AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT performance estimates leaked: 42% to 66% faster than Radeon RX 7900 GRE

AMD
(Image credit: AMD)

AMD reportedly held a press briefing and disclosed more information about its upcoming Radeon RX 9000-series graphics processors as well as the RDNA 4 architecture. Perhaps the most important part was the disclosure of AMD's official performance numbers of the new Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card that appeared to be significantly ahead of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, according to the allegedly official numbers published by VideoCardz.

In fact, AMD claims that the upcoming Radeon RX 9070 XT is 42% – 168% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE at a 4K resolution with 'ultra' quality settings across over 30 games. The Radeon RX 9070 XT outperforms the RX 7900 GRE by an average of 38% at 1440p and 42% at 2160p. However with certain titles that rely on ray tracing more than others — such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Hitman 3 — performance gains reach 164% –168%, again according to the numbers published by VideoCardz.

Games with ray tracing tend to see the biggest increases, emphasizing AMD's RDNA 4 advances in handling RT workloads. Titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, F1 24, and Hitman 3 show the strongest performance jumps of 56% to 66%, which clearly makes the new Radeon RX 9070-series offerings strong contenders to sit amongst the best graphics cards in the coming quarters.

When it comes to the performance difference between the Radeon RX 9070 XT and the Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT), the delta averages between 16.1% at 1440p Ultra Settings and 18.3% at 2160p Ultra Settings across the tested games, according to AMD. Yet, the Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) still delivers a 20% performance boost at 1440p and a 21% higher performance at 2160p over the Radeon RX 7900 GRE.

AMD admitted that it did not have a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for comparison, so it did not compare its new flagship against some of Nvidia's most wanted parts of today. The company did not explain why it decided not to compare its upcoming Radeon RX 9070 XT against its existing Radeon RX 7900 XTX flagship, but stuck to the cut-down Radeon RX 7900 GRE. The latter has around 25% lower compute performance compared to the range-topping Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but also has 16GB of memory onboard, whereas the range-topping board carries 24GB of GDDR6 VRAM.

Unlike AMD, Nvidia uses upscaling technologies like frame generation to demonstrate performance improvements over the previous generation, so the red company gains some kudos. As a result, AMD has chosen to focus on native rendering performance and ray tracing, so performance gains are quite real. More details will, of course, be shared on February 28 when AMD officially presents its Radeon RX 9070-series products.

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Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • -Fran-
    If they're keen* on comparing it to the 7900GRE, then does that mean it'll be hovering around the same MSRP? Would that be a reasonable assumption?

    The Launch MSRP of the 7900GRE, for comparison, was $550. If AMD does indeed launch the 9070XT at that price, that's a no-arguments winner this generation.

    Come on AMD, you said you wanted market share. This is it.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Gururu
    Good luck with that since they aren't doing a FE-type of version. All AIB I understand.
    Reply
  • Jagar123
    -Fran- said:
    If they're keen* on comparing it to the 7900GRE, then does that mean it'll be hovering around the same MSRP? Would that be a reasonable assumption?

    The Launch MSRP of the 7900GRE, for comparison, was $550. If AMD does indeed launch the 9070XT at that price, that's a no-arguments winner this generation.

    Come on AMD, you said you wanted market share. This is it.

    Regards.
    I certainly hope that is what this means. I was hoping for it to come in at $499 but I can see myself paying $550 for this performance level. I am cautiously optimistic for this release.
    Reply
  • Bikki
    Bikki said:
    "AMD claims that the upcoming Radeon RX 9070 XT is 42% – 168% faster...
    performance gains reach 164% –168%, again according to the numbers published by VideoCardz."

    It is not 168% faster but 68% faster max (168% of 9700 GRE, refer to VideoCardz chart).
    Reply
  • ezst036
    And no melting connectors.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    Seems a comparison to the current AMD flagship GPU (RX 7900 XTX) would have been more appropriate given a new generation of product.
    Reply
  • helper800
    COLGeek said:
    Seems a comparison to the current AMD flagship GPU (RX 7900 XTX) would have been more appropriate given a new generation of product.
    If it comes in at 750-800, and a similar performance level to the 7900XTX with less VRAM while the 7900XTX's street price is the same, I don't see this cards selling at all until the 7900XTX stock dries up.
    Reply
  • valthuer
    -Fran- said:
    If they're keen* on comparing it to the 7900GRE, then does that mean it'll be hovering around the same MSRP? Would that be a reasonable assumption?

    The Launch MSRP of the 7900GRE, for comparison, was $550. If AMD does indeed launch the 9070XT at that price, that's a no-arguments winner this generation.

    Come on AMD, you said you wanted market share. This is it.

    Regards.

    Even if it turns out that the launch price is higher than the one you mentioned, the improved Ray Tracing performance of this card, is a good sign by itself.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    I managed to copy the table out of their HTML source, which enabled me to copy & paste it into Excel. From there, I could compute the following speedups on RT vs. non-RT games:

    RX 9700 (non-XT) vs. RX 7900 GRE:Category1440p Ultra4k UltraRaster
    +17%
    +19%
    Raytracing
    +26%
    +26%


    RX 9700 XT vs. RX 7900 GRE:Category1440p Ultra4k UltraRaster
    +33%
    +37%
    Raytracing
    +50%
    +53%

    In both cases, we can clearly see the bigger speedup is on RT, which is in line with what has been revealed so far - that RDNA4 mostly improves in the areas of RT and AI.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    COLGeek said:
    Seems a comparison to the current AMD flagship GPU (RX 7900 XTX) would have been more appropriate given a new generation of product.
    But it's not meant to be a flagship-tier GPU. AMD said (much like Polaris, if you remember the RX 400 and RX 500 generations) this gen will focus only on mid-range and below.
    Dr. Lisa Su ... asserting that next-gen Radeon RX 9000 GPUs will target the "highest volume portion" of the market; referring to the mid-range segment. AMD made it clear a couple of months back that it has no plans to compete with Nvidia in the high-end space with RDNA 4. Instead, the goal of this generation is to penetrate the budget market, mirroring a strategy similar to RDNA 1.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amd-ceo-confirms-the-rx-9070-series-will-arrive-in-early-march-promises-4k-mainstream-gaming
    Reply