AMD appears unlikely to sell reference Radeon RX 9070, RX 9070 XT GPUs

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Apparently, the reference we've been seeing in AMD's marketing is an "artistic render."

Radeon RX 9070 XT
(Image credit: AMD)

AMD will announce the highly anticipated Radeon RX 9070-series graphics cards on February 28, seven days from now, at 8 AM ET via its YouTube channel. Many users are looking forward to this launch, hoping the price-to-performance ratio will be more palatable and readily available for purchase.

AMD's marketing materials have included renders of what many thought would be the reference design for the Radeon RX 9070 or Radeon RX 9070 XT. However, in its latest banner, AMD clarified that the design is an "Artistic Render. Not Available for Purchase," which implies that the chipmaker will not release any 'Made by AMD' (MBA) models this generation. The move may prove to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there will be more silicon for AIB partners, but on the other hand, there may not be many options at MSRP.

AMD's partners often offer faster and better-cooled custom variants of the chipmaker's GPUs. However, some users still prefer the reference models over the custom variants. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean there won't be any GPUs with MSRP pricing, as all brands typically have budget-oriented models that prioritize simplicity and pricing over all the bells and whistles.

AMD has not officially revealed any specifications or pricing, but we've had our fair share of preliminary retailer listings. Last month, a Spanish retailer accidentally revealed Gigabyte's lineup with its pricing, including the 21% VAT applied in Spain. B&H also had a pre-order listing hinting at a launch date on January 23 (later taken down), and Amazon listings showed RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT for $649 and $749. This should be taken with a bag of salt, as it could all be placeholder pricing.

Asus showcased Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT variations under Prime and TUF Gaming editions at CES 2025, but no information about the GPUs was revealed. Earlier leaks hinted the RX 9070 series with PCIe 5.0 support, and it was rumored that the RX 9070 XT had 16GB VRAM on a 256-bit interface and 4,096 Stream Processors. AMD Radeon RX 9070 series is based on RDNA 4 architecture, which is said to have optimized compute units with upgraded AI and Ray Tracing accelerators and better media encoding.

With the reveal seven days away, we should see its specifications, MSRP pricing, and multiple variations from AIB partners. It is a good opportunity for AMD to capitalize on all the GeForce RTX 50-series woes, such as the missing ROPs, black screen issues, and melting 16-pin connectors.

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Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Contributing Writer

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh has been in the Indian PC hardware community since the early 2000s and has been building PCs, contributing to many Indian tech forums, & blogs. He operated Hardware BBQ for 11 years and wrote news for eTeknix & TweakTown before joining Tom's Hardware team. Besides tech, he is interested in fighting games, movies, anime, and mechanical watches.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • valthuer
    It will be very interesting to see how this new series performs, with Ray Tracing on.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    this amd gpu launch is a mess....and leaving it up to AIB's means like se seeing on green there wont be any near msrp gpu's. (they know hot items and will scalp price from the start)
    Reply
  • Ogotai
    hotaru251 said:
    this amd gpu launch is a mess
    um.. they havent launched any thing yet, have they ?? just announcements...
    Reply
  • Jabberwocky79
    "It is a good opportunity for AMD to capitalize on all the GeForce RTX 50-series woes, such as the missing ROPs, black screen issues, and melting 16-pin connectors."
    That statement would only be relevant if AMD was making an equal competitor to the 50 series GPUs released so far. But indications so far seem to suggest that they aren't, which is a crying shame.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    valthuer said:
    It will be very interesting to see how this new series performs, with Ray Tracing on.
    yes, because its important to put up an artificial barrier to performance for a grand total of 4 games anyone plays with ray tracing on, that they can actually tell it's on.

    all ray tracing is, is physx version 2. there were free software solutions that did this. nvidia took one, made some specialized hardware to encode the software solution and new software to interpret it and sell it back to people and make an artificial barrier for competition to make the sheep who have elevated nvidia to a status symbol in thier head feel better about paying 20% more for the same raster performance as team red.

    in another 3 years they'll have a new tech doing the same thing. stuff that was done just fine with free software, that they'll turn into a quasi hardware solution and sell back to devs in their dev tools so the devs get a less functional version of what they already were using...
    Reply
  • valthuer
    ingtar33 said:
    yes, because its important to put up an artificial barrier to performance for a grand total of 4 games anyone plays with ray tracing on, that they can actually tell it's on.

    all ray tracing is, is physx version 2. there were free software solutions that did this. nvidia took one, made some specialized hardware to encode the software solution and new software to interpret it and sell it back to people and make an artificial barrier for competition to make the sheep who have elevated nvidia to a status symbol in thier head feel better about paying 20% more for the same raster performance as team red.

    in another 3 years they'll have a new tech doing the same thing. stuff that was done just fine with free software, that they'll turn into a quasi hardware solution and sell back to devs in their dev tools so the devs get a less functional version of what they already were using...

    You don't seem to understand that RT is coming whether you like it or not. Developers will be using the technology as the standard so they can stop using baked in lighting and shadows which takes up a lot of time.

    It may not be for maybe two or more GPU generations, but RT will eventually become the standard lighting with no option to turn it off.

    Due to the lack of hardware that can run full RT at satisfactory framerates, developers are left to just halfway implement RT which many times doesn't improve graphics to a noticeable extent.

    Scream all you want about how RT doesn't make a difference, you will eventually see it no different than any other technology that has been implemented and become standard over the past 30 years.
    Reply
  • smogfactory
    valthuer said:
    You don't seem to understand that RT is coming whether you like it or not. Developers will be using the technology as the standard so they can stop using baked in lighting and shadows which takes up a lot of time.

    It may not be for maybe two or more GPU generations, but RT will eventually become the standard lighting with no option to turn it off.

    Due to the lack of hardware that can run full RT at satisfactory framerates, developers are left to just halfway implement RT which many times doesn't improve graphics to a noticeable extent.

    Scream all you want about how RT doesn't make a difference, you will eventually see it no different than any other technology that has been implemented and become standard over the past 30 years.
    Sure it's coming....one day. But not this gen and it certainly will not be the default for games for a long time to come. So yeah it is a stupid comparison to use as it currently is bad on both nvidia and amd, yes amd is worse.
    Reply
  • TesseractOrion
    hotaru251 said:
    this amd gpu launch is a mess....and leaving it up to AIB's means like se seeing on green there wont be any near msrp gpu's. (they know hot items and will scalp price from the start)
    Personally I think they may have played a blinder by waiting on Nvidia to mess up first, seeing the pricing and performance and then (hopefully) springing a nice surprise!

    Not long to wait now... but at least we know there is plenty of stock at retailers already and more piled up in warehouses ready to ship, unlike Nvidia...
    Reply
  • Mcnoobler
    valthuer said:
    You don't seem to understand that RT is coming whether you like it or not. Developers will be using the technology as the standard so they can stop using baked in lighting and shadows which takes up a lot of time.

    It may not be for maybe two or more GPU generations, but RT will eventually become the standard lighting with no option to turn it off.

    Due to the lack of hardware that can run full RT at satisfactory framerates, developers are left to just halfway implement RT which many times doesn't improve graphics to a noticeable extent.

    Scream all you want about how RT doesn't make a difference, you will eventually see it no different than any other technology that has been implemented and become standard over the past 30 years.
    They will need time. They are a few years back, and don't have the foresight to see beyond their own boot. No doubt it is right there though with new releases. The pattern is apparent, to those who can see a pattern.
    Reply
  • tamalero
    Im confused, since when AMD releases references by themselves?
    Its well known that their versions are always made by Sapphire.
    Reply