts the 9070 XT as still right around the 5070 Ti and 4070 Ti Super.
Ray Tracing - Dying Light 2 4K
Dying Light 2 is up next, tested at 4K with upscaling as the game is relatively heavy.
The 9070 XT landed at 46 FPS AVG, which puts it tied with the 7900 XTX and just behind the 3090 Ti. AMD still has a deficit in RT as compared to its NVIDIA competition, with the 5070 Ti leading by 24%. That’s not as obscene as the gap in Black Myth, but it’s still an undeniable victory for NVIDIA. The RTX 5070 ran at 44 FPS AVG here, so the 9070 XT is about 6% ahead.
Ray Tracing - Dying Light 2 1440p
At 1440p, the 9070 XT ran at 89 FPS AVG and tied the 4070 Ti Super and 3090 Ti. It’s marginally ahead of the 7900 XTX, though they’re functionally equal. The RTX 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT by 16% now, down from 24% at the higher resolution. The 4080 Super and FE were tied with each other and aren’t distant from the 5070 Ti.
Ray Tracing - Dying Light 2 1080p
At 1080p, the 9070 XT ran at 129 FPS AVG. The 5070 Ti maintains a lead here, but it’s now reduced to 9.4%. Those are some huge reductions in its advantage as the resolution comes down. NVIDIA is still ahead but has lost significant ground here.
Ray Tracing - Resident Evil 4 4K
Resident Evil 4 is up now. At 4K with ray tracing and upscaling, the 9070 XT performs at parity with the 5070 Ti. This is another of the lighter-weight RT titles, so broadly speaking, thus far, games with fewer RT features implemented that lean more heavily on raster allow AMD to compete better.
The 9070 XT leads the 5070 by 27%, with the 7900 XTX leading the 9070 XT in this one by 16%.
Ray Tracing - Resident Evil 4 1440p
At 1440p upscaled, the RX 9070 XT ran at 180 FPS AVG and allowed the 5070 Ti a marginal victory. The 9070 XT improved upon the 7900 XT, but not the 7900 XTX.
Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 4K RT Ultra
Cyberpunk is up next. We’ll start with the heaviest workload and scale down from there.
4K and RT Ultra tends to destroy cards with lower VRAM capacity, like the 5070 with its 0.1% lows. Cards like the 2070 (watch our review) and 2070 Super (watch our review) have been removed this time since they were unplayable and their results were just noise anyway. One could be better than the other just because neither can play the game.
The 9070 XT landed at 22 FPS AVG. In a relative sense, what matters is the 5070 Ti’s lead of 23.5%. The 9070 XT leads the 5070 by 26% in average FPS, but the 5070 has massive stuttering problems due to insufficient VRAM as it depletes.
Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 4K RT Medium
Bringing RT down to Medium but still at 4K, the 9070 XT runs at 28 FPS AVG and lands between the 7900 XTX and 4080. That’s a much better spot to be in. This puts the 5070 Ti ahead by 10%, down from 24% at Ultra. You could then get to a playable framerate with upscaling or by dropping resolution.
You can see NVIDIA getting embarrassed by its own choices again: The 4070 Ti (read our revisit) and 5070 are both crumbling in the 0.1% lows, which is a direct result of the low VRAM capacity. This low 0.1% value manifests as stuttery frame delivery and inconsistent frametime pacing.
Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 1080p RT Ultra
At 1080p but back to RT Ultra, the 9070 XT ran at 71 FPS AVG, 61 1% low, and 58 0.1% lows. The 5070 encroaches on this result at 64 FPS AVG, although the 9070 XT has a slight advantage in 0.1% lows.
The 5070 Ti leads the 9070 XT by 20%.
Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 1080p RT Medium
Finally for Cyberpunk, 1080p at RT Medium, the 9070 XT ran at 92 FPS AVG. That reduces the 5070 Ti’s lead back down to 12% from the 20% we saw with RT Ultra and the same resolution.
RX 9070 XT Power Efficiency Testing
We’re getting into efficiency testing now. Efficiency benchmarks are a combination of power consumption and performance, so you’ll get to see both in this testing. We perform the testing with a PMD2 sitting as an interposer between the PCIe slot and the power cables, capturing just GPU power consumption in isolation.
Efficiency: FFXIV 4K
We’ll start with Final Fantasy 14 as usual; however, this won’t reflect well on the 9070 XT due to its overall low performance in this title. The 9070 XT ends up toward the bottom of this chart. Its power draw was 310W here, pulling less than the 430W of the 7900 XTX, but also producing a lower framerate. This drags down the efficiency, planting it between the XTX and the 3090 Ti. The 7900 XT was more efficient in this particular test, with the 5070 likewise significantly improved on the 9070 XT.
NVIDIA remains advantaged in efficiency.
Efficiency: FFXIV 1440p
1440p has more cards on the chart. The 9070 XT ends up improved upon the efficiency of the 6600 XT and 6700 XT, up at 0.45 FPS/W, but still worse than the prior XTX, 7900 XT, and NVIDIA’s entire modern lineup. The 5070 Ti is 62% more efficient than the 9070 XT here, up at 0.73 FPS/W. This is not a good result for AMD. It’s burning a lot of power to produce the output.
Efficiency: F1 24 4K
Here’s a better test for the 9070 XT. In F1 24 at 4K and with ray tracing, the 9070 XT ran at 0.18 FPS/W. These results round to the second place, so differing bar sizes for the same numbers is normal -- it just means the hidden digits are separating them.
Anyway, the 9070 XT is more efficient than the 5070 and significantly more efficient than AMD’s prior 7900 XT. This massive uplift and flip over the prior raster Final Fantasy charts comes as a combination of improved performance for the power with the large ray tracing uplift that AMD saw generationally. NVIDIA’s 5070 Ti remains more efficient than the 9070 XT at 0.20 FPS/W, but this is much closer than it was previously and now only has an 11% uplift. That’s more normal.
Efficiency: F1 24 1080p
At 1080p but still in F1 24 with RT, the 9070 XT ran at 311W and scored 0.51 FPS/W. That puts it ahead of the RTX 4060, the Intel B580, and 42% improved on the prior 7900 XT. NVIDIA’s 5070 Ti maintains an advantage at 266W and 0.62 FPS/W, or a 22% improvement in FPS/W. That benefit mostly comes from its lower power draw to produce comparable performance.
Efficiency: Dragon’s Dogma 2 RT 1440p
Dragon’s Dogma 2 with RT and at 1440p is up now.
The 9070 XT consumed 311W during the course of this testing and calculated to a 0.33 FPS/W result, which makes it better than the 7900 XT and worse than the 5070 Ti. Despite AMD’s gains overall, NVIDIA retains its advantage in efficiency and output for the power used. AMD had to get performance before it could get efficiency though, as these two are part of the same formula. We think their focus should remain on pumping performance with the hope to balance-out the efficiency calculation on that side of the formula.
Efficiency: Starfield 1440p
Starfield at 1440p is up now. This is without ray tracing. The 9070 XT pulled 310W again here, landing at 0.34 FPS/W and just ahead of the B570 and 7800 XT. The 5070 and 5070 Ti are both more efficient, with the 5070 Ti in particular keeping a massive improvement at 0.48 FPS/W. The performance is comparable on the 9070 XT and the 5070 Ti here, meaning that most of that efficiency benefit comes from the NVIDIA card pulling just 209W to produce almost the same amount of work. This is a good comparison because they’re effectively iso work, or controlled for a nearly fixed output, and so we’ve eliminated the last variable of performance. NVIDIA is simply more effective per Watt consumed. Whether that matters is up to you.
AMD RX 9070 XT Conclusion
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AMD is definitely winning in the cost per frame department -- but it has often done this, so now it’s a question of whether it wins by enough.
NVIDIA currently has 90% of the discrete GPU market share. AMD has 10% with Intel at around 0% still. That’s why it’s so important for consumers that AMD -- and one day Intel -- are able to really compete with NVIDIA. At the same time, AMD and Intel shouldn’t get pity purchases if they haven’t earned it.
We’ll see how street prices shake-out for the 9070 XT. The 5070 Ti has a problem where its partners aren’t even hitting MSRP, so consumers are getting scalped by the likes of MSI.
As a quick recap of performance:
In rasterization performance and at 4K, AMD's 9070 XT is commonly within the range of 5-6% of the 5070 Ti, with a few break-outs like Dying Light 2 and Black Myth non-RT where the 5070 Ti has a 12% advantage over the 9070 XT. As we said earlier, our Final Fantasy 14 results just don't match what AMD presented, but we also run the newest version of the benchmark. Across all resolutions, performance of the 9070 XT approaches levels of the 7900 XTX in some benchmarks and is commonly around 7900 XT levels, but often between them. Broadly speaking, the 9070 XT beats the 5070 non-Ti and these charts show the summary of some of the 4K and 1440p results we have against the 5070 Ti. These charts illustrate the percent improvement from a 9070 XT to a 5070 Ti. In other words, if the bar is positive and going to the right, then that’s a 5070 Ti victory.
As for ray tracing performance, NVIDIA is ahead almost universally in our testing. In Black Myth, it's not even a competition. If you really wanted to play this game and you decided you needed RT for it with heavy settings, you'd basically need NVIDIA. In Cyberpunk, AMD narrows the gap from previous generations, but NVIDIA maintains a large advantage. In games like Dragon's Dogma 2 with RT, the 9070 XT looks much more competitive. The extra VRAM is useful in some heavy situations, such as in Cyberpunk RT with ultra settings where the 5070 starts to struggle under VRAM load.
In our efficiency testing, NVIDIA maintains an advantage overall. This is derived from both FPS and power, and in many of these cases, the lower power draw serves as the stronger part of NVIDIA's side of the equation (rather than performance). We think AMD's focus on performance before power is the right move. Power is OK for them. It can obviously be better, but running lower power wouldn't be worth losing potentially everywhere on performance. We think they made the right decision on this balancing act and can refine it later.
And this back-and-forth we’re describing is why it’s been so critical for AMD to get its pricing right. In situations where a purchasing decision between AMD and NVIDIA is unclear for the average consumer -- not most people reading this, but we’re talking about the mass market who don’t even know Gamers Nexus exists -- NVIDIA will remain the “default” choice in the minds of those consumers unless AMD really gives them a reason to pay attention to. For AMD to really get noticed, it has to either win in large ways or be much cheaper, but ideally both.
With the 9070 XT, we think the $600 MSRP is the minimum that AMD had to do to get some positive groundswell and attention. And it achieved that: there has been a lot of enthusiasm over the last few days, in no small part thanks to NVIDIA continually f***ing everything up. We wish AMD would have come in slightly cheaper on the 9070 XT to really kick in the doors to the mass market, even though that’d hurt short-term margin, just to make sure it can generate some momentum and keep developers integrating its own technologies.
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