AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card has finally penetrated the Steam Survey video card user-share table. The complete set of new-generation RDNA 4 graphics cards data from AMD is now nestled within the Steam gamer popularity tables, with the performance-leading RX 9070 XT highest placed at position 25. AMD took the wraps off the RX 9070 XT and regular RX 9070 at a special event in Feb 2025, with availability starting from March 2025. The RX 9060 XT was a Computex 2025 (~end of May) launch. So the charting of the family has been a long time coming.

Valve doesn’t publicly state a minimum share threshold for inclusion in the results table, but whatever formula lies behind it, the numbers must have climbed sufficiently by May 2026 for the complete Radeon RX 9000 family to now make the grade. Notably, with its newfound data, the RX 9070 XT's 1.35% share sits just a shade behind the RTX 5080, which has 1.52%.

Green Team context and AMD’s leading mystery GPU

Nvidia dominates the Steam GPUs chart, as you may expect. The current leader of the Steam GPUs pack is the time-tested Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 with a 4.02% share according to the newest survey. Positions two and three are the laptop (3.99%) and desktop (3.74%) versions of the RTX 4060, so some would call this Ada Lovelace GPU the real champion of champions.

Currently, the highest placed Red Team GPU is the nebulous ‘AMD Radeon Graphics’ at position 13 and 1.89% share. Some observers reckon this Steam entry impacts the tally of named models, as the Steam Client miscategorizes discrete models for some reason, perhaps due to some iGPU + GPU combos. There are also two other instances of ‘AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics’ in the table, muddying the waters.

At position 39, the RX 9060 XT has made its debut with a reported 0.72% share of Steam users gaming on this mid-ranger. The stats don’t differentiate between the 8GB and 16GB variants of this card.

We have to go all the way down to position 90 to see the Radeon RX 9070 non-XT graphics card. It has a user share of 0.18% according to the figures. For some reason, this efficiency king among GPUs has been present in the Steam Survey much longer than its brethren. We mentioned it popping up with just a 0.16% market share at the start of this year. The revised 0.18% figure doesn’t show spectacular growth, despite some of the praise heaped on this SKU. However, since the pricing of our current best-pick all-around enthusiast graphics card, the RX 9070 XT, can be so close, it’s probably not surprising that the non-XT is overshadowed.

AMD recently launched the RX 9070 GRE worldwide. This 12GB variant of the RX 9070 has been available for months in the Far East, but we aren’t surprised it hasn’t entered the Steam Survey yet (if it will ever make it).

Today, we will take a look at Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) – a new gaming feature aimed at improving the overall user experience by reducing load times dramatically and improving 1% low FPS. We tested six games, measuring up to a 95% improvement in game loading times and solid improvements in 1% Low FPS in some titles. We will explain the issues that it aims to fix, we will go into detail about its functionality, and then we will test it in several games with on vs off comparisons.

Shader compilation stutter has been the bane of every PC gamer’s existence for a long time. Imagine finally sitting down after school or work to play a highly anticipated new release, only to spend several minutes waiting for shaders to precompile. Worse yet, even after that lengthy process, some shaders may still compile during gameplay, causing noticeable stuttering. First impressions matter, and technical issues like these can quickly sour the experience.

Pipeline State Objects (PSOs) define how input data is interpreted and rendered by the hardware when submitting work to the graphics card. PSO creation is also where shader compilation and related stalls happen. Modern games can contain such a massive number of PSOs that engines are unable to fully enumerate them ahead of time. Developers have introduced various mitigation techniques, but these are ultimately compromises that can still miss certain shaders during pre-compilation. In theory, allowing every player to locally precompile every possible shader permutation could eliminate these issues, but in large modern titles, that process could potentially take hours.

That is why Microsoft has introduced Advanced Shader Delivery.

What is Advanced Shader Delivery?

What is Advanced Shader Delivery?

Advanced Shader delivery is a feature that aims to eliminate long shader pre-compilation and shader compilation-related stuttering in games by distributing precompiled shaders when downloading a game — those shaders are downloaded just like other parts of the game. In other words, faster initial load times and smoother performance when first playing a game after installation, a game update, or a driver update.

The idea is that developers will programmatically capture and generate a new type of asset from pipeline state object inputs, called a State Object Database (SODB.) An SODB is a SQLite3 database that contains the shaders, as well as the structure for how to group them into PSOs.

The next step after collecting the SODBs is to precompile shaders using offline compilers. Compilation happens outside of the game and does not require a GPU. The SODB is converted into a precompiled shader output that can target a wide range of hardware without needing that hardware to be physically present. This output is called a precompiled shader database (PSDB), which can be registered for a game and distributed by the Xbox store alongside the game to supplement the shader cache.

After installing a game with Advanced Shader Delivery support, the Xbox store downloads an update containing the precompiled shaders. As you can see below, the ‘Shaders’ folder will contain an SODB and PSDB file after this update.

When a game runs for the first time, all the shaders it needs will already be available. The game will see this and will skip the compilation step on the gaming device. If a device requires a driver update, the shaders will be updated automatically.

Theoretically, if developers programmatically capture SODBs with every required shader represented in the PSDB – and the system functions correctly – a game could achieve a 100% cache hit rate on its first run. This would not only dramatically reduce initial load times but could also entirely eliminate shader compilation stutter during gameplay.

Microsoft recently expanded the public preview for Advanced Shader Delivery with support for dedicated and integrated AMD GPUs on desktops. However, not all system configurations currently support Advanced Shader Delivery, even if you own an AMD GPU.

The device requirements are as follows:

• OS: Windows 11 24H2 or higher
• Xbox Gaming Services: 37.113.11003.0 or higher (Microsoft Store > Library > Update Gaming Services)
• Xbox Insider Hub: Open Xbox Insider Hub > Select Previews > PC Gaming Preview
• GPU: AMD RDNA 3, RDNA 3.5, RDNA 4 architectures
• Driver: Adrenalin 26.5.2 or higher

Advanced Shader Delivery is currently only supported on the Xbox store, but it is coming to other storefronts in the future.

NVIDIA and Intel GPUs are expected to receive support in the near future, although Intel has a similar technology on its graphics cards called “Precompiled Shader Distribution.”

If Advanced Shader Delivery is working, ‘Precompiled shaders installed’ will appear in the bottom left corner of the launch window.

With all that said, let’s see how it performs in practice.

Load Time and Performance Tested

Load Time and Performance Tested

Advanced Shader Delivery is supported in a little over 30 games. It is available in every game that initially supported the feature on the ROG Ally, plus the recently released Forza Horizon 6.

We selected six games known for lengthy shader pre-compilation times, shader compilation-related stuttering, or both.

The on vs off comparisons were run with the exact same settings for each individual game, but we did not use maximum settings. We used custom settings to get a playable experience on the 9070 XT.

There is no official way to disable Advanced Shader Delivery, but we managed to disable it by deleting the files in the Shaders folder of each game and then disconnecting the system from the internet so that the Xbox store will not download those files upon launching the game.

Each test was performed after a fresh driver install.

Since ASD is only supported on AMD GPUs, we used a Radeon RX 9070 XT for our testing.

Test system

• PowerColor Red Devil RX 9070 XT
• Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• 64GB (2x32GB) G.SKILL Flare X5 DDR5 @6200 MHz CL30
• Crucial T700 Gen5 SSD
• ASUS ROG STRIX B850-F Gaming WiFi
• Corsair Nautilus 360 RS AIO Cooler
• HAGS enabled
• Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8457)
• Adrenalin 26.5.2
• NVIDIA driver 596.49

Forza Horizon 6

Forza recently launched with Advanced Shader Delivery support. Both the Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport series are known for having lengthy pre-compilation steps. As such, it is no surprise that ASD dramatically reduces the initial game load time.

From 48 seconds down to just 2 seconds. That’s a whopping 96% improvement in load time.

Not only did we see a reduction in load time, but gameplay performance was also smoother.

During the first stage of the prologue, there is a nasty shader compilation stutter on the very first run of the game with ASD disabled. With ASD enabled, that stutter is no longer present.

Below you can see a comparison between our test system paired with an RTX 5090 vs an RX 9070 XT with ASD enabled. This is not a comparison between the two GPUs, as the 5090 is far more powerful, which is evident from the average framerate. Indeed, NVIDIA GPUs will also support this feature in the near future. Rather, it serves as an illustration that highlights how shader compilation stutter can bring even the most powerful system to its knees.

Both of the runs shown above were performed with the same settings. With the 5090 (top) plugged into our system, we experienced a massive stutter on the first run, that brings the 1% low to 3 FPS at this particular point of the scene. Meanwhile, the 9070 XT (bottom) cruises past this point with a smooth frametime on the very first run.

The Outer Worlds 2

The Outer Worlds 2 has a very long shader pre-compilation step that takes almost 3 minutes, so it is a very good candidate for our testing.

From 2 minutes and 52 seconds down to just 9 seconds. That’s a 95% improvement, but more crucially, it cuts down your waiting time by an incredible 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

We did not experience any shader compilation stutter in our run with ASD disabled, so there was no improvement in performance here.

Ninja Gaiden 4

Ninja Gaiden 4 does not have a pre-compilation step with ASD disabled, so there is no improvement in load time.

However, we did experience a couple of minor stutters with ASD disabled in our first run that were no longer there in the second run. These are shader compilation-related stutters.

The game was mostly smooth during our runs, but those two minor dips were enough to give ASD about a 10% edge in 1% lows. This is important, because those dips came during combat.

Avowed

Avowed is another game that has a lengthy pre-compilation process of almost 3 minutes.

This is a 78% improvement in initial load time. While not as dramatic as what we saw in Forza Horizon 6 and The Outer Worlds, it still cuts your initial waiting time by 2 minutes and 16 seconds.

There were no shader compilation stutters here with ASD on or off, so the performance remains the same.

Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy’s pre-compilation is not as long as others we have seen, but it does take over a minute.

We see a 56% reduction in load time. Quite a bit lower than the previous games we tested, but it is nothing to sneeze at.

Performance remains the same whether you enable or disable ASD as we encountered no shader compilation related stuttering.

Silent Hill f

Silent Hill f does not have a pre-compilation phase, so there is no improvement in initial load time.

However, the game does have some rather significant shader compilation stutters in the town area at the beginning of the game, as seen below.

We were hoping that ASD would entirely eliminate those stutters, but unfortunately, that is not the case.

Unlike Forza Horizon 6 and Ninja Gaiden 4, Silent Hill f’s shader stutters are not eliminated by ASD, and performance remains the same.

It's unclear whether this stems from an API limitation or the developer failing to supply all shaders to the SODB. Either way, it serves as an example that – while the technology is genuinely impressive – it still needs some work to completely eliminate shader compilation stutter.

The Verdict

Our testing shows that Advanced Shader Delivery can significantly improve the player experience. A gamer’s first impression is critical, and nothing sours it faster than technical issues. Being able to load right into a game without waiting several minutes and having smooth performance unencumbered by intrusive shader compilation stutter should be the standard.

Advanced Shader Delivery delivered this experience in most of the titles we tested. However, there is still work to be done – whether by Microsoft, game developers, or both – to make the feature consistently reliable across all games.

A few months ago, we covered the first reported case of a 16-pin power connector meltdown for AMD's RX 9070 XT. Usually, it's Nvidia's RTX 4090 and 5090s that face the fire, but Sapphire has adopted the same 16-pin power connector on one of its RDNA 4 GPUs. Today, another report has surfaced on Reddit where a user found their Nitro+ RX 9070 XT with a considerably scorched connector after experiencing a period of system instability.

Another one bites the dust - Sapphire 9070XT Nitro+ 12V HPWR FAIL from r/radeon

This is possibly the fifth time an RX 9070 XT has been subject to the incendiary nature of the 12V-2x6 connector. As u/divinethreshold describes on the r/pcmasterrace subbredit, their PC had started randomly crashing with little to no stability even after checking all the components. The last part to troubleshoot was the GPU and, sure enough, after plugging out the cable, they found scorch marks on the top-row of 16-pin connector.

Usually, we're left to guesstimate what happened in a certain case, but here it's pretty clear that the pins in the bottom didn't make proper contact with the GPU's female plug, leading to increased load on the top row. Despite the fact that the RX 9070 XT is a midrange card with only 304W of TGP, the electrical load was too much for just half of the pins, so they got scorched. Otherwise, the 12V-2x6 connector is rated for up to 600W of power.

We've covered several reports pertaining to melting 16-pin power connectors, the most recent of which was an RTX 5090. For AMD's RX 9070 XT, though, every single case has exhibited the same issue: the top row of the 16-pin power connector is what burns out. The first case was a ASRock Taichi card back in August, then Sapphire's Nitro+ design made rounds once in October, and twice in November, leading us to the fourth case for the same variant today; fifth overall.

The damage is easily visible in all these cases because Sapphire provides a blue-tipped 16-pin to 8-pin adapter that most people use with their older power supplies. This adapter essentially takes what's a 32-pin connection (16 on either side) to an 80-pin connection, which more than doubles the points of failures. It's simple math; the more factors there are in an equation, the more likely it's to break down with even the slightest of errors.

Speaking of, these 16-pin connector woes are often attributed to user error, that the customer hasn't firmly secured the cables in place on either end. However, across the myriad of cases we've seen at this point, there's no discernible pattern beyond the abdsence of any consistent secondary factor. Some people using modern ATX 3.1 power supplies with native 16-pin cables, ensuring a tight, unbent connection, and never overclocking their GPU still walk away with scorched kit.

The popular claim in the community, therefore, is that the 16-pin connector itself is flawed due to being under-designed (despite receiving a revision). It shouldn't take an extraordinary amount of effort just to prevent malfunction, which leads many to even argue that any other product would've been recalled at this point following so many duds. The OP on Reddit said they'll go for an RMA, so we hope their RX 9070 XT is resurrected one way or another.

German Cooling specialist Alphacool has just announced a sizable expansion of its Core GPU Cooler block product series for liquid-cooled PC systems. Previously only available for select Nvidia RTX 40 series and a couple of AMD RX 7900 XTX GPU designs, the firm is now offering 21 new water blocks for AMD’s RX 9070 family. This extensive set of new products includes water blocks for both RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT models, and embraces brands such as ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX.

Alphacool says that all the new Core GPU Cooler designs are made with the utmost precision, minimizing clearances between the cooling surfaces and heat-generating components on your graphics card PCB. The firm also praises its own design decisions in using chrome (instead of nickel) plating on the copper cooling plates and the use of brass connections on all pipework. All these liquid cooling-ready replacements for your factory-supplied air coolers come with a backplate, mounting apparatus, pre-cut thermal pads, and pre-applied thermal paste.

So, let’s take a look at the long list of new Alphacool Core GPU Cooler blocks for the RX 9070 family. For your convenience, we’ve created a table:

The Radeon RX 9070-series GPUs have been a big hit for AMD, according to none other than the firm’s CEO, Lisa Su. This level of third-party hardware accessory support suggests she wasn’t exaggerating. Moreover, it is good to see that of the 21 new water blocks from Alphacool, five are for RX 9070 non-XT models. Perhaps the 9070-non XT could be a sleeper hit, as enthusiasts have warmed to its great efficiency. Moreover, in actual retail, the official $50 MSRP difference between RX 9070 XT and non-XT seems significantly wider.

Update: AMD reached out to Tom's Hardware to clarify that no claims about sales numbers were given at the event. There was discussion about strong demand for RX 9000 (and X3D), but the 200K claim was not a part of that conversation, according to AMD. The Benchlife page which seems to have been the original source of the claim has also been pulled.

AMD recently announced that its first run of 200,000 RX 9070-series GPUs has nearly sold out. According to BenchLife.info [machine translated], AMD made this claim during its Advancing AI summit recently held in Beijing, China, where it also talked about the recent release of its Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D chips.

The RDNA4 GPUs were highly anticipated, especially as Nvidia’s RTX 50 series GPUs were severely understocked. And while Team Red has had months to stockpile graphics cards at retailers, the unprecedented demand for the RX 9070 XT meant that supply was quickly cleared out by frustrated gamers.

Because of this, some stores and scalpers are taking advantage of the situation, selling 9000-series GPUs way over the MSRP. Even legitimate retailers have reportedly been selling base models at a 22% markup, with some attributing this to tariffs. Despite this, the RX 9070 is on track to become one of the best-selling GPUs of its time, with the graphics card already ranking on top of Amazon’s best-seller lists.

AMD hasn’t released any data to back up its 200K GPU claim, so we can't verify how accurate its sales claim is. But if it’s true, it means that Nvidia’s supply situation is way worse than we believe. After all, we can see this with the better availability of RX 9070 GPUs versus Nvidia’s 50-series.

Team Green has already admitted to a GPU shortage with its RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs. However, even the mid-range RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 cards are nowhere to be found. Rumors have swirled that Nvidia supply should improve in the coming months, while an AMD AIB claims that GPU supply for AMD will stabilize by April. These reports likely pertain to chips being released to GPU manufacturers, so we'll likely have to wait for April to June before we see these new stocks arrive on store shelves.

While news like this may give us hope for an affordable latest-gen GPU that’s readily available, the way Nvidia has been treating gaming GPUs makes us inclined to not believe anything until we see stocks arrive. As for AMD, it now has the chance to claw back some market share from Nvidia if it can take advantage of the situation and deliver 9070-series stocks before Team Green ramps up deliveries and fills the market with 50-series GPUs.

AMD's newest RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 graphics cards are setting the gaming world on fire, or they would be if not for limited supply and MSRP markups. For the lucky few who managed to get their hands on the cards, the 9070 XT can seemingly edge past Nvidia's RTX 5080 in real-world performance, thanks only to undervolting the card.

YouTube overclockers Der8auer and Alva Jonathan have shown off the most impressive boosts on the RX 9070 and 9070 XT this week. By only adjusting the power target and undervoltage curves of the GPUs in software, both YouTubers saw 10% boosts to FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 on both cards. Of note is that both of these boosts came without adjusting the GPU clock speed offset in software. The GPUs' clock speeds did increase thanks to the undervolt, but the offset remained unedited.

Both YouTubers tested with testbenches different enough that we should add a disclaimer that the above table does not portray a fair comparison between the RX 9070 XT and 9070 (slightly different CPUs and RAM were used between both Der8auer and Jonathan's testing arrays), but the RTX 5080 and RX 9070 XT as tested by Der8auer were on equal testing ground.

Der8auer tested with the PowerColor RX 9070 XT Red Devil, which sits near the pinnacle of RX 9070 XT factory-overclocked models. Interestingly, testing with increased clock speed offsets did not make any difference in his measured clock speeds or performance, likely because the card is already overclocked to its board limit from the factory. Overclocking the GPU's VRAM also resulted in higher clock speeds, but lower in-game performance; this is due to built-in error correction on the VRAM recalculating failed errors rather than displaying bad voxels.

Der8auer found the best results through increasing the GPU's power target to 110%, and then applying a GPU voltage offset of -170mV, allowing the RX 9070 XT to hit 3.36 GHz and see a 10% boost in FPS over a similar XTX-brand RX 9070 XT.

With AMD's Radeon software, undervolting a GPU does not simply lower the voltage it runs at. Instead, changing the voltage offset moves the voltage-frequency curve higher or lower, thus lowering the voltage required to hit higher frequencies. A fair comparison would be tuning a car's automatic transmission so a lower RPM is needed before automatically shifting to the next gear.

Alva Jonathan's testing used the ASRock RX 9070 Steel Legend, another heavily factory-overclocked model. Like Der8auer, adjusting GPU clock offsets did not result in much change for Jonathan, who also employed a similar voltage and power draw adjustment to hit a matching 10% boost in FPS. He also employed similar means to undervolt and under-power the board to hit the lowest power draw possible, a solid method for preserving the lifetime of the GPU.

Remember that both YouTubers tested with cards heavily overclocked from the factory, and (normally) selling for well above MSRP. The PowerColor Red Devil initially sold for $799 on Newegg, $200 above MSRP for the RX 9070 XT at launch. Likewise, the ASRock Steel Legend board was listed at $640, a cool $90 above MSRP for the RX 9070. With these markups comes better PCBs and much-improved cooling, which may be the silver bullet allowing for such aggressive undervolts to remain stable.

Still, in the magical Christmas land where new GPUs sell for MSRP, the PowerColor Red Devil still sits $200 cheaper than the RTX 5080, and can now surpass it in Cyberpunk 2077 (and a few other benchmarks which can be seen in Der8auer's testing) after some creative overclocking and tweaking. While ray-tracing, path-tracing, and software support are all Nvidia's games to lose, AMD puts up stiff competition with this undervolting-capable card — and does it without needing to be bundled with a smoke alarm.

AMD RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT GPUs, which rival the best graphics cards, were launched on March 5, three days ago. The RDNA 4-powered graphics card is the second best-selling GPU on Amazon and has taken the first spot in Amazon Germany and Amazon UK. Remember that these standings are dynamic and are subject to change as consumers purchase more units of one graphics card than the other.

Despite the supply issues with the GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs, the RTX 5070 Ti has remained on top of Amazon's best-selling list. The MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16G Ventus 3X OC, launched at $829.99, appears to be the most popular model. The Asus TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition is in second place.

Amazon Germany lists the XFX Swift Radeon RX 9070 OC White as its best-selling GPU, despite being listed for €929.99 — this is way above its $549 MSRP (around €506), even if you include taxes. On the other hand, the U.K.’s top bestseller is the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC, which is already unavailable at the time of this article.

Despite seemingly launching with more stock than Nvidia and Intel, AMD’s RX 9070 series GPUs quickly ran out within a few hours of its launch. Scalpers are now selling them for more than twice the MSRP, and it’s apparent that people still buy these mid-range cards despite scalpers selling them at high-end prices. While we expect that some 9070 models will be sold at a premium, AMD’s Frank Azor said that multiple cards from AIB partners will be sold at MSRP prices. However, the prices we see feel unreasonable, even for a more premium offering, especially as they now stray into RTX 5080 territory.

Hopefully, AMD will deliver more supplies in the coming weeks and help normalize the market. The GPU market has been fraught with shortages during the past few months. Intel launched its highly acclaimed Intel Arc B580 GPU late last year, but the graphics card stock is still hard to come by, even if you know where to buy it. Nvidia admitted a shortage of RTX 50-series GPUs, affecting everything from the RTX 5090 to its most affordable RTX 5070.

At the moment, we’re unsure if AMD’s shortage is temporary, having been caused by the pent-up demand for new GPUs caused by the wider community’s frustration with Nvidia and Intel. This is a big opportunity for Team Red, allowing it to claw back some market share from Nvidia, which has long dominated the gaming GPU market. We will know in the next few weeks if AMD can cope with the situation and produce enough cards to cover its competitors' shortfall.

AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 consumer graphics cards will not get official ROCm support at launch. According to Phoronix, AMD answered a question during its press briefing stating that ROCm support would not arrive for RDNA 4 until sometime after launch day. AMD has since not clarified what the timeline for support for the consumer cards will look like.

ROCm, or Radeon Open Compute Ecosystem, is AMD's open-source answer to Nvidia's CUDA platform. The ROCm software stack is meant to enable HPC and AI workflows for consumer/prosumer products and has offered official support to AMD's consumer products on Windows since 2022. Of course, ever since launching in the pro sector, ROCm has lagged behind the standards of consumer support set by CUDA, which has offered CUDA support for its consumer products at launch for several generations.

Interestingly, AMD first teased its Navi 48 GPU die through ROCm Validation Suite documentation, with its first sighting coming in April of last year. For the cards using Navi 48 not to be ROCm-ready at launch is a bit silly, if not ironic (in the Alanis Morissette sense of the word). RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 may not launch with official ROCm support for a few days, weeks, or even months, but this does not mean that they will not work with the software, nor is it unusual for a new AMD release.

Since first coming to Windows, AMD has had interesting support rollouts for ROCm. When it first broadened its reach to consumer cards, ROCm's support list only included the RX 6900 XT, RX 6600, and, surprisingly, the R9 Fury from 2015, with only the R9 Fury receiving "full" software support and the 6000-series cards only working with parts of the HIP runtime. Currently, AMD's list of supported GPUs includes the full RX 7000-series, most of the RX 6000-series, and the Radeon VII on Windows, though the lower-end of the 6000-series does not support the HIP SDK, and Linux support is only extended to the RX 7900 and Radeon VII.

Compared to CUDA's history of supporting Nvidia's newest consumer cards on launch day and its extensive backward compatibility stretching back to 2006, ROCm has a long way to go. We'll keep our eyes peeled for any announcements from AMD on the future of ROCm support being extended to the RX 9070 XT, 9070, and the rest of the 9000 series. AMD has also recently acknowledged user polls calling for extending full support to the 6000-series and Strix/Strix Halo mobile chips, so compatibility may take longer than hoped to arrive as AMD works through everyone's ROCm wishlists.

Of course, a lack of full official support does not mean that the ROCm software will not run successfully on the newest cards, so those needing their ROCm fix will not be entirely left in the cold come March when RDNA 4 hits shelves (theoretically). For more on the RX 9070-series, Navi 48, and RDNA4 at large, check out our deep dive into today's announcement of AMD's newest GPU architecture.

With just a couple of days before AMD officially announces the RX 9070 family of GPUs, listings for these graphics cards momentarily appeared online on Micro Center. Although it seems that the retailer has already taken them down, we caught a glimpse of their prices, and we aren’t happy. We saw one RX 9070 listing — the ASRock RX 9070 Challenger Triple Fan — for $649.99. The cheapest RX 9070 XT we saw — the ASRock RX 9070 XT Steel Legend Triple Fan — was listed for $699.99.

Since AMD hasn’t announced prices for these GPUs yet, we hope that these are just placeholder prices and that the real pricing will be much lower. After all, the company already denied that the starting prices for the 9070 and 9070 XT are $749 and $899, respectively. But if these leaked numbers are true, then the 9070 XT isn’t much lower than the RTX 5070 Ti’s MSRP of $749, and the vanilla 9070 is much higher than the 5070’s $549 launch price. The company also compared the 9070 XT’s performance to that of the 7900 GRE, which had a launch price of just $549, while the 9070 could match the 7800 XT, which had a launch price of just $499.

AMD doesn't appear to have plans to sell a Made by AMD reference card to the public, so the GPUs that we saw listed may not even sell at MSRP. We expect there will be some "MSRP" variants at launch, but whether or not they remain available and in stock will depend on AMD's supply. This is also true of Nvidia's graphics cards and the RTX 5070 Ti, as Nvidia didn't create a Founders Edition version of that GPU. We only saw a few listings at the MSRP, and some options even hit nearly double the launch price. That might be due more to the retail outlets than the AIB partners, of course.

Many gamers and enthusiasts are anticipating the arrival of AMD’s competitors to Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs. With shortages still plaguing RTX 50-series GPUs despite being launched weeks ago, the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 GPUs might be the only real option for mid-range GPUs. AMD also renamed its graphics card lineup to make it easier to match and compare against the competition, so we expect the 9070 XT to be competitive with the 5070 Ti. However, leaked synthetic benchmark tests indicate it more closely matches the RTX 4070 Super, while the RTX 5070 Ti outperformed it by approximately 28%. We'll see where Team Red lands once we get our hands on these GPUs and are able to see how they perform in the real world.

AMD has announced a February 28 announcement date for its RX 9070 series GPUs. Rumors of a 32GB variant of the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU were also shot down by Frank Azor, AMD Chief Architect for Gaming Solutions. Azor replied to a post on X (formerly Twitter) reporting that the company is allegedly working on a version of the previously-mentioned graphics card that will feature double the VRAM, saying, “No, the 9070 XT card is not coming in 32GB.” However, he also attached the X post of AMD GM of Ryzen CPU and Radeon Graphics David McAfee confirming that the RX 9000-series GPUs will be unveiled at the end of this month.

AMD had already previously said that it would not prioritize a flagship commercial GPU to compete against Nvidia, so a GPU with 32GB of VRAM is unlikely to come out in the near future. It's possible that Team Red could launch a professional-grade graphics card with this amount of VRAM, especially as demand for AI hardware is still increasing, but the company has made zero mention of such a solution so far.

On the other hand, AMD has finally announced the official event for its RX 9070 series GPUs. Many anticipated the arrival of these RDNA 4 cards at CES 2025, but they were disappointed after the company dropped them completely from its livestream. McAfee said that the company simply ran out of time during its 45-minute presentation, so it decided not to include the graphics cards in the show. But finally, after more than a month of waiting, we will officially see the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT on the stage.

According to McAfee’s X post, the event will be held on February 28 at 8 a.m. EST, and the cards will go on sale in early March. This confirms the previously rumored event schedule, although the RTX 5070 Ti, which will compete with the 9070 XT, will be released about a week before the announcement. However, the launch of the RTX 5070, which is said to be paired against the RX 9070, was allegedly delayed to early March to coincide with the release date of AMD RDNA 4 GPUs.

Whatever the case, we’re excited about the arrival of these mid-range cards, and we’re looking forward to seeing what RDNA 4 can do and at what price. While Nvidia owns the top-end of the graphics card market with its RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs (which are out of stock everywhere and have some melting power connector issues), the mid-range and entry-level GPU competition is heating up. We have the $249 GPU champion with the Intel Arc B580, and we expect to see options arrive in March for Nvidia’s and AMD’s offerings. This is a great development for enthusiasts, as these three companies now must compete to deliver the best balance of price and performance to win the market.

A Bulgarian retailer previously stated that AMD delayed the launch of the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, and that the latter was priced at 500 Bulgarian Levs more than the 7900 XT. VideoCardz calculated that this meant the RX 9070 XT would retail at around $899, while the vanilla RX 9070 would be $749. Moreover, the original launch date of the first RX 9000 cards was claimed to be January 23. However, AMD Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions and Gaming Marketing Frank Azor has now clarified that an $899 starting price for the RX 9070 XT “was never part of the plan.”

AMD has yet to release official pricing for its upcoming RDNA 4 graphics cards, which are supposed to deliver performance on par with the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti. The first batch of Radeon 9000 graphics cards was conspicuous by the absence of details during AMD’s keynote, with the company saying it ran out of time to show them off on-stage at the event.

Rumors suggest that Team Red was caught off guard by the aggressive pricing that Intel and Nvidia introduced in the mid-range market, especially as the Intel Arc B580 launched at $249, while Team Green priced the RTX 5070 Ti and 5070 'MSRP cards' at $749 and $549, respectively. These rumors were quickly dispelled by AMD, though, through its posts on social media. Though we are still waiting for the actual pricing of its latest GPUs.

Nevertheless, it seems that there’s already a ready stock of AMD’s latest GPUs in various retailers and that they’re just waiting on the company to give the go signal and put them on the front-of-store shelves. This delay means that reviewers haven’t been able to release the details of these new GPUs, and that we can only rely on leaked specs to estimate how much these graphics cards will perform.

AMD hasn’t released any official statement about why they delayed the release of these graphics cards, but we hope it will allow retailers to stock up on RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 GPUs from the get-go and prevent shortages. That way, we don’t have to worry about finding a new GPU and dealing with scalpers selling these hard-to-find PC components at more than triple the MSRP.

Still, if you’re looking to upgrade your GPU, you should wait until the release of the Nvidia 5070 and 5070 Ti, which is rumored to be on February 20, and these AMD GPUs in March, before spending your hard-earned money. That way, you can check out multiple independent reviews of these cards and ensure that you’re getting the best hardware for your needs and budget.

Earlier this week David McAfee, AMD's corporate vice president and general manager of client channel business, announced that the company would release its next-generation Radeon RX 9070-series graphics cards this March. Late on Wednesday, he clarified that the company wants its partners to deliver as many custom boards to retailers as possible to ensure widespread availability on release day. In the meantime, AMD will polish its drivers to ensure the new products are among the best graphics cards straight out of the gate.

"We are focused on ensuring we deliver a great set of products with Radeon 9000 series," McAfee wrote in another X post. "We are taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles. We also have many partners launching Radeon 9000 series cards, and while some have started building initial inventory at retailers, you should expect many more partner cards available at launch."

So far, AMD has disclosed that its Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics cards are based on the RDNA 4 architecture and are positioned for performance-mainstream market segments, something that is indirectly confirmed by a rather moderate die size of the Navi 48 graphics processing unit. The company has not disclosed the actual specifications of these add-in-boards — even though there are rumored specs — so it is hard to make educated guesses about the performance of these products.

As it turns out, AMD intends to spend the next 1.5 – 2 months finessing drivers for its RDNA 4 architecture and probably ensuring that FSR 4 technology works with a higher number of games. This will promote out-of-box performance of the new graphics cards and will likely demonstrate a decent uptick compared to predecessors with FSR 4 enabled. It is expected that FSR 4 will support frame generation technology and this capability significantly improves performance on paper.

AMD's partners will also have a couple of extra months to learn how to better enhance performance of AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics processors, so perhaps some AIB models will feature significant performance enhancements achieved by factory overclocking the GPU.

Finally, with positive reviews and plenty of factory-overclocked models, AMD hopes to grab a larger chunk of the market from its rival Nvidia, which initially focuses on the highest end of the market with its GeForce RTX 50-series products. Of course, it remains to be seen whether AMD indeed manages to occupy a significant part of the market without a real halo product.

AMD has finally shared a release date for its upcoming RX 9070 series GPUs, after teasing them at CES 2025. AMD's David McAfee posted on X that the new GPUs will officially go on sale in March.

The VP and GM of AMD also stated that gamers could expect a "wide assortment of cards" to be available globally. AMD's software solution for the Radeon 9000 series is also purportedly "looking great," so we should expect launch day and review day drivers to be stable.

The RX 9000 series was officially announced during CES 2025, featuring the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. AMD purposefully kept most of the GPU specs hidden but confirmed that the new GPU lineup will run on AMD's next-generation RDNA 4 architecture, which is built on TSMC's 4nm process and features 2nd gen AI accelerators, 3rd gen ray tracing accelerators and a 2nd generation radiance display engine.

Despite not revealing the RX 9070 series during its CES 2025 presentation, AMD's board partners showed off a plethora of graphics card models based on the upcoming RX 9070 series, giving us a sneak peek at what these new GPUs will look like. All of the AIB-partner cards shown came with triple-fan cooling solutions, with most sporting a triple 8-pin power connector design, hinting that AMD will be ditching the new 16-pin 12V-2x6 power connector for another generation. Though there might be some exceptions, ASRock's RX 7900 XTX WS GPU takes advantage of the 12V-2x6 power connector, so we can't rule out the same behavior repeating itself with the RX 9000 series.

The new GPUs are officially focused on the mid-range GPU market. AMD confirmed in a slide interpreting the GPU's new numbering scheme that the RX 9070 series would be a direct successor to the RX 7900 XT/GRE and the RX 7800 XT, as well as direct competitors to the RTX 4070 series (in general). As a result, it is expected that Nvidia's new RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti will be the primary competition of the RX 9070 series.

After CES, we saw new rumors suggesting that the RX 9070 XT has 4,096 cores, 64 CUs, and 16GB of VRAM. The RX 9070 likewise has 3,584 cores, 56 CUs, and 16GB, with both GPUs operating on a 256-bit interface and utilizing GDDR6 memory. Take these details with a grain of salt, but this close to launch it is likely that these specs could be close to the real deal. IGN has already confirmed that the RX 9070 has 16GB of VRAM.

It's time for more RDNA 4 leaks, and it seems that AMD's upcoming flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card has allegedly undergone some testing with impressive performance numbers. As shared by HXL, a Chiphell thread (now removed) detailed performance metrics of AMD's RX 9070 XT 16GB against the RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4070 Ti Super. Word of caution: we strongly advise you take this leak with a grain of salt. Even if these numbers prove accurate, the drivers are likely to improve so it's best not to draw any conclusions yet.

So while AMD didn't fully showcase RDNA 4 during its keynote at CES, the firm has promised more details later this quarter. We managed to get a sneak peek of Navi 48; the chip that's powering the RX 9070 series, measuring roughly 390mm² roughly equal to AD103. As it stands, two GPUs have been announced: the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9070. Note that AMD's updated naming scheme positions these GPUs as a competitor to the RTX 5070 series; the same RTX 5070 that Nvidia claims can quote unquote "match the RTX 4090" in performance.

Let's get to the juicy details. While you can find more information about the leaked data in the thread at X, we've compiled all the numbers in a table for clearer comparisons. The leaker purportedly tested AMD's RX 9070 XT and Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4070 Ti Super in Black Myth Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p resolutions. Notably, Cyberpunk appears to have used ray-tracing which explains why the RX 9070 XT lags behind in this game.

Across both games and all resolutions, the RX 9070 XT is 4% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti and 12% slower than the RTX 4080 Super. Excluding the Cyberpunk 2077 performance stats tips the balance in favor of the RX 9070 XT; now 9.2% ahead of the 4070 Ti Super and just 5.5% short of the RTX 4080 Super, per this leak.

Since the RX 9070 XT is targeted as a competitor to the RTX 5070, it is reasonable to expect AMD to price it in the same ballpark of $500-$600. With improved drivers, the RX 9070 XT may catch up to the RTX 4080 Super in non-ray-traced titles; as shown by a previous leak. Still, this is all speculation and we should refrain from jumping to any conclusion until AMD provides more official details, or we are allowed to review its RDNA 4 graphics cards.

Spanish retailer Neo-Byte listed three RX 9070-series GPUs from Gigabyte on its e-commerce platform, including pricing and specifications. X user momomo_us first shared the listings, showing a Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 9070 XT Elite priced at €1,119.99 (~$1,148.53), a Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC listed for €1,069.99(~$1,097.26), and a Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC GPU with a €889.99 (~$912.67) price tag.

Although these GPUs already have active listings, we recommend throwing a pinch of salt over early retailer listings. Sometimes, these prices could be simple placeholders. It's also important to note that computer hardware is more expensive outside of the U.S. market, and Spain has a 21% standard VAT (value-added tax) rate so that the prices may be higher than usual. While we still don’t have an official launch date for these AMD GPUs, B&H previously listed the RX 9070 series with preorders set for January 23.

However, what caught our eye with Neo-Byte’s listings are the GPUs’ specifications. Since AMD skipped announcing the RDNA 4 GPUs during CES 2025, many of us are in the dark about the pricing and details of these new graphics cards. Although the company promises to release more information about these GPUs this quarter, many enthusiasts can’t wait for more details about these potential Nvidia RTX 50-series competitors.

AMD said that it focuses on the sub-$1,000 segment for its RDNA 4 GPUs, and the price of the RX 9070 certainly puts it within the ballpark figure. However, Nvidia’s launch of the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, which these GPUs are expected to compete against, are priced aggressively, undercutting the RX 9070 series by nearly $400. The RTX 5070 will retail for $549, so a more realistic price for the Radeon RX 9070 XT would be around $550 and $600 range, but we'll have to wait for AMD's official announcement to find out.

Nvidia claims that the RTX 5070 can deliver RTX 4090-like gaming performance. We doubt this claim regarding numbers, though, as Team Green likely uses technologies like DLSS to deliver higher FPS instead of creating a midrange GPU with the grunt of the previous-generation top-of-the-line card at nearly a quarter of the price.

It'll be exciting to see a fight between AMD’s RX 9070 series and Nvidia’s RTX 5070 to see who delivers more performance and better bang for the buck. Hopefully, Intel will release higher tiers of its Battlemage GPUs to turn the fight into a three-way battle royale in the mid-range desktop GPU space.