It’s difficult to shake the feeling of déjà vu from Radeon RX 9070. Not only is it eerily similar to RX 9070 XT but the difference in cost between those cards feels reminiscent of 7900 XT and 7700 XT launches past. In the face of such comparisons, though, the card proves its worth and will undoubtedly excite cash-strapped gamers.
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070
£524 / $549
Pros
- Great QHD and UHD performance
- Solid raster and ray tracing
- Healthy 16GB VRAM buffer
- FSR 4 upscaling is great
- Exceptionally cool under load
Cons
- RX 9070 XT is better value
- Few FSR 4 games for the moment
- Not as feature-rich as rivals
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Starting at £529 / $549, it’s clear that AMD hopes Radeon RX 9070 can usurp GeForce RTX 5070 as the midrange model of the moment. While it stops short of knockout blow to Nvidia’s bid for dominance, it still manages to do plenty of damage and steers the market in a healthier direction outside of its performance.
Specifications
Once more with feeling, it’s time to drum up the Club386 Table of Doom to glean how AMD has approached the sub-$600 through prior generation models compared to its new offering.
There are no direct predecessors to place side-by-side with Radeon RX 9070. In lieu of those, I’ve settled on RX 7900 GRE and RX 6800 as comparison points given how close their MSRPs are.
| Radeon | RX 9070 | RX 7900 GRE | RX 6800 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Released | March 2025 | Jul 2023* | Nov 2020 |
| Codename | RDNA 4 | RDNA 3 | RDNA 2 |
| GPU | Navi 48 | Navi 31 | Navi 21 |
| Process | TSMC N4P (4nm) | TSMC N5/6 (5/6nm) | TSMC N7 (7nm) |
| Transistors | 53.9bn | 57.7bn | 26.8bn |
| Die size | 357mm2 | 522mm² | 520mm² |
| Stream processors | 3,584 | 5,120 | 3,840 |
| Game clock | 2,070MHz | 1,880MHz | 1,815MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,520MHz | 2,245MHz | 2,105MHz |
| Compute units | 56 of 64 | 80 of 96 | 60 of 80 |
| RT accelerators | 56 (3rd Gen) | 80 (2nd Gen) | 60 (1st Gen) |
| AI accelerators | 112 (2nd Gen) | 160 (1st Gen) | – |
| Peak FP32 TFLOPS | 36 | 46 | 16 |
| Peak FP16 TFLOPS | 72 | 92 | 32 |
| ROPS | 128 | 192 | 96 |
| Memory | 16GB | 16GB | 16GB |
| Mem. type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| Mem. clock | 20Gb/s | 18Gb/s | 16Gb/s |
| Mem. interface | 256-bit (PCIe Gen 5) | 256-bit (PCIe Gen 4) | 256-bit (PCIe Gen 4) |
| Mem. bandwidth | 640GB/s | 576GB/s | 512GB/s |
| Board power | 220W | 260W | 250W |
| Launch MSRP | $549 | $549 | $579 |
Radeon RX 9070 rocks a cutdown Navi 48 GPU, forgoing eight of the chips maximum compute units for a total of 56. This naturally has knock-on effects for its AI and ray tracing accelerators, which fall to 112 and 56 apiece. Stream processors also take a hit too, shrinking to 3,584, making for a 12% hit across the board.
Though fewer in number, each of Radeon RX 9070’s subcomponents are more performant per unit than prior generations. This is of course thanks to architectural improvements. In addition to newer accelerator designs, the transistor density of RDNA 4 GPUs is much greater.
Both reference boost and game clocks are higher on Radeon RX 9070 than the likes of RX 7900 GRE or RX 6800, at 2,070MHz and 2,520MHz, respectively. Board power is lower to boot, at 220W. You’ll find plenty of partner designs on the market that take both of these specifications up a notch, though.
Packing 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM, Radeon RX 9070 doesn’t push the boat out in terms of buffer size and even rides on the same 256-bit bus as its forebears. Its memory is faster, though, running at 20Gb/s for a total bandwidth of 640GB/s. Taken as a whole, it’s a well-rounded setup.
Round the back of Radeon RX 9070 you’ll find an equal distribution of DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b ports, ensuring the graphics card will pair nicely with modern displays.
| Radeon RX | RX 9070 | RX 9070 XT | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Released | March 2025 | March 2025 | – |
| Codename | RDNA 4 | RDNA 4 | – |
| GPU | Navi 48 | Navi 48 | – |
| Process | TSMC N4P (4nm) | TSMC N4P (4nm) | – |
| Transistors | 53.9bn | 53.9bn | 1.00 |
| Die size | 357mm2 | 357mm2 | 1.00 |
| Stream processors | 3,584 | 4,096 | 0.88 |
| Game clock | 2,070MHz | 2,400MHz | 0.86 |
| Boost clock | 2,520MHz | 2,970MHz | 0.85 |
| Compute units | 56 (RDNA 4) | 64 (RDNA 4) | 0.88 |
| RT accelerators | 56 (3rd Gen) | 64 (3rd Gen) | 0.88 |
| AI accelerators | 112 (2nd Gen) | 128 (2nd Gen) | 0.88 |
| Peak FP32 TFLOPS | 36.1 | 48.7 | 0.74 |
| Peak FP16 TFLOPS | 72.3 | 97.3 | 0.74 |
| ROPS | 128 | 128 | 1.00 |
| Memory | 16GB | 16GB | 1.00 |
| Mem. type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | – |
| Mem. clock | 20Gb/s | 20Gb/s | 1.00 |
| Mem. interface | 256-bit (PCIe Gen 5) | 256-bit (PCIe Gen 5) | 1.00 |
| Mem. bandwidth | 640GB/s | 640GB/s | 1.00 |
| Board power | 220W | 304W | 0.72 |
| Launch MSRP | $549 | $599 | 0.92 |
It’s impossible to discuss Radeon RX 9070’s specs without the shadow of RX 9070 XT looming large over the conversation. AMD only has itself to blame for this given how closely it prices the two together, unfortunately to the detriment of the more affordable card.
Radeon RX 9070 is $50 cheaper than RX 9070 XT, translating into an 8% saving. Unfortunately, this short-term gain comes with losses in specifications that are puzzling in their extent. In addition to trading in 12% of Navi 48’s maximum compute units, clock speeds are 14-15% slower, while FP16 and FP32 performance tumbles down by 26%.
I feel as though AMD learned little if anything from its prior pricing gaffes, namely Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7700 XT. Even a small discount to £499 / $524 would help RX 9070 better differentiate itself from its sibling, not to mention make for an even cheekier response to GeForce RTX 5070.
If your budget absolutely cannot stretch beyond £524 / $549, though, don’t sweat about picking up this graphics card. It’s a solid option, and with availability proving problematic for rival offerings, a safe bet if you can find it in stock at the quoted MSRP. Speaking of which, let’s look at one now. Meet Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070.
Design
Those familiar with Pulse coolers will recognise the black-and-red colour scheme present on this Radeon RX 9070. Though the manufacturer doesn’t stray far from prior iterations, it does make several changes to the aesthetics and build of the cooler which result in an attractive final finish typical of Sapphire.
Black plastic makes up the majority of this graphics card’s shroud, save for its metal backplate which colour matches perfectly to the rest of the body. Together they create a rigid frame that feels reassuringly premium and heavy in the hand, weighing just over 1kg. It’s fairly slim too, measuring in 280mm (L) x 120.25mm (W) x 51.5mm (H), making for a a dual-slot design that will fit in almost every rig.
Stylistically, Sapphire puts a new spin on familiar elements. For instance, the brand’s trademark red ECG iconography makes a return but this time angles up towards the PCIe interface rather than across the backplate. While I prefer the older approach, there’s no way it could work here owing to the GPU die’s shift away from the centre of the PCB so it’s a fair compromise.
This generation of Pulse rocks a sparse side profile, showing off almost all of the card’s heatsink save for small wedges of plastic at either end and one in the centre that masks a support column behind it. Sapphire keeps brand representation low-key here, adorning the lower-half of the cooler with a Radeon logo as well as its own in red, sans any RGB.
Unlike its Nitro+ sibling, Pulse opts for dual 8-pin PCIe headers instead of a single 12V2x6 port. I’ve grown accustomed to the convenience of the latter cable but there’s no issue opting for tried and tested methods. Sapphire has recessed the connectors on this card, which can make installation a bit more fiddly but does help with clearance.
Pulse has a pretty face, sporting abstract red lines spread across the frontplate in a manner pleasing to the eye. They evoke thoughts of veins, which seems wholly appropriate given the name of the cooler. The silver centre of its two fans provides a welcome spot of contrast against the black body, whose various ridges provide definition to its surface.
I also much prefer the smoother stylings of Sapphire’s new ‘AeroCurve’ fan blades compared to the ridged designs of yore. The company claims this new approach reduces air friction and increases RPM range while maintaining a low noise profile and solid cooling efficiency. These blowers also mark the first time a Pulse card’s fans come with dual-ball bearings, a welcome upgrade that should improve their lifespan.
Pulse provides everything Radeon RX 9070 needs and does so to a high standard. This is Sapphire’s most affordable cooler, hitting that all-important MSRP. The company does offer more premium models too, namely its pearlescent Pure series alongside its top-of-the-line Nitro+ designs which are worth a look if you’ve got some extra cash to spend.
Performance
Radeon RX 9070 joins RX 9070 XT in becoming the latest entry to the parade of graphics cards to demonstrate their worth in the proving grounds that are the Club386 test benches. As a reminder, these rigs feature Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPUs which packs plenty of processing power to keep GPU bottlenecks at bay.
Our 7950X3D Test PCs
Club386 carefully chooses each component in a test bench to best suit the review at hand. When you view our benchmarks, you’re not just getting an opinion, but the results of rigorous testing carried out using hardware we trust.
Shop Club386 test platform components:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Motherboard: MSI MEG X670E ACE
Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420 A-RGB
Memory: 64GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR5
Storage: 2TB WD_Black SN850X NVMe SSD
PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1,300W
Chassis: Fractal Design Torrent Grey
AMD advertises its Radeon RX 9070 Series as “built for 4K gaming” so I’ll be putting that claim to the test in the benchmarks below. Of course, you’ll also find frame rates for other resolutions, namely FHD (1080p) and QHD (1440p) alongside other performance tests.
Application & AI
Radeon RX 9070 trades blows with GeForce RTX 5070 across 3DMark, breathing down its rival’s neck in Speed Way and claiming a confident victory in Steel Nomad. These results suggest the card is a dab hand at rasterised rendering and keeps pace when you want to call on its ray tracing capabilites.
A promising baseline from these synthetic benchmarks but it’s frame rates in real-world tests that’ll truly test the mettle of Radeon RX 9070 and its competitors.
Radeon RX 9070 manages an admirable half precision score of 46,282, creating healthy distance between it and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super. Nonetheless, Blackwell claims victory in Geekbench AI.
Even with a win under its belt, RTX 5070’s lead of 2,161 should raise eyebrows at Team Green HQ. Don’t forget, these are the results of AMD’s second generation AI accelerators going up against Nvidia’s fifth generation Tensor cores.
While AMD has clearly made strides in the realms of AI elsewhere, the company still has plenty of work left to do to improve its performance in LLMs (Large Language Models). Radeon RX 9070 is considerably better at running Llama 3.1 locally than RX 7800 XT, demonstrating a decent generational uplift, but it’s still miles behind GeForce RTX 5070.
Gaming
Impressively, Radeon RX 9070 offers performance similar to RX 7900 XT and even bests GeForce RTX 5070 Ti across all three resolutions in Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Weighing it up against GeForce RTX 5070, it enjoys a decent lead of 8% at FHD. Turn up the resolution though and you’re looking at 16% uplifts at QHD, rising to 18% at UHD. Radeon RX 9070 is expectedly slower than its XT sibling, to the tune of ~10%.
Four frames per second at most separate Radeon RX 9070 and GeForce RTX 5070 in Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. Regardless of resolution, though, Nvidia’s contender emerges the faster of the two cards however slightly. Compared to Radeon RX 9070 XT, it’s only 8-10% behind.
Radeon RX 9070 makes GeForce RTX 5070 sweat in Forza Motorsport, as the gap between the two pixel pushers is once again made up of four frames at FHD and QHD. At UHD, it narrows further to a single frame.
Given Nvidia’s track record of ray tracing superiority this is an uncomfortable result for Team Green. So far, Radeon RX 9070 has largely kept pace if not exceeded GeForce RTX 5070. If ever there was a place where the midrange Blackwell GPU could secure a lead it was here.
Bloodied but not beaten, Radeon RX 9070 digs deep and pulls out some clear wins in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Its ability to keep GeForce RTX 5070 at bay diminishes as resolutions increase but the card never allows its rival to exceed it.
Radeon RX 9070 XT similarly declines in splendour as the battle shifts from FHD through to UHD. As the two fatigue in parallel, RX 9070 finds itself 7-15% behind its fellow RDNA 4 GPU.
Making short work of Rainbow Six Extraction, Radeon RX 9070 is one smooth operator for its price point. It leaves GeForce RTX 5070 in the dust at FHD, charging ahead with an 11% advantage in average frame rates. There’s no respite for its rival at QHD or UHD either, besting it at these resolutions too by 11-14%.
In this final shootout, Radeon RX 9070 trails RX 9070 XT by 16% at QHD and UHD. Performance differences shrink to 4% at FHD but this is less in part to due differences in graphical grunt and more indicative of a bottleneck elsewhere.
| Average QHD performance | |
|---|---|
| RX 7800 XT to RX 9070 | +22% |
| RTX 3090 to RX 9070 | +14% |
| RTX 4070 Super to RX 9070 | +9% |
| RTX 5070 to RX 9070 | +6% |
| RTX 4070 Ti Super to RX 9070 | -1% |
| RX 7900 XT to RX 9070 | -6% |
| RX 9070 XT to RX 9070 | -12% |
| RTX 5070 Ti to RX 9070 | -13% |
| RTX 4080 Super to RX 9070 | -17% |
| RX 7900 XTX to RX 9070 | -18% |
| RTX 5080 to RX 9070 | -23% |
Averaging out performance at QHD, Radeon RX 9070 manages some surprising feats. Most pertinent and important among them is a 6% lead over GeForce RTX 5070. Coming 13% behind RTX 5070 Ti is nothing to scoff at given the price differences between them.
Looking to prior generation offerings, Radeon RX 9070 is a healthy 22% ahead of RX 7800 XT. It’s not quite a 1:1 replacement for RX 7900 XT but it’s not far off at just 6% behind the previously $900 graphics card.
Finally, falling 12% behind Radeon RX 9070 XT is right in line with RX 9070’s shortfall in compute units. This sort of linear scaling is fine in of itself but price puts a dampener on this comparison as highlighted earlier. To reiterate, a price cut to £499 / $524 would do wonders here.
Frame Generation
There are no new additions or tweaks to FSR Frame Generation following the launch of Radeon RX 9000 Series. AMD is launching FSR 4 in tandem with its new cards but its improvements exclusively concern upscaling. It currently isn’t possible to use this new version in Cyberpunk 2077 but performance differences between it and FSR 3.0 are minor. Without further ado, let’s get to drag racing RX 9070 in a path traced Night City.
Radeon RX 9070 joins RX 9070 XT and GeForce RTX 5070 in mustering the rendering might to punch north of 30fps on average at native FHD. However, all three cards crumble under the weight of QHD and UHD with Nvidia’s offering fairing particularly badly at the latter resolution likely due to its 12GB buffer.
Engaging DLSS and FSR nets healthier frame rates, as Radeon RX 9070 pushes beyond 60fps at FHD while its competitors push past 70fps. The upscalers, running in their highest quality preset, also create enough breathing room to facilitate a 30fps at QHD. Meanwhile, UHD remains off limits but dropping to a less-demanding base resolution could fix this.
Coupling upscaling with frame generation, Radeon RX 9070 XT pulls ahead of the other two cards. It’s a close call for second place but an additional five frames per second secures silver for GeForce RTX 5070 over RX 9070. Of course, Multi Frame Generation sees Nvidia’s champion rush ahead with no ready response from AMD’s camp.
FSR 4
AMD finally embraces the power of AI via FSR 4, following in the footsteps of Nvidia and Intel. This latest version of Team Red’s offers a host of improvements over prior iterations, all in the service of improving visual fidelity. In short, it’s a necessary upgrade that gives Nvidia DLSS a run for its money.
You’ll find my FSR 4 explainer and examination of the feature in action in my Radeon RX 9070 XT review. For the sake of brevity, I’ll now touch on its performance footprint running on RX 9070 versus FSR 3.1.
| Settings | FSR 4 (Avg.) | FSR 3.1 (Avg.) |
|---|---|---|
| 4K Quality | 61fps | 64fps |
| 4K Quality + FG | 93fps | 99fps |
| 4K Performance | 85fps | 88fps |
| 4K Performance + FG | 120fps | 123fps |
Benchmarking the opening cutscene in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart using both FSR 4 and 3.1 indicates the newer upscaler is heavier on Radeon RX 9070 albeit only slightly. A 3-6fps penalty seems a reasonable trade-off for a vastly superior final image. Of course, this will vary game-to-game, but I don’t foresee its footprint growing much beyond this example.
Conclusion
Despite the uphill battle Radeon RX 9070 faces in sharing its cost category with a competitor and a sibling, it still manages to leave a mark on the midrange market. It packs enough rasterisation performance to either outperform GeForce RTX 5070 at best or be a handful of frames behind at worst. Combine this with a larger 16GB frame buffer and it becomes an attractive mainstream option
I still maintain that it’s worth saving up for Radeon RX 9070 XT to maximise value but there’s no harm in settling for the more affordable alternative. Should AMD drop the cost of RX 9070 to £499 / $524, if not lower, then this minor dilemma will evaporate. I don’t believe we’ll see post-launch price cuts similar to prior launches simply because I expect demand to remain healthy, particularly when it’s nigh on impossible to get a GeForce RTX 5070.
For those with no more than £529 / $550 to spend, Radeon RX 9070 comes heartily recommended, particularly the Sapphire Pulse model I’ve gone hands-on with here. Here’s hoping AMD can continue this momentum with its RX 9060 Series, keeping Nvidia on its toes and providing vital value to the market through cracking competition.
