AMD has launched the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070, the first cards in its Radeon RX 9000 Series of consumer GPUs, based on its next-gen RDNA 4 GPU architecture.
The 16GB cards, which have recommended prices of $599 and $549, hit online stores yesterday, to strong reviews in the gaming press.
Below, we’ve summarized their key specs, and rounded up what we know so far about how that gaming performance will translate to CG software like Blender, DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro.
New RDNA 4 architecture promises better AI, ray tracing and video encoding performance
The Radeon RX 9000 Series cards are the first GPUs to use AMD’s new RDNA 4 GPU architecture.
It features improvements to all of the cards’ hardware core types, including for general GPU compute, but particularly for AI operations and ray tracing, with AMD claiming that RDNA 4 provides “2x the ray tracing throughput per compute unit” compared to RDNA 3.
For video processing, a new dual media engine promises to double throughput for AV1 encoding, and to improve the quality of AV1, H.264 and H.265 encoding and decoding by “up to 25%”.
As with NVIDIA’s current-gen GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, the Radeon RX 9000 Series cards support PCIe 5.0.
The new cards are also currently the only GPUs to support FSR 4 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 4), the latest version of AMD’s AI-based viewport upscaling technology.
For more details, Tom’s Hardware has a deeper dive into the RDNA 4 architecture.
| AMD Radeon RX 9000 and 7000 Series GPUs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon RX 7900 XT | Radeon RX 9070 XT | Radeon RX 9070 | Radeon RX 7900 GRE | |
| Architecture | RDNA 3 | RDNA 4 | RDNA 4 | RDNA 3 |
| Shading units | 5,376 | 4,096 | 3,584 | 5,120 |
| AI accelerators | 168 | 128 | 112 | 160 |
| Ray accelerators | 84 | 64 | 56 | 80 |
| Base clock (GHz)* | 1.4 | 1.7 | 1.3 | 1.3 |
| Boost clock (GHz) | 2.4 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 2.2 |
| FP32 compute performance (Tflops)* | 51.5 | 48.7 | 36.1 | 46.0 |
| GPU memory | 20GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bandwidth (GB/s)* | 800 | 645 | 645 | 576 |
| TBP | 300W | 304W | 220W | 260W |
| Display* | 2 x DisplayPort 2.1 1 x HDMI 2.1a 1 x USB-C |
3 x DisplayPort 2.1a 1 x HDMI 2.1b |
3 x DisplayPort 2.1a 1 x HDMI 2.1b |
2 x DisplayPort 2.1 1 x HDMI 2.1a 1 x USB-C |
| Release date | 2022 | 2025 | 2025 | 2023 |
| MSRP at launch | $899 | $599 | $549 | $549 |
*Figure taken from third-party website.
Key specifications
AMD has changed its naming scheme since the previous-gen Radeon RX 7000 Series, but its launch materials position the new GPUs between the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 GRE.
The new numbering convention suggests that the cards are being pitched against NVIDIA’s mid-range consumer GPUs: the current-gen GeForce RTX 5070 and previous-gen GeForce RTX 4070.
Above, we’ve rounded up the key specs of the new Radeon RX 9000 Series cards and their previous-gen counterparts, based on AMD’s own figures and the TechPowerUp database.
All of the Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 GPUs are being manufactured by partner firms – there are no AMD reference cards – so clock speeds and power consumption will vary between models.
However, their core specs are broadly comparable to the Radeon RX 7900 GRE – all are 16GB cards, and remain on GDDR6 memory – as are their recommended launch prices.
Processor core core counts are actually down on the previous generation, though AMD is promising overall performance improvements due to the advances in GPU architecture.
Strong early reviews in the gaming press
Early reviews of the Radeon RX 9000 Series cards in the gaming press have been positive, with many contrasting the launch troubles and lukewarm reviews for NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5070.
TechRadar’s review of the Radeon RX 9070 XT is fairly typical, describing it as a “stunning release … delivering [GeForce] RTX 4080 levels of gaming performance at half that card’s launch MSRP”.
Benchmark results in CG software
But how will that gaming performance translate to professional graphics work?
As you would expect, most of AMD’s own published performance comparisons are for games, although its launch materials do include a few benchmarks for AI.
That includes both generative AI models and the AI tools in CG applications.
The slide above shows the Radeon RX 9070 XT outperforming the previous-gen Radeon RX 7900 GRE by 12-17% in AI-based tools in Adobe’s Lightroom Classic photo editor and by 20-34% in DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic Design’s video editing, compositing and VFX software.
The figures are based on Puget Systems’ standard PugetBench tests.
Independent reviews include scores for Blender and Premiere Pro
Some early reviews also include benchmarks for CG apps, although their conclusions are mixed.
Tom’s Hardware shows the Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 outperforming NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5070 and 4070 in the synthetic SPECworkstation 4.0 benchmark, both in the HandBrake video transcoding test, and for average viewport performance across a range of apps, including Blender.
However, for rendering, the GeForce RTX 5070 and 4070 outperformed both the Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs in the Blender benchmark itself.
PC World’s review also notes that the GeForce RTX 5070 “absolutely stomped” the Radeon RX 9000 Series cards in the PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark.
For DCC work, it’s also important to note that some GPU render engines, including Arnold GPU, OctaneRender and V-Ray GPU, use NVIDIA APIs, and are not accelerated on AMD graphics cards.
Price and availability
AMD’s Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs became available on 6 March 2025 through partner firms including Acer, ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, PowerColor, Sapphire, Vastarmor, XFX and Yeston.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT has a MSRP of $599, and the Radeon RX 9070 has a MSRP of $549, but street prices are currently significantly higher for what remains of the initial stock.
Read more about the Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs AMD’s website
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