AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs & RDNA 4 Architecture & FSR 4: Announcement & Info

AMD is making it known that AMD hardware has a broad range of applications, from consoles, desktop PC, mobile, and handhelds, Indeed, you cannot deny the broad scope and reach that AMD has in hardware. AMD “Focusing on what Gamers want”, in which AMD indicates 85% of gamers buy GPUs less than $700, which sure is true, but I would argue that it should be less than $500, to be more accurate.

Higher resolutions, with 1440p and 4K becoming more of the norm, certainly true. AMD also recognizes that Ray Tracing is an important feature, and gamers demand higher performance. Easy upgrades as well, with existing PSUs and power connectors. RDNA 4 is “forged for gamers” raising the bar in raytracing and machine learning performance to improve performance per dollar.

The key to AMD’s goals this generation is the new RDNA 4 architecture (we’ll have a deeper dive later in this article). Some top-level information is that RDNA 4 includes a new compute unit with an enhanced memory subsystem, improved scalar units, dynamic register allocation, and increased CU efficiency and clock speeds. RDNA 4 also includes new 3rd generation Raytracing Accelerators, which increases Raytracing Throughput 2x per CU compared to the previous generation. This is done by increasing Ray Intersection performance and more advanced RT features.

AI is a huge component of RDNA 4, and this introduces the 2nd-generation AI accelerators from AMD. These new accelerators increase FP16 2x, INT8 4x, FP16 with Sparsity 4X, and INT8 with Sparsity 8X and new FP8 formats. You’ll note that INT8 gets some big boosts in performance, and this was key for introducing machine learning-based FSR 4 Upscaling. Culminating these improvements, RDNA 4 also includes an Enhanced Media Engine with up to 20% higher media quality and Future-Ready display technologies like HDMI 2.1b, DisplaryPort 2.1a, and PCI-Express 5.0 support.

To make these realizations take place, the new AMD Radeon RX 9070 series graphics cards are based on this RDNA 4 architecture technology. The Radeon RX 9070 series, from a high-level, provides 4K and 1440p gaming with up to 64 RDNA 4 CUs and up to 53.9B transistors.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT leads the top of the SKU as AMD’s flagship GPU this generation. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT has 64 CUs, 64 hardware RT accelerators, 128 hardware AI accelerators, with 1557 peak TOPS, clocked at a boost clock of 2.97GHz with 16GB of GDDR6 with a total board power of 304W.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 falls in under the RX 9070 XT and has 56 CUs, 56 hardware RT accelerators, 112 AI accelerators, with 1165 peak TOPS, a boost clock of 2.52GHz, and 16GB of GDDR6 with a total board power of 220W.

At the high-end, AMD is claiming with first-party benchmarks that the Radeon RX 9070 XT is up to 51% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT at 4K max settings, averaging across 30+ games. AMD is also claiming that the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is up to 26% faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 at 4K max settings, averaging across 30+ games.

Again, these are first-party benchmarks, if we look at the first benchmark graphs at 4K, we can see that AMD is also comparing the Radeon RX 9070 XT to the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. When compared to the Radeon RX 7900 GRE in raster performance, we see anywhere from 23% faster up to 48% faster. When we look at Raytracing performance, we see anywhere from 36% faster up to a whopping 66% faster. From this, we can at least tell that Raytracing seems to be a bigger uplift than raster, at least on paper.

When we look at the benchmark graphs at 1440p, we see that AMD is showing the Radeon RX 9070 XT anywhere from 23% faster up to 44% faster in raster, and anywhere from 34% up to 68% faster in raytracing, even at 1440p.

Right under the Radeon RX 9070 XT sits the Radeon RX 9070. In AMD’s first-party benchmarks, AMD claims the Radeon RX 9070 is up to 38% faster in 4K gaming compared to the Radeon RX 6800 XT as an average across 30+ games. AMD also claims an up to 26% performance uplift at 4K gaming compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 across an average of 30+ games.

Breaking this down, we can see that at 4K gaming, AMD shows the Radeon RX 9070 anywhere from 5% up to 28% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE in raster performance. We can see that with Raytracing the Radeon RX 9070 is anywhere from 11% up to 34% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 4K gaming with Raytracing. At 1440p gaming, the Radeon RX 9070 is anywhere from 4% up to 26% faster compared to the Radeon RX 7900 GRE in raster performance. In 1440p Raytracing performance, the Radeon RX 9070 is anywhere from 12% up to 38% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE.

AMD also continues to improve driver features, performance, and stability over time. It is actually quite interesting to look back on previous versions of the software driver control panel, I remember the very early days, and the monstrosity that was the earlier Catalyst days requiring MS .NET Framework. The drivers and control panels have come a long way, and it is currently at its best with AMD Radeon Software.

New for 2025 AMD will be adding an AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2.1 update and more features to come. These can be all bundled up into a one-button enablement option that AMD is calling HYPR-RX. Note that HYPR-RX does enable both Upscaling and Frame Gen, so that comes with all the normal caveats in regards to latency, potential visual errors, and other issues, you do need a high base framerate for Frame Gen to provide the best experience.

Of course, we have to talk about the AI performance, and AMD shows improved performance in things like Adobe Lightroom, Davinci Resolve, Procyon, and others. This shows improvement for professional or creative applications.