It's all about the money, money, money.
Previous rumours have suggested that AMD’s new top-end RDNA 4 GPU will deliver RTX 4080-like raster performance. However, according to an official slide detailing the branding scheme for the new cards, it looks like the RTX 4070 Ti is the 40-series card it’s aiming to match.
The RX 9070 XT has been expected to be a mid-range card compared to next-generation offerings from Nvidia, as AMD’s Jack Huynh previously said that the company has focused on the mid-range sector over the high-end for RDNA 4.
AMD has since explained that it’s changing its GPU model numbers over to the 9000-series, to match its 9000-series CPU offerings, and using “the tenths digit to signify its position in the market so it’s clear to end users how our products match up against the competition.”
So, rather than the RX 8800 XT branding that’s been rumoured for some time, we have the RX 9070 XT instead. With me so far? However, AMD shows the RX 9070 series in line with the RTX 4070 Ti in its branding chart, and if that’s an indication of where AMD sees it sitting in the market (and therefore, equivalent performance) that’d mean it’d be significantly slower than the rumoured RTX 4080-like performance it was said to possess late last year.
So, big deal. Rumours are wrong all the time. And, it must be said that the RTX 4070 Ti is still a very fast card, so a new AMD model delivering similar performance would absolutely be worth looking at.
For the right price, that is. According to the branding scheme, the RX 9070 series sits below the RX 7900 XTX by comparison. The older RDNA 3 card is no slouch, that’s for sure, and can trade blows with the RTX 4080—but overall it slightly loses out.
But compared to the RTX 4070 Ti? It’s ahead. Not by a huge amount, but by enough. The RX 7900 XTX can still be found for around the $870 mark, and we’re expecting the RX 9070 XT, as a mid-range card, to release for a fair bit cheaper than that.
How much cheaper? We’ll have to wait to find out. AMD didn’t tell us a whole lot about the new cards when it comes to raw figures, and the price was notable by its absence (along with a lack of VRAM numbers, CU counts, bus widths and more).
But with Nvidia’s RTX 5070 expected to likely mirror the pricing of the RTX 4070 when it was first released ($599), if AMD manages to undercut or match it, that might make for a pretty sweet deal for plenty of performance on a relatively small budget.
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Unless the RTX 5070 turns out to be an absolute barnstormer, of course. Or Nvidia does the unthinkable, and actually lowers the price of its cards compared to the previous generation.
Yes, we’ve all had a chuckle. Still, while the 9070 XT looks like it might not be as fast as some of the previous rumours had suggested, there’s always that 45% improved ray tracing performance figure to cling on to. That’s a speculation that may have some weight, given AMD’s claims that the new GPUs have improved ray tracing performance per CU.
Round and round we go again. We’ve had an AMD CES announcement now, and the RX 9000-series cards still remain a bit of a mystery. At this rate, I simply want to get hold of one myself and put it through the PC Gamer torture test. Then we’ll really find out what sort of mettle we’re dealing with.
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