It has been a very busy start to the year for PC brands. In the span of two months, we have seen six new GPUs hit the market. NVIDIA had to typical NVIDIA and release four of their own but AMD held back and we have two new GPUs in its 9000-series. The first of which is the Radeon RX 9070.
Watch this Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC review below:
Now this card is pretty special. After a few weeks of testing, I am actually blown away that AMD made this GPU so power efficient, affordable and I can confidently say, powerful. The AMD Radeon 9070 is a powerful GPU that costs just as little as $549. This puts its in line with NVIDIA’s not-so-great RTX 5070.
I say not-so-great because while I was testing out two RX 9070 GPUs, I was actually reviewing an RTX 5070 at the same time and it is was quite the coincidence. I have that review up on the site right now too alongside another RX 9070 variant from ASUS. Find the ASUS PRIME Radeon RX 9070 review here and the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 5070 review here.
This content, however, covers the Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC model. It is also my first hands-on with the redesigned Gaming OC range from the brand and I kinda like the new look. Granted, it isn’t the most overhauled on the planet but it looks cool.
I think the most striking factor of the GPU is its small size. While ASUS says its PRIME OC is small form factor, it is actually bigger than this Gaming OC variant. This is a tiny GPU guys. No joke. It brings back memories of the good old 10-series days.
In terms of dimensions, the card is 288mm long, 132mm wide and 56mm thick. It comes with four ports. Two of them are HDMI 2.1b ports and the other are 2 DisplayPort 2.1a ports. The card comes with 3584 shading units, 56 Compute Cores, 56 RT Cores, 112 Tensor Cores and 128 ROPs (guaranteed, unlike the 50-series). It has a boost clock of 2590MHz, 16GB of DDR6 RAM and a max TGP of 220W. Although Gigabyte does recommend a 650W power supply for this card.
The card packs a 256-bit memory bus with 20Gbps of bandwidth and a 2518MHz memory clock. It makes use of two 8-pin PCIE power connectors. Plain and simple. No bending, no heat build-up, no fires and no nonsense.
In the box, you get the GPU and a piece of paper. Don’t expect anything fancy here and I don’t think it is needed. The card looks great. Gigabyte has added some new details around the shell. There’s a sort of rugged outer shell design now that features what is meant to look like debris.
I especially like the new sliding plastic on the side of the card that let me slide the Gigabyte logo over the RGB LED light to light up the logo. If I didn’t want the logo lit up, I just slid the plastic over to the other side? Could this be the first GPU with a moving part? I guess so. I turn off all RGB when I play games anyway so don’t care really.
The WindForce cooling system includes three 80mm fans with the centre fan that spins in the opposite direction. Gigabyte has also added its new server-grade thermal conductive gel to this card. The gel is used on the 50-series too and so far, I have been overly impressed by the results.
Apart from that, the card looks nice. I can’t get over how small it is. It is actually cute-looking. In comparison to my RTX 4080 SUPER, it looks like a toy version of a GPU. Mad really. I guess I am so used to dealing with these massive 50-series cards that I forgot what GPUs used to look like. Even AMD’s previous generation cards were bigger than this.
As for the technical stuff, this is an AMD Radeon RX 9070 and as such, it comes with quite a substantial boost in performance, especially for this price tag. The card leverages FSR 4 which is exclusive to these new 9000-series models. FSR 4 essentially automatically upgrades FSR 3.1 games to the new version and automatically kicks the feature into gear when you enable it.
The launch lineup is limited I won’t lie. On my PC, I had only a few select games that benefited from FSR 4. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 and the Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark.
Other games include loads of PlayStation ports like God of War and the Horizon and The Last of Us series. But Sony stopped sending me PC review codes to test because I refused to be a shill for the brand. So I will buy those for the next XT GPU review I have coming up soon.
FSR 4 was then activated by enabling it two ways. I could turn on Hyper-RX in the AMD Adrenalin software or manually enable it across supported games in the same app. If the game supported it, the toggle would appear as Super Resolution 4. However, it is easier to just keep HYPER-RX enabled because then everything seems to happen automatically. I just had to make sure that FSR 3.1 was enabled too as these games would automatically be kicked into FSR 4 mode.
AMD also has some noticeable updates to its software while I am on the topic. The new overly menu is intuitive and lets you start recording a video, take a screenshot, check your performance metrics and more. I actually really enjoyed using the software. I could also tweak the many various settings on the overly including FSR 4, to see if it was enabled in the game, the sharpness of the FSR, change game filters, you name it. I think the new overly is a much needed revamp and people are going to love it.
I ran tests across FSR 4 games, FSR 3 games and some games with all the AI stuff disabled. I also ran synthetic benchmarks across 3DMark because it is the best reference to compare GPUs. Given I had the RTX 5070, I also compared some scores where possible.
I didn’t change much on my build, it includes the:
- AMD Ryzen 9900X
- 64GB DDR5 60000MTs RAM
- X870 AORUS Wi-Fi 7 Motherboard
- AORUS Waterforce X II 360 Cooler
- Gigabyte AMD Radeon 9070 Gaming OC
- Gigabyte AORUS C700 GLASS Case
I did use GPU Tweak III to increase the power limit of the GPU by 10%. I also turned my cooler and PC fans to performance mode. You know, just set up the scene as the usual daily gaming set-up.
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 handles its cooling very well. During a stress test, the card peaked at 62C and didn’t go over it. The power draw was maxing out at 245W with the fans revving up to 1800RPM. This fan speed is a little higher than usual but I do think that has to do with the smaller design of the card and the lack of heat spread area. The GPU clock then peaked at 2800MHz.
In terms of the fan noise, even at 1800RPM, I barely heard the fans at all. There was no noticeable whine or hum. These fans are dead silent even when they need to work overtime. Again, much of this is attributed to the new thermal solution gel Gigabyte uses on this GPU.
Then we have the FSR 4 technology. It was actually quite impressive. The visuals are significantly cleaner compared to FSR 3. There’s no visible blurring around moving objects, particle effects finally resemble their intended appearance, and the overall level of quality surpasses our expectations.
The technology also delivers exceptional performance. 4K games were effortlessly handled by this Radeon 9070. While Raytracing does encounter some minor issues, it generally outperforms the RTX 5070. This was an unexpected outcome, especially considering the card’s price.
The most significant achievement here is AMD’s leap from FSR 3 to FSR 4. We now have improved visuals and remarkable performance. Although there’s no multi-frame-generation, the card didn’t require it. FSR 4 already handles this aspect effectively. When comparing tests like Monster Hunter and Ratchet and Clank, the frames are achieved on this 9070, and in certain circumstances, the performance is even higher.
However, we must consider the price and performance of this card. It’s truly remarkable that this GPU can be purchased for just $549. I had reservations, but AMD has delivered a product that might be difficult to resist if you’re seeking 4K gaming on a budget. Last generation, 4K gaming on a budget resulted in an expensive card with subpar FSR visuals and performance. This generation, it’s the complete opposite.
Of course, we need to acknowledge that FSR 4 is a new technology, and games are still limited in availability. In fact, I even faced challenges in finding suitable titles for benchmarking during my review. However, like DLSS 3, we can expect a gradual expansion of supported games over time.
The Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC is really an excellent GPU. It is so small but mighty. Again, I have to mention how small this card is because it needs to be said, it is incredibly small. Yet the performance it packs is on par with other Radeon RX 9070s and beats the RTX 5070. I think Gigabyte has a real winner on its hands here.
I know that Gigabyte fans enjoy their AMD variants and you can’t go wrong here. This 9070 is fantastic value but it does make it hard to decide between spending the extra $50 or just throwing money at this card. Either way, you’re getting a good card here that will only get better as more games get FSR 4 support.
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC retails in South Africa from R14,499. Visit the Gigabyte website to find out more about the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC here.
Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC
Summary
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC might be small but it packs some fantastic performance that outclasses the competition thanks to its thermals and price point. The card easily manages 4K 60FPS+ thanks to FSR4 which now produces cleaner upscaled content and generated frames. The sheer value you get for this card’s asking price makes it a must-have for 4K and 1440p gamers. Although, I do wish the FSR 4 lineup wasn’t so abysmal right now, but it will grow over time.
