Something to look forward to: AMD’s naming scheme for the upcoming Radeon RX 9070 series along with the company’s various comments and statements would appear to confirm that these graphics cards will be squarely aimed at the mid-range market. However, as we await for final specifications and pricing, new rumors suggest that Team Red may be ready to aggressively undercut Nvidia’s competing GeForce RTX 50 offerings.
According to IT Home, AMD aims to set highly competitive prices for the upcoming Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, potentially accelerating the retirement of the RX 7800 XT. Depending on performance benchmarks, a sub-$600 price tag could signal serious competition against Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti.
Currently, AMD’s best GPU in this price range is the Radeon RX 7800 XT, which launched in 2023 at $499. Reports indicate that the company initially planned to cease production in the third quarter of this year but may have decided to move up that timeline to January in order to shift focus to the RX 9000 series more quickly.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT is expected to be based on the Navi 48 GPU, rumored to feature 4,096 cores, a 2.97GHz boost clock, 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a 256-bit bus, and 640GB/s of memory bandwidth. The standard RX 9070 is also anticipated to include 16GB of VRAM.
Reports suggest that the RX 9070 XT could debut at a $599 MSRP, undercutting Nvidia’s $749 RTX 5070 Ti by $150. If these rumors hold, the RX 9070 will likely be slightly cheaper than the $549 RTX 5070.
However, AMD’s competitiveness will entirely depend on real-world performance results, and those are currently only available in vague snapshots. IGN reported impressive rasterization performance from the RX 9070 in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, while Hardware Unboxed highlighted substantial improvements in upscaling image quality.
Comprehensive testing is still needed to determine whether the RTX 50 series’ transition to GDDR7 VRAM – offering increased memory speed and bandwidth – will provide a meaningful advantage over the Radeon’s GDDR6. AMD’s claims of dramatic ray tracing performance improvements also remain unverified.
Historically, AMD’s GPUs have lagged behind Nvidia’s in hardware-accelerated ray tracing. However, numerous recent titles – such as God of War Ragnarök, Stalker 2, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II – run well without it. That said, ray tracing bound games are becoming more prevalent, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Doom: The Dark Ages.
Nvidia is expected to launch the RTX 5070 Ti on February 20, while AMD has confirmed plans to release the RX 9070 series in early March. Additionally, rumors suggest that the RTX 5070, 5060 Ti, and 5060 could follow soon after.
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