Latest news with #RadeonRX9070XT
Digital Trends
6 days ago
- Digital Trends
My favorite GPU this year is also one you absolutely shouldn't buy right now
When it comes to some of the best graphics cards that have been released in 2025 so far, I have a strong favorite — and it's not one I thought would end up at the top of my list going into this year. I'm talking about the current AMD flagship, the Radeon RX 9070 XT. However, as much as I love the GPU, I still don't think you should buy it right now — and although it pains me to do it, I'm about to show you why not (and what you can buy instead). The RX 9070 XT is a fantastic GPU In a year when both Nvidia and AMD launched new graphics cards, there's always quite a bit to choose from. However, going into this generation, I knew that AMD would be trying to stick to mainstream GPUs. Nvidia's RTX 5090 was bound to remain uncontested, and I thought that the RTX 5080 and the RTX 5070 Ti wouldn't have too much to worry about, either. I was wrong, and for once, I was happy to be. Recommended Videos Upon launch, the RX 9070 XT was said to deliver RTX 5070 Ti-level performance for $150 less, and I was fully on board with that. Benchmarks quickly proved that AMD wasn't throwing around empty promises, either. The GPU can stand its ground, perhaps more so than I expected it to, making it more of an upper-midrange option than a true mainstream card. Sure, AMD wasn't trying to destroy Nvidia — but it tried, and succeeded, in making a GPU that most gamers can want. Depending on the benchmark and the reviewer, you'll see the RX 9070 XT falling behind the last-gen flagship, the RX 7900 XTX, in pure rasterization. But in ray tracing? The RX 9070 XT beats the previous-gen halo card, and that's despite its lower price point. Let's compare to Nvidia. As Nvidia remains ever the GPU behemoth, it's no wonder that many gamers still default to Team Green — but on paper, AMD's option is better here. Most benchmarks pin the RX 9070 XT somewhere within 10% of the RTX 5070 Ti, and up to 15% faster than the RTX 5070. Not a bad score for something that was meant to cater to the mainstream market. I've even seen the RX 9070 XT nearly catch up to the RTX 5080 when overclocked. Back when the RX 9070 XT launched, I told people that if I had to buy a graphics card this year, it'd have been AMD. Unfortunately, I had to change my mind soon after the GPU hit the shelves. There's one major problem It's all about the money, I'm afraid. No single GPU exists in a vacuum. It's important to know that. Even if the card in question is fantastic, it's always going to be compared against other GPUs, and I'm not just talking about the performance. I'm talking about the price, and this is where, months after launch, the AMD RX 9070 XT still leaves a lot to be desired. AMD launched the RX 9070 XT at $599, and the RX 9070 at $549. I've seen people complaining about the price, but personally, it was better than I dared to hope for. AMD managed to undercut Nvidia in a major way with the RX 9070 XT, and while the non-XT version was doomed to a less successful life due to the skewed price-to-performance ratio, the RX 9070 XT had every chance of becoming a fan favorite. Well, what do you know: AMD itself admitted that the RX 9070 XT was selling faster than the manufacturers could keep up with. AMD delivered a good product, and the market was ready for it. Unfortunately, the MSRP didn't last. Demand today for our new @amdradeon cards has been phenomenal. We are working with our AIBs to replenish stock at our partners ASAP in the coming days and weeks. MSRP pricing (excluding region specific tariffs and/or taxes) will continue to be encouraged beyond today so don't… — Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) March 6, 2025 Although AMD's Frank Azor said back in March that MSRP pricing will continue to be encouraged, the current state of the market has won. Scanning Amazon for the RX 9070 XT shows me a few models in the $720 to $820 range. At that price, the advantage AMD has over Nvidia is all but gone, which is why it's hard to recommend the RX 9070 XT right now. If I had to recommend one, it'd be the cheapest option from Asus, which you can check out here. It's still $120 more than the MSRP, but it is cheaper than the RTX 5070 Ti, if only slightly. I can't, and don't, blame AMD here at all. The GPU market is rough, and most graphics cards are selling above their MSRPs. In fact, if a GPU sells at MSRP, chances are that the demand for it might be lower — take from that what you will. AMD doesn't suffer from a lack of demand. If anything, it's the exact opposite. When the GPU flew off the shelves on launch day, I hoped that it'd be back in great quantities somewhere down the line. I was partly right — it is back, and readily available, but sadly, hardly any cheaper. You still have to pay a premium if you want to own AMD's best GPU. What can you buy instead? The sad reality of the current GPU market is that many graphics cards sell above their MSRPs. However, there are a few options for gamers who don't want to pay too much of a premium. One GPU I keep recommending this year is the Intel Arc B580. Unfortunately, it's not at all of the same caliber as the RX 9070 XT, but if you're looking for a budget option to add to your build, it'll do the trick nicely. If we're looking at cards that offer similar performance to the RX 9070 XT, we're really considering options like Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5070, and perhaps the RTX 5060 Ti. From AMD itself, there's the RX 9070 non-XT, but also the RX 7800 XT, RX 7900 XT or GRE, and the RX 7900 XTX. The last-gen options will offer worse ray tracing performance, so that's something to keep in mind. Last-gen availability is spotty, and cards are often overpriced. If you want to try to get one of those, I recommend the second-hand market instead. But let's say you want a new GPU. What do you do? If you want to keep the same level of performance, I would probably bite the bullet and get the RTX 5070 Ti. It's slightly faster than the RX 9070 XT, offers better ray tracing performance, and grants you access to Nvidia's latest DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation tech. I found the RTX 5070 Ti for $790 on Amazon, so check it out. That's $40 above the MSRP, which is not too terrible for current pricing trends. Don't mind lowering your performance-related expectations? AMD's more recent RX 9060 XT 16GB is an option — just make sure you buy the 16GB version and not the one with just eight gigs of VRAM. I found this Sapphire RX 9060 XT 16GB at $380. Nvidia's 16GB RTX 5060 Ti is considerably pricier, so if you're buying something cheaper, make sure to choose AMD here.
Business Mayor
26-04-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
GPU prices are out of control again
Every so often, Central Computers — one of the last remaining dedicated Silicon Valley computer stores — lets subscribers know it's managed to obtain a small shipment of AMD graphics cards. Today, it informed me that I could now purchase a $600 Radeon RX 9070 XT for $850 — a $250 markup. It's not alone. I just checked every major US retailer and street prices on eBay, and I regret to inform you: the great GPU shortage has returned. Many AMD cards are being marked up $100, $200, $250, even $280. The street price of an Nvidia RTX 5080 is now over $1,500, a full $500 higher than MSRP. And an RTX 5090, the most powerful consumer GPU? You can't even get the $2,000 card for $3,000 today. Here, I've built tables to show you: You shouldn't just blame tariffs for these price hikes. In early March, we found retailers were already scalping their supposedly entry-level MSRP models of the new AMD graphics cards. Nor is this likely to just be high demand, given how few cards are changing hands on eBay: only around 1,100 new Nvidia GPUs, and around 266 new AMD GPUs were listed there over the past 30 days. Here's a deeper dive on the 'MSRP' models of the AMD cards, which were all originally listed at $549 or $599: I've focused this table on Newegg and Micro Center since they carry more models than any other retailer, though I also spotted 'MSRP' 9070 XT cards at $800 and $850 at Amazon today, and an $830 card at Best Buy. Otherwise, these are the new sticker prices, not necessarily attainable prices, as most were out of stock. Read More Wordle today: Answer and hints for January 23 (#583) From December 2020 to July 2022, I periodically tracked the prices of game consoles and GPUs during the covid-19 pandemic, when they were incredibly expensive to obtain. At one point, some GPUs were worth triple their MSRP. I'd love to hear from Verge subscribers in particular: is this a valuable service we should continue in the tariff era? Or do you just want to know when it's safe to enter the water again? READ SOURCE
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AMD's GPU Market Share in Japan Reaches Record 45% Amid Supply Challenges
AMD's (AMD, Financials) Radeon graphics processing units reached a 45% retail market share in Japan, the highest the company has recorded in the country, AMD Japan Marketing Manager Yoshiaki Sato said. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with AMD. Sato said AMD wants to raise its share to 70%, but doing this would need a dependable supply chain. With board partners ASRock, Asus, Gigabytes, MSI, PowerColor, and Sapphire present at an event in Akihabara, Tokyo, the firm displayed its Radeon RX 9000 GPUs and Ryzen 9000X3D AMD blamed great demand for supply shortages, board members mentioned manufacturing limitations as a barrier. Depending on the vendor, the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price of $599 for the Radeon RX 9070 XT has been retailing for as high as $ Steam Hardware Survey indicates that AMD's worldwide market share, including integrated GPUs, was 11.5% in February. Given the RDNA 4 architecture's release earlier this month, the 45% number in Japan most certainly represents AMD's lesser position in the discrete GPU market compared to Nvidia (NVDA, Financials), Sato said the business has not traditionally sold as many GPUs. To maintain wins in Japan, AMD could have to boost manufacturing capacity or use incentives. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
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.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AMD Launches Radeon RX 9000 Series Graphics Cards With AI and Raytracing Enhancements
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Financials) introduced its Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards, incorporating its new RDNA 4 architecture. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with AMD. Designed for high-performance gaming, the release comprises the Radeon RX 9070 XT and models. Improved AI and raytracing accelerators together with 16GB of GDDR6 RAM define the graphics cards. While the RX 9070 XT gives a 40% performance gain, AMD says the RX 9070 delivers a 20% performance jump over the previous RX 7900 GRE at 1440p resolution. According to AMD, the revised raytracing accelerators quadruple throughput per computing unit compared to RDNA 3 and AI accelerators provide up to eight times INT8 throughput for machine learning jobs. With 75 more anticipated later in 2025 and over 30 games at launch supported, the business also unveiled FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4), a machine learning-based upscaling engine. The HYPR-RX Suite combines Boost, Anti-Lag, Fluid Motion Frames 2.1, and Rendering Super Resolution. With 8K resolution at 144Hz refresh rates, 12-bit HDR, and complete REC2020 Color Space, AMD said its Radiance Display Engine supports DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b. Additionally supporting AMD FreeSync technology, which runs with more than 4,000 monitors for better gaming performance, are the new GPUs. Radeon RX 9070 XT contains 64 processing units, 2.4 GHz game clock, and boost frequency of 3.0 GHz. The RX 9070 has 56 compute units, 2.1 GHz game clock, and 2.5 GHz boost clock. Both cards include 256-bit 64MB Infinity Cache memory interfaces. While the RX 9070 has a TBP of 220 watts and will sell for $549, AMD said the RX 9070 has a total board power of 304 watts and would be marketed at $599. Manufacturers including Acer, ASRock, ASUS, Gigabytes, PowerColor, Sapphire, Vastarmor, XFX, and Yeston will have the cards available beginning March 6, 2025. Emphasizing the price-to-performance ratio and integration of AI and raytracing capabilities, the firm said it seeks to position the RX 9000 series competitively against Nvidia and Intel. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
