How much do it’s crucial that you spend to get the most out of your games at 4K?
AMDs aggressive pricing gives two competing products a punch in the gut.
One of those is theNvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti at $750 MSRP, or the expected base price.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
The other is AMDs own $550 Radeon RX 9070 (our review is coming soon).
The RX 9070 XTs strengths all depend on whether AMD can meet demand.
That doesnt mean there arent issues.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
Those cards have their own litany of issuesbothintendedandunintendedso Im not implying AMD is the only one with drawbacks.
I tested the AMD GPUs on a system with an Intel CPU.
I suspect AMD will play nicer with AMDs chips, but thats no excuse.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
It is also a big, big card.
Both the RX 9070 and 9070 XT include 16 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 644.6 GB/s bandwidth.
Both cards are based on the new RDNA 4 architecture.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
Despite housing the same memory, AMDs two latest graphics cards are very different in most ways that matter.
The $600 graphics card has 64 compute units versus the 9070s 56.
That shows up in benchmarks, where the RX 9070 XT sees sizable uptick in graphical and AI performance.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
In that way, RDNA 4 is surprisingly versatile.
The same cant be said for the card in tests that demand improved ray tracing performance.
Its not all good news.
With upscaling, I was getting around 80 FPS.
I could not match that with either the RTX 5070 or RTX 5070 Ti.
Its as amazing as Peter Parker and Miles Morales themselves.
Then came other issues that made some titles unplayable.
Still, AMD didnt offer me an idea what the issue may be in time for this review.
Well be sure to check back to see if these issues get resolved in non-beta drivers.
The answer is FSR 4, AKA FidelityFX Super Resolution.
This is supposed to offer less artifacting, less ghosting, and higher details for each upscaled frame.
The difference between running games with FSR 2 and FSR 3 is stark.
That was something I struggled to do on Nvidias latest graphics cards.
While FSR 3.1 and earlier models were far more hardware-agnostic, FSR 4 depends on RDNA 4.
In that way, its now a direct competitor with the exclusive nature of Nvidias DLSS models.
Earlier AMD Radeon cards wont get access to FSR 4, either.
The problem is, currently there are just over 30 games that support FSR 4.
Nvidia has been adding more and more support to games over that time.
FSR support can be the make-or-break between whether a game is truly playable or not.
DLSSand FSR frame gen for that matterwork best when youre at or near 60 FPS already.
Thats why the RTX 5070 proved a disappointment.
It simply doesnt meet the needs of gamers who want to play at 4K.
However, its more than capable of hitting solid framerates at 1440p.
Theres a sick thrill of using DLSS 4 to push 60 or 70 FPS to 150 or higher.
You wont get that with AMDs latest GPUs.
Then the question is, whether to get the RTX 5070 Ti or the RX 9070 XT?
Well, it may simply come down to availability.
Will you miss out on DLSS 4 and the potential to do over 100 FPS in some games?
Yes, you will.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
The Framework 13 now feels like a laptop that’s more than a modular, repairable novelty.
It’s now a unit that’s a joy to both build and use.
However, some of our most-anticipated tech for the month won’t arrive until April.
