AMD Radeon RX 9070 & 9070 XT: New 1440p gaming champions

AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT offer faster performance and more memory than Nvidia's lackluster RTX 5070.

- BRAD CHACOS & ADAM PATRICK MURRAY

Nvidia fumbled the ball with its $549 GeForce RTX 5070 (fave.co/41v5w2p), and AMD's new Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are primed to seize advantage.

The RTX 5070, hitting store shelves today, is a good 1440p graphics card but a stagnant generational sidegrade at best. Enter the $549 Radeon RX 9070 and $599 Radeon RX 9070 XT, launching tomorrow. Both cards are faster than the RTX 5070, with the 9070 XT going toe-to-toe with the $750 RTX 5070 Ti (fave.co/3DJ8dWb) in many games, and each includes an ample 16GB of VRAM. The RTX 5070 is stuck with a disappointing 12GB. Even ray tracing, long an AMD weakness, improved dramatically!

Bottom line? AMD's Radeon RX 9070 series is the new 1440p gaming champion. If you opt for an RTX 5070 instead to get in on Nvidia's DLSS 4 greatness (fave.co/ 41SWo7S), you're making some major sacrifices in other areas.

We've spent the past week testing the XFX Swift Triple Fan Gaming Edition and Asus TUF Gaming OC models of both of these cards. The Asus card is a heavily juiced custom model that sports an extra third power connector compared to other models-all the better to overclock with. Here are the key things you need to know before buying an AMD Radeon RX 9070 or 9070 XT.

PERFORMANCE

Our benchmarks above include results from both the aforementioned XFX and Asus 9070 cards, albeit only at 1440p resolution. We skipped 4K testing to be able to include multiple Radeon 9070 models in these graphs.

The Radeon RX 9070 cards kill it.