Update (1/28/25): AMD’s Frank Azor has clarified that “an $899 USD starting price point was never part of the plan.”
The Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT, two of the first graphics cards for gamers based on AMD’s new RDNA 4 architecture, were originally supposed to sell for $899 and $749, respectively, before red team got wind of the pricing that NVIDIA had decided upon for its GeForce RTX 50 “Blackwell” Series, according to a new video from a Bulgarian retailer, one in which the host explains how board partners and retailers already have the Radeon RX 9070 Series in stock but can’t sell them due to an extended embargo that AMD has set so it can implement a new pricing and announcement strategy.
“The retailer refers to the RX 9070 launch date as delayed, although AMD has not officially communicated any earlier launch dates,” reads a report from an outlet that claims to have received a translation of the video from GplayTV, which can be viewed below. “Based on the information we received and translated, these cards were initially planned to sell at around $899 for the RX 9070 XT and $749 for the RX 9070 non-XT, with a launch date of January 23.”
News of the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070’s original pricing comes two weeks after PC World published a video interview with Frank Azor, one in which AMD’s Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions and Gaming Marketing teased how its first RDNA 4 GPUs would compete against the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Series.
“Hey, if you’re in the market now, you can say, ‘I’m in the market for a 70-class card, and the 70-class card cost between this and this in the market,'” Azor said at one point in the video regarding the Radeon RX 9070 Series’ naming scheme. “And there’s two solutions that are out there. And I know that the 9070 and maybe the 5070 or, like, you know, compare it against one another. And then you can decide, ‘okay, let me look up 5070 versus 9070.’ Real simple.”
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT, AMD’s RDNA 3 flagships, launched in December 2022 for $999 and $899, respectively.