AMD RX 9070 XT vs. 9070: Can they deliver?

AMD’s RX 9070 and 9070 XT are almost here. After a strange non-announcement of these new cards at CES 2025 while many of the boards were on the show floor, it’s felt a long wait for their official unveiling. It’s almost here and the cards will be on sale shortly after. This leaves everyone on tenterhooks to find out how will they perform and can they beat the Nvidia competition?

If they can do well, though, the question then becomes which is the better option? The RX 9070 XT vs. 9070 battle of the bang for your buck is almost here.

Pricing and availability

The AMD RX 9070 XT and 9070 are both set to be officially unveiled and fully-detailed on February 28 — just one day away at the time of writing. Reviews will then drop the following week, on March 5, with the cards officially going on sale on March 6.

We don’t yet know much about pricing, although hopes are pinned on it undercutting the Nvidia competition and making graphics cards affordable and available again. However, VideoCardz did find an AMD slide that suggested both cards would at least be “under $700. That’s not the most exciting news ever, since it would suggest close to $700 for he XT version and something well north of $500 for the 9070.

Ideal world? The 9070 comes in under $500 and the 9070 XT more like $600, but we shall see. If AMD can get the price down low enough to undercut Nvidia’s MSRP pricing and go well beyond what has happened with scalper prices, AMD will be on to a winner, if not, it’s going to really struggle to make an impact.

Either way, though, the 9070 XT is going to be notable more expensive than the 9070. We just don’t know by how much just yet.

Specifications

AMD hasn’t officially released the specifications to everyone yet, but VideoCardz again has the inside line and got the official specs from AMD directly.

The AMD RX 9070 XT and 9070 aren’t too distinct from each other in most areas, with clock speed and power draw being the main dividers. They each sport the same GPU and the same quantity of memory, at the same speed, and with the same bus-width — so there’s plenty of VRAM to go around and lots of available bandwidth to both cards (though notably less than most of the Nvidia competition).

The 9070 XT has just over 14% more shader cores, which will help boost the higher-end card’s performance, but it’s the boost clocks which will be the most dramatic. That 450 MHz disparity (assuming the XT models can keep the GPU cool enough to maintain those kinds of clocks) should give the XT a real boost in gaming performance.

It also suggests, though, that these cards may be quite dependent on their cooling and available power to put their best foot forward. It could mean there’s lots of overclocking headroom under the right circumstances, though AMD may lock down the clock of the non-XT model to help separate it from the more expensive alternative.

Performance

This is one area that is unfortunately, a complete unknown for now. There are rumors that have suggested these cards will be more like the 7900 GRE, while others suggest they’ll land between the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT.

What no one is expecting is AMD to break new ground with these cards. The 7900 XTX is likely to remain AMD’s fastest graphics card for general rasterized games for the foreseeable future. However, in games where raytracing is a major element, or where AMD’s new FSR4 and frame generation technology are available, that could give the 9070 XT a boost beyond AMD’s best to date.

Look out for AMD’s first party benchmarks in the coming days, and third-party reviews in around a week’s time.

The waiting game

This AMD graphics card launch has the potential to go one of two ways: Either AMD does what everyone hopes and gives gamers graphics cards that are capable, affordable, and (most importantly) available in high-enough quantities that anyone who wants one can actually buy one. Or, it could release graphics cards that are priced too close to Nvidia to really standout, and without strong supply, they never really take off enough to shift AMD’s marginal marketshare.

With only around 10% of gamers using AMD graphics cards, AMD desperately needs a bigger install base for its GPUs. Taking a hit on pricing this generation, when Nvidia has so bungled the launch of its own next-gen designs, could be a real game changer for AMD. Here’s hoping it delivers.

We’ll update you with more news on how these cards perform when we can say more.