It’s almost time for AMD’s next-gen graphics cards to hit the market and while we don’t have much information on these cards officially, plenty of leaks have revealed crucial information about these GPUs. From architecture to performance and possible pricing, there are various rumors and discussions going around the AMD RDNA 4 GPU lineup, which we will be covering in this article in detail.
AMD is apparently going with the RX 9000 naming convention and is skipping the RX 8000 naming for the upcoming generation. That said, this doesn’t affect the specs or performance of these GPUs but clears the confusion about the GPU model names for easier reference. The earliest leaks have pointed towards the possible flagship GPU in the lineup, known as the Radeon RX 9070 XT, and here is everything from specs, performance, price, and release date you should know about it.
AMD RDNA 4 Architecture and Radeon RX 9070 XT
The next-gen AMD RX 9000 GPUs will be powered by the RDNA 4 architecture, the successor to the RDNA 3 and RDNA 3.5 powering the RX 7000 as well as Zen 5 integrated graphics respectively. AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture is reportedly utilizing TSMC’s N4P process node to offer better performance and efficiency. Unlike RDNA 3, the RDNA 4 will utilize a monolithic die structure instead of the chiplet design. This change should bring enhancements in both performance and latency.
While there isn’t much about the RDNA 4 from AMD itself, various reports suggest that RDNA 4 will be incredibly powerful in both rasterization and ray tracing. As per AMD’s CEO Lisa Su,
In addition to a strong increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities,
That said, even though RDNA 4 is more powerful than RDNA 3, AMD isn’t expected to push its potential to the max since it will only deliver two GPU dies for the RX 9000 lineup. These are the Navi 48 and Navi 44, the former being more powerful than the latter, which is unlike what AMD followed with the naming of the GPU die in the previous generation.
The upcoming Radeon RX 9070 XT is expected to be based on the Navi 48 die and will utilize the full GPU, which has an area of 240 mm2. As per some reports, the RX 9070 XT is going to be the flagship GPU and is aimed at delivering performance equivalent to upper mid-range GPUs from its rival, NVIDIA.
Specifications
The Radeon RX 9070 XT is supposedly the most powerful graphics card based on the RDNA 4 architecture. It’s not yet known whether AMD has any plans to release any GPU faster than the RX 9070 XT but at the moment, we didn’t hear about any other faster die than the Navi 48. Considering this in mind, one shouldn’t expect the RX 9070 XT to go against NVIDIA’s upcoming RTX 50 series high-end cards or even the Ada high-end GPUs such as the RTX 4090.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT is reported to feature a 256-bit memory bus and 16GB GDDR6 VRAM from Micron. Unlike NVIDIA, AMD isn’t going to equip the RDNA 4 discrete GPUs with the latest GDDR7 VRAM and hence, the total memory bandwidth will be much lower. Still, as the memory speed is said to operate at 20 Gbps, the total memory bandwidth will be up to 693 GB/s, which is noticeably better than its predecessors.
The Navi 48 die will bring up to 64 Compute Units and this means 4096 Stream Processors on the RX 9070 XT. The clock speeds are rumored to hit up to 3.1 GHz and the default TDP rating will be 260W. This is for the reference edition but the custom AIB cards can reach higher frequencies and can consume up to 330W. The specs are subject to change since nothing is official but based on the leaks, most of them will be quite close to what we have stated here.
Specs Summary:
- Architecture: RDNA 4
- GPU: Navi 48
- SPs: 4096
- RT Cores: 64
- Base Clock: 2.5 GHz
- Boost Clock: 3.1 GHz
- Interface: PCI-E 5.0
- VRAM: 16GB GDDR6, 256-bit, 20 Gbps
- Memory Bandwidth: 640 GB/s
- Texture Fillrate: 783.4 GTexels/s
- Pixel Fillrate: 195.8 GPixel/s
- TDP: 260W (Reference), Up to 330W (Custom)
Performance
Earlier it was believed that the RX 9070 XT would go against the RTX 4080 GPU but the recent benchmarks show that it is slightly above the Radeon RX 7900 GRE from the previous lineup. In simple words, it’s a successor to the RX 7800 XT or the RX 7900 GRE and this will be decided according to the price.
In another synthetic benchmark (Time Spy), the RX 9070 XT was barely 2% faster than the RX 7900 GRE and was noticeably slower than the RX 7900 XT. It scored 22,894 points while the RX 7900 XT delivered 27,044 points, which puts the RX 9070 XT around 14% slower than the RX 7900 XT. This is a much lower performance number than the RTX 4080, which is around 4% faster than the 7900 XT in Time Spy.
In another recently leaked benchmark, the Radeon RX 9070 XT came out on par with the RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4070 Ti Super. This was the 3DMark Speed Way test, where it delivered 6345 points. In another test called 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, the RX 9070 XT delivered 14448 points, which was even higher than the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super. It should be kept in mind that these are subject to change as the GPU currently doesn’t boast the latest drivers.
The gaming benchmarks aren’t yet here and the 3DMark synthetic scores may not accurately translate to such performance in games but it’s unlikely that the RX 9070 XT is going to surpass the RTX 4080 or RTX 4080 Super. However, according to one report, the RX 9070 XT is within 5% of the RTX 4080 performance in select titles. This is still not confirmed due to the absence of evidence but could be possible as well.
Price and Release Date
The official MSRP of the Radeon RX 9070 XT isn’t yet available publicly but as per some rumors, it is expected that the Navi 48-based Radeon RX 9070 XT will cost $479 but the AIB editions will start at $500+. This was seen in recent retail listings where the AIB editions were over $549. Once again, this is just a rumor and nothing has been confirmed yet.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT is expected to be revealed at CES 2025, and at the same time, AMD is going to reveal the FSR 4 and Ryzen 9000X3D processors. This report has been confirmed by a reliable leaker and since most hardware vendors including NVIDIA, are launching their cutting-edge hardware at CES, expect AMD to launch its RDNA 4 discrete GPU lineup in the early January CES event.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT: What to Expect?
Based on the available information on the specs, performance, and pricing of the Radeon RX 9070 XT, one shouldn’t have high expectations from the card. Even though the architecture has been improved, the pricing remains a challenging part for AMD to succeed against NVIDIA. If RX 9070 XT goes live at $599 or $649 while its performance is barely higher than RX 7900 GRE, it is DOA.
If the price remains $499 at max, it may seem like a satisfactory option but since Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7900 GRE are now available for lower than their launch MSRP, it could be hard to convince the consumers to buy the RX 9070 XT. On the flip side, if the performance comes closer to RTX 4080, the $649 price tag will be appealing. Nonetheless, not much has been improved in its specs compared to its predecessors and it needs to be priced competitively to gain an advantage over NVIDIA.
