Gameplay Performance
In the section below, we are comparing performance at 1440p (2650×1440) as this is the primary target resolution for the Radeon RX 9070 XT. We are using stock reference clocked NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Founders Edition and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT video cards in addition to a factory-overclocked PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE. In games, we are selecting the highest preset.
Alan Wake 2
In Alan Wake 2, we see playable results from each card. It gets even better with upscaling. The SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT is essentially even with the RTX 5070 Ti. It holds a 5% edge over the Radeon RX 7900 XT and a 20% uplift over the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE. Upscaling draws even across the board, excepting the 13% edge against the Hellhound 7900 GRE. When overclocked, you do gain 6%.
Black Myth: Wukong
Black Myth is a graphically demanding game at the settings we chose. At native resolution, none of the cards show a 100% smooth game. Once again, the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Founders Edition are essentially even, with a slight edge to the RTX 5070 Ti in upscaling. The SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC enjoys a 15% better performance versus the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and is 42% faster than the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE. The same holds true when upscaled. Overclocking is a +3%.
Cyberpunk 2077
We see fast results in this game with all cards, and the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT takes the top spot. The margin is 3% over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Founders Edition, 12% over the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, and 30% versus the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE. Upscaling widens the gap over the RTX 5070 Ti to 10%. Overclocking adds 5% in this game.
Horizon Forbidden West
Here, the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT really shines against the competition. The results are 13,22 and 42% uplifts in the order your eye follows downward. Upscaling duplicates the results. Overclocking adds 6%.
Kingdom Come: Deliverence II
All the cards are nicely playable here. The game is quite graphically demanding, given the in-game locations. Overall, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Founders Edition has the edge by 12% and 33%. The SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT is quicker than the other two AMD video cards by 15 and 33%, respectfully, with upscaling, 16 and 20%. The overclocked card added 3%.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl
This is another pretty demanding game, given the settings. All the cards are playable. Once again, we see the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Founders Edition take the top spot by 10% and upscaled by 5%. The SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT is faster than the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT by 7% and 10% and runs by the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE by 25%. Overclocking did nothing in this game to increase performance.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →SON OF A BITCH will these AHOLES figure it out. LAUNCH IT AT MSRP AND YOU WILL DESTROY NVIDIA!!! Well at this tier.
Snagged one this morning from NE.
I was very impressed with the Sapphire 9070XT. The build quality is top notch and innovative. It ran so quiet. Also is pretty strong in every game at 1440p. Ray Tracing is still a little weak but AMD is inching closer......they need to fix that and then they will own the 600-1000 dollar GPU market.
Here, 6 or 7 years later, I'm still not convinced the Ray Tracing performance is a good metric to base my video card purchase decision on. I'm still considering it in the same vein as I am upscaling, frame generation, "AI", and proprietary feature sets: nice to have, but not worth spending extra money on over traditional rasterization performance and video memory capacity.
Sure, it's nice. And it may be the future. But I can upgrade again when that happens.
Not even the latest Indy Jones game with "required" ray tracing sways me on that, and it's what, the ~first~ game to have some level of ray tracing that isn't optional -- and even then, it just requires the feature set, not like the entire game is 100% ray traced. It still performs well on AMD and older RTX hardware (and even runs on some hardware without dedicated RT support)
Yup. Remind me again how mandatory PhysX is these days?
Going by support in the 5000 series... good point.
You should run the Half-Life 2 RTX demo and then tell me how you feel. Seeing a 20 year old game look entirely new is pretty amazing.