Latest news with #RadeonRX9070
Engadget
04-06-2025
- Business
- Engadget
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: Finally, a powerful $350 GPU
NVIDIA releases a brand new video card and AMD follows up with a cheaper one. That's basically been the cycle of the GPU industry for the last decade, with NVIDIA typically leading the pack and AMD rushing to keep up. But with the recent Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, AMD finally found a winning formula with GPUs that were both cheaper than NVIDIA's and, in many cases, more powerful. The new Radeon RX 9060 XT, which is meant to take on NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti in 1080p and 1440p gaming, mostly repeats that formula. Starting at $350 with 16GB of RAM (and $300 with a paltry 8GB), it's launching for much less than the $429 RTX 5060 Ti while delivering a similar level of performance. Once again, the key for AMD is offering much more RAM than NVIDIA for far less money. Sure, AMD is using slower GDDR6 RAM with 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth, compared to NVIDIAs' 448 GB/s GDDR7. But in practice, actually having a larger memory pool is more useful when you're dealing with massive textures and 3D models in modern games. So if you're looking for the best gaming bang for the buck under $400, the 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT is undoubtedly a winner. The Radeon RX 9060 XT delivers a solid amount of 1080p and 1440p gaming power for just $350. It's not the fastest card around, but it's a great option for most people. $350 at AMD The least powerful member of AMD's Radeon RX 9000 family (so far), the RX 9060 XT is basically the card you'd get if you can't stomach spending more than $500 on a GPU. Just remember that video cards tend to jump up in cost once they actually hit stores, depending on availability and the whims of retailers. The RX 9060 XT sports 32 RDNA 4 compute units, 32 RT accelerators and 64 AI accelerators. It can reach up to 3.1GHz speeds with its boost clock and consumes up to 180W of power. In comparison, the $549 MSRP RX 9070 has 56 compute units, while the $599 RX 9070 XT has eight more. AMD is pitching this GPU as a replacement for the RX 7600 XT, which launched at $329 last year. That card also had 16GB of VRAM, but it had a slower 288 GB/s bandwidth. While the 7600 XT was more focused on entry-level 1440p gaming, the 9060 XT's hardware improvements make it far more capable. AMD claims it's 46 percent faster than the 7600 XT across more than 40 games, and in my testing that figure checks out. For this review, I tested Gigabyte's RX 9060 XT GPU, which has three cooling fans pointed at a typical copper heatsink. There's no fancy vapor cooling chamber or any extravagant materials on the card, but at this price range I didn't expect much. Devindra Hardawar for Engadget Across games and benchmarks, the 9060 XT clocked in just about where I expected: noticeably slower than the RX 9070, and either on-par or slightly slower than the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti. In 3DMark's Steel Nomad benchmark, the 9060 XT scored 200 more points than that NVIDIA card, and it was also 90 points ahead in Timespy Extreme. But NVIDIA had a 1,000 point lead in the Speedway benchmark and it was more than 2,000 points ahead in the Luxmark HDR 4 test. Despite those figures, I'm still impressed that the 9060 XT can stay in the same league as NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti while costing a lot less. AMD's ray tracing performance has also improved quite a bit from its previous generations, scoring 45 percent faster in the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark. NVIDIA still has the lead in ray tracing in games though, especially with the one-two punch of DLSS 4 AI upscaling and multi-frame generation. NVIDIA's RTX 5000-series cards can produce up to three interpolate frames for every natively rendered frame, while AMD is still stuck with generating a single extra frame with its FSR 3 and 4 (Fidelity Super Resolution 4) upscaling. None 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme Geekbench 6 GPU Cyberpunk (1440p RT Overdrive DLSS/FSR 3) Blender AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 8,192 91,617 80fps 1,560 NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) 8,100 139,756 136 fps (4X frame gen) 4,220 AMD Radeon RX 9070 10,997 113,012 117 fps N/A AMD Radeon RX 7600 5,526 N/A 20 fps 1,013 The Radeon RX 9060 XT was able to run Cyberpunk 2077 in 1440p ray tracing "overdrive" mode at a respectable 80 fps, whereas NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti hit 136 fps thanks to multi-frame generation. Still, there's plenty of wiggle room to crank out more frames: Stepping down to 1080p got me 120 fps, and I saw 90 fps while using the less demanding ray tracing "ultra" preset in 1440p. In terms of raw performance, without any upscaling fanciness, the 9060 XT hit 114 fps in 1080p and 90 fps in 1440p. The Radeon RX 9060 XT didn't run very hot during my testing, but that makes sense since it's purely focused on 1080p and 1440p gaming, During 3DMark's Steel Nomad stress test, which repeats the benchmark 20 times in succession, the card only topped out at 54 Celsius. I'm used to seeing video cards reaching upwards of 70C under load, so the 9060 XT was a nice surprise. While idling, it sits at 42 Celsius. That's higher than cards with vapor chamber cooling, but it's about average for cards in this price range. I didn't hear any annoying fan noise under load either, since it barely broke a sweat. Devindra Hardawar for Engadget There isn't really much to complain about with the Radeon RX 9060 XT, so long as you're not expecting too much from a sub-$400 GPU. Still, it would be nice to see support for AMD's new FSR 4 AI upscaling spread out more quickly. When the RX 9070 XT launched, the feature was only available in a handful of games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and now it's supported over 60 games. That's still about half of the games that NVIDIA's DLSS 4 supports (which so far includes over 125 titles). On the RX 9060 XT, the FSR 4 user experience still isn't as simple as activating DLSS on NVIDIA cards. I had to enable it manually in AMD's Adrenaline software, then flip it on in Call of Duty: Warzone to activate it. On the bright side, I saw an average of 254 fps while playing a match in 1440p with extreme graphics settings, FSR 4 and frame generation flipped on. With frame gen enabled, but no FSR 4, performance dipped to 174fps. And if I removed both of those features, it fell to 110 fps. Clearly, FSR 4 and frame gen helps quite a bit, I just wish it were in more games. Assuming retailers don't go wild by overpricing the Radeon RX 9060 XT, it's a solid option if you're looking for an affordable GPU that's dedicated to 1080p and 1440p gameplay. At $350, the 9060 XT is well below the RTX 5060 Ti's $429 retail price, and certainly much cheaper than models being sold for more than $500. To reach a lower $300 price point, AMD also unveiled an RX 9060 Ti with 8GB of RAM. But honestly, I'd recommend avoiding that entirely unless you only play ancient games in 1080p. It's worth spending a bit more so you can play newer games with less headaches, and it's practically a requirement if you want to play in 1440p. Devindra Hardawar for Engadget The Radeon RX 9060 XT is a reminder of a world where we didn't have to pay more than $400 to get a capable GPU. We already know more than 80 percent of PC gamers play at 1440p or lower resolutions, according to Steam's data. So for the vast majority of players out there — the ones who aren't using monitors with crazy high refresh rates or 4K+ resolutions — it's all the GPU you really need.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AMD Shares Climb Following 45% GPU Market Share Boost in Japan
AMD (AMD, Financial) saw its shares rally more than 3% on Monday morning after the company claimed it now holds a 45% GPU market share in Japan. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with AMD. At a special event in Akihabara, Japan, AMD highlighted strong demand for its Radeon RX 9070 series graphics cards, with supply struggling to keep up. The company also showcased its latest products, including Ryzen 9000 X3D CPUs, alongside new software features like the "3D V-Cache Performance Optimiser" for X3D chips and Fluid Motion Frames 2.1 for RDNA GPUs. AMD executive Yoshaki Sato addressed production concerns, joking that AMD isn't used to selling graphics cards, drawing laughter from the audience. The stock movement reflects investor optimism over AMD's growing presence in the Japanese GPU market as it challenges competitors for market share. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Yahoo
Sapphire offers unusual advice to RX 9070 owners experiencing overheating
Sapphire Technology has issued an advisory for owners of its latest Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards. The company warns that protective foam inserts, intended to safeguard components during shipping, may still be present between the shroud and heatsink fins of these GPUs. If not removed before installation, this foam can impede cooling performance and potentially lead to hardware failure. The foam inserts are not immediately visible, as they are tucked beneath the shroud and blend in with the surrounding components due to their gray color. This subtle placement increases the likelihood of users overlooking them during setup. Sapphire emphasizes the importance of removing these protective materials to ensure optimal cooling and prevent possible damage. As per the company, models including the Pure Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC, Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming, and Pure Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC are affected. To address this issue, Sapphire Japan has disseminated information through its official channels, including a post on X (formerly Twitter), directing users to a support page by Ask Corporation, a hardware distributor. The advisory states: 'Using the product without removing the cushioning material may result in a decrease in cooling capacity or product failure, so please be sure to remove the cushioning material before installing it in your PC.' Ask Corporation advises users to remove the protective foam from the heatsink by pushing it out or pulling it from the designated area, avoiding tools like cutters or screwdrivers to prevent damage. If the foam is difficult to remove, peeling off the top sticker and loosening a specific screw can create enough space to extract it safely. Sapphire Japan has confirmed that removing the sticker will not void the warranty. While the protective foam serves to prevent damage during transits, failing to remove it can obstruct airflow, leading to increased temperatures and reduced efficiency. Users experiencing higher-than-expected temperatures with their Sapphire RX 9070 series cards are advised to check for and remove any remaining foam inserts to restore proper cooling functionality.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Yahoo
PlayStation's Mark Cerny says a version of FSR 4 could be implemented on the PS5 Pro
AMD just debuted its new FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) upscaling tech on the latest Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 Ti GPUs, and it sounds like it might not be limited PCs. According to a new Digital Foundry interview with Mark Cerny, some version of FSR 4 will make it into the PlayStation 5 Pro via a software update rather than new hardware. "Our target is to have something very similar to FSR 4's upscaler available on PS5 Pro for 2026 titles as the next evolution of PSSR," Cerny tells Digital Foundry. The PS5 Pro's PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) is a custom upscaling technology that lets the console run lower-resolution versions of games and make them appear like they're 4K, and by Cerny's own lengthy explanation, it was created using a combination of existing and future AMD tech. Based on our review of AMD's new GPUs, FSR 4 is not a miracle worker. In some cases it leads to a lower frame rate than you might get from FSR 3, but in exchange for more detail. That extra crispness, while subtle, will probably make a difference to someone who's already spent $700 on a "Pro" console. The comparison video below does a pretty good job of illustrating the improvements FSR 4 actually makes: Sony believes implementing FSR 4 on the PS5 Pro is even possible in the first place because the company also directly contributed to the development of the tech through its "Project Amethyst" collaboration with AMD. "The neural network (and training recipe) in FSR 4's upscaler are the first results of the Amethyst collaboration," according to Cerny. The company's work with AMD was announced with a focus on building new machine learning architecture for game graphics, but it will clearly have more immediate impacts on PSSR and current PlayStation consoles, too. "FSR 4 and this next evolution of PSSR are a paradigm for our future," Cerny tells Digital Foundry, "going forward we expect to have our own implementations of each of the algorithms developed through the collaboration."
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Yahoo
Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9070
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. AMD's Radeon RX 9070 falls right in line behind the Radeon RX 9070 XT in its Radeon RX 9000 series of graphics cards. Though a competent card in its own right, the $549 Radeon RX 9070 sits in the shadow of the generally better-value $599 Radeon RX 9070 XT, with the difference in price not big enough to make the Radeon RX 9070 stand out. In testing a Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9070 for this review, we found that you can undoubtedly draw an enjoyable gaming experience from the Radeon RX 9070 at high-detail 1440p and lower-detail 4K resolutions. However, spending an extra $50 for the Radeon RX 9070 XT, an Editors' Choice award winner, is much more worthwhile, so long as that card remains in stock and the price gap doesn't grow. The RX 9070 uses the RDNA 4 graphics architecture and the Navi 48 GPU die, just like the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, but AMD partially disabled portions of the RX 9070's GPU in the binning process. The RX 9070 hasn't lost much from a part-by-part analysis. The number of stream processors inside the RX 9070 is 3,584, a 14% reduction from the RX 9070 XT's count of 4,096. This reduction comes with a decrease in the number of texture mapping units (TMUs) from 256 on the RX 9070 XT to 224 on the RX 9070, and the number of ray accelerators similarly dropped from 64 to 56. That's about it in terms of hardware changes. Technically, the number of AI accelerators dropped from 128 to 112, but those don't impact gaming performance under normal conditions. The number of raster operation units (ROPs) was unchanged; same for the memory interface. AMD's 16GB pool of GDDR6 memory operates at 20Gbps on both cards. Arguably, the most notable differences between the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9070 come from their firmware. The RX 9070 XT is configured to operate with a max boost clock of 2,970MHz and is rated to mostly hover around 2,400MHz while gaming. AMD set the RX 9070's turbo clock 15% lower at 2,520MHz, and the expected gaming clock speed dropped by 14% to 2,070MHz. These reductions in hardware resources and clock speed also pushed the expected peak power draw of the RX 9070 down to 220 watts from the RX 9070 XT's peak of 304W. These drops in performance create a sufficiently large performance delta between the Radeon RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT to keep each card from directly competing on performance, but pricing is another matter. With the RX 9070 XT priced at $599 and the RX 9070 set at $549, that's a price difference of just 9%. Keep this in mind when I get to the benchmarks: If the RX 9070 XT can outpace the RX 9070 by more than 9%, which these specs suggest it should easily do, then the RX 9070 XT is the better value. Before moving on to the tests, it's worth mentioning that the Radeon RX 9070 could have ample headroom for overclocking. The RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT both use the Navi 48 graphics chip, but AMD clocked the RX 9070 XT much higher, suggesting that the RX 9070 could also go higher. However, if you are interested in overclocking, I wouldn't bother buying a better-cooled RX 9070 model if it costs any extra. You won't find enough room between the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT in price to support doing that when you could just buy an RX 9070 XT. Sapphire manufactured the test card that AMD sent us for review with a dual-fan thermal solution. The Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9070 doesn't have any RGB LEDs but makes up for this with an edgy black exterior covered in diagonal slits and red lines. A metal backplate helps give the card additional structural integrity while keeping the components on the back of the card's PCB cooler. This card requires only two conventional eight-pin PCIe power connectors. Display output options include two HDMI 2.1 ports and two DisplayPort 2.1a jacks. Our 2025 graphics card testbed features a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor with a large 360mm water cooler to test the Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9070. We installed two 16GB sticks of DDR5 on the motherboard and configured them to operate under a 6,000MHz AMD EXPO memory profile. We also added two Crucial 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs to the system, one dedicated to games and the other holding Windows 11 and all other software. To ensure plentiful power delivery headroom, we used a 1,500-watt Corsair power supply. AMD's main Radeon RX 9070 competition is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, which is also priced at $549. Due to similar pricing, the RX 9070 will also have to compete with the RX 9070 XT, the last-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super, and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE. The Radeon RX 9070 started strong in the 3DMark tests we conducted. It essentially tied with the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super while surpassing the RTX 5070 and the RX 7900 GRE in the Port Royal test. The RX 970 also performed this way in the Steel Nomad and Time Spy Extreme benchmarks. In 3DMark's Solar Bay and Speed Way tests, the RTX 5070 pulled into a close tie with the RX 9070. Unigine Superposition showed both scenarios, with the RTX 5070 tying with the RX 9070 in DirectX but falling behind in OpenGL. AI performance could be a key measurement for graphics cards someday, but that remains somewhat questionable for the moment as software that can take advantage of this hardware is still in development. In these particular tests, Nvidia unquestionably has the advantage over AMD. At least the AMD Radeon RX 9070 performed well enough for an AMD card, holding an edge over the RX 7900 GRE. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 also performed reasonably well in content creation tasks. It essentially tied with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 and outpaced the rest of the AMD competition. The Blender benchmark refused to work with the AMD Radeon RX 9070, but this will likely be a temporary issue that will disappear after the drivers or Blender software are updated. We limit our DLSS, FSR, and XeSS testing to Black Myth: Wukong due to the complications surrounding testing these technologies against each other. They all result in differing image quality, which makes comparing them solely on performance imprecise. Black Myth Wukong supports DLSS 3 and FSR 3, which we test on Nvidia and AMD cards, respectively, with the super-resolution sampling set to 100%. We then rerun these tests with frame generation on for all cards to gauge how this alters performance. This test notably does not show DLSS 4 or FSR 4 multi-frame-generation performance. With DLSS 4, Nvidia adopted a new AI model for DLSS work and AMD also made several changes to its fourth version of FSR technology. Of particular note is that these technologies can create more than one intermediary frame between each conventionally generated frame, though this has some trade-offs. To learn more about DLSS 4, check my article that closely examines DLSS 4 performance on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090. In this test, the RX 9070 performed about the same as the RTX 5070 with frame generation off but pulled ahead of the RTX 5070 with frame generation on. The RX 9070 was faster than the RX 7900 GRE in both tests, though. The Radeon RX 9070's performance in modern games that support ray tracing produced ups and downs. In Cyberpunk 2077, the RX 9070 was slightly slower than the GeForce RTX 5070 and lagged behind the RTX 5070 in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Returnal. However, the RTX 5070 never beat the RX 9070 by more than 10% in these titles, with its advantage typically in the single digits. That contrasts with the RX 9070's wins against the RTX 5070. The RX 9070 may not have beaten the RTX 5070 in every game, but when the RX 9070 was faster, it was typically ahead by double-digit percentages. The RX 9070's advantage varied from as low as 6% in F1 2024 to as high as 27% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. It was also faster in Far Cry 6. As for competing with other AMD cards, the last-generation Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 GRE were typically behind the RX 9070. And the RX 9070 XT was typically faster than the RX 9070, which makes sense. I didn't calculate the percentage differences between the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT across the board, but the RX 9070 XT was ahead by at least 18% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III at 4K and by 16% in the same game at 1080p. The RX 9070 XT's lead over the RX 9070 in other games looks roughly around these figures across the board. As those leads are greater than the 9% difference in price between these two GPUs, there's no question: The Radeon RX 9070 XT presents a better value and more frames per dollar than the RX 9070, assuming the pricing holds. Last generation, AMD's greatest strength was in games that didn't support ray tracing as its ray-tracing hardware was less potent than Nvidia's. Instead, the average AMD GPU seemed to have a bit more muscle when it came to more traditional gaming workloads like those that don't support ray tracing. This generation's situation appears to have been reversed, with the GeForce RTX 5070 performing better in Total War: Three Kingdoms than the Radeon RX 9070. The Radeon RX 9070 pulled ahead in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the 4K resolution, which shows that it can still be faster in older games. The RTX 5070 appeared slightly faster in this game at 1440p and 1080p, but the scores were realistically close enough to be a tie at those resolutions. Using a Kill-A-Watt power meter, we measured the power consumption of our graphics card test bed as a whole while running some key benchmarks on each of the graphics cards shown in the table. The Radeon RX 9070 consumed a bit more power in the Adobe Premiere Pro test than the RTX 5070, but this is made up for by the RX 9070's higher performance in that test. Gaming power consumption was also notably lower on the RX 9070 than the RTX 5070. Given the RX 9070 typically tied with or performed better than the RTX 5070, this suggests the RX 9070 is the more energy efficient of the two. The RX 9070's power consumption was also considerably better than the RX 9070 XT's, which is likely due in large part to its reduced clock speeds and slightly reduced shader count. The RX 9070 also stayed much cooler than the RTX 5070 during the testing process; the Sapphire's thermal solution performed better than Nvidia's Founders Edition cooler. For its $549 asking price, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 gives you lots of performance and realistically little to complain about. Sure, its AI performance lags behind Nvidia, but seriously, is that why you are buying a midrange graphics card? When it comes to gaming, the RX 9070 is usually just as fast as the RTX 5070 or a fair bit faster. It is slightly slower in a few games, but not by a meaningful amount, whereas the RX 9070's performance lead is more meaningful and noticeable when present. The Radeon RX 9070 goes a long way to replace AMD's aging Radeon RX 7900 GRE and Radeon RX 7900 XT, as it generally outpaces these cards. AMD only has one real issue as far as the RX 9070 goes: You can buy a Radeon RX 9070 XT for just $50 more. AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT is generally better and well worth the added cost if the two cards remain $50 apart or less. The RX 9070 is a solid buy, but it would be easier to recommend if it were priced a touch lower, like $499. At $549, the Radeon RX 9070 is a fine graphics card that is worth its asking price, but think long and hard and make sure you can't scrape together that extra $50 for the Editors' Choice-award-winning Radeon RX 9070 XT.
