A few weeks ago I wrapped up my review on the AMD Radeon RX 9070 and I was impressed by the GPUs fantastic performance and competitive price tag. Of course, competitive price tag means nothing if you can’t find the GPU at its recommended retail price but that is an issue on its own. I have now spent a few weeks with the other 9000-Series card, the Radeon RX 9070 XT variant. This is the beefier, slightly more expensive model.
Watch this Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT review below;
On paper, this card sells for $50 more than the non-XT variant. $50 is really nothing if you look at the specs of the GPU. The XT variant includes 4096 Stream Processors, 128 AI Accelerators, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM a Base Clock of 2520MHz and a Boost Clock of 3060MHz. These are slightly overclocked out of the box compared to the reference card of 2400MHz and 2970MHz. The card requires. a 750W power supply and has a max TGP of 304W.
Other differences include 56 RT Cores, 112 Tensor Cores, and 224 TMUs. Apart from that, these two cards are identical. They both have the same 256-bit memory bus and memory clock of 2518MHz, same ROPs count and most of the time, use the same PCI-E connectors. I say this because some brands use three while others use two. This Gigabyte Gaming OC model uses three.
Speaking of the card, this Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC is identical to the non-XT model too. It packs the same grey outer shell, adjustable RGB cover flap, triple-fan WindForce Cooling System and the same 2 HDMI 2.1b and 2 DisplayPort 2.1a ports. The only two differences here is the card uses three 8-pin PCIE power connectors instead of two and the card is 6mm thicker taking the dimension to 288mm long, 132mm wide and 56mm thick.
The card is another no-nonsense GPU from Gigabyte. In the box, you just get the GPU and a piece of paper. There are no mounts or power adapters here. This means installing it is simple and easy. You just slot it in, screw in the bracket and plug it in.
AMD FSR 4 is the big selling feature on this GPU as it aims to usher in the next-generation of upscaling from the brand. From what I tested with the non-XT card, I was very surprised to see how it performed. With that being said, the XT card still has the same one challenge to overcome, the lack of FSR 4 games.
We are still very limited when it comes to games that support this technology. Essentially, if the game supports FSR 3.1, it will supports FSR 4 but that does’t mean much because even FSR 3.1 games are still hard to find. Right now, there are around 35 games that full take advantage of the improved FSR 4. The most recent game is Monster Hunter Wilds. Even Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which launched just a few days prior to this review, lacked the feature.
So I ran some tests. These benchmarks include direct comparisons to the non-XT 9070 GPU and span across games with and without FSR 4. My main goal was to see just where this 9070 XT sat between the non-XT but also how it compared to the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, two NVIDIA cards that I just reviewed which are more expensive than this AMD variant.
My PC build includes the following:
- AMD Ryzen 9900X3D
- 64GB DDR5 60000MTs RAM
- X870 AORUS Wi-Fi 7 Motherboard
- AORUS Waterforce X II 360 Cooler
- Gigabyte AMD Radeon 9070 XT Gaming OC
- Gigabyte AORUS C700 GLASS Case
You can see from the benchmarks that the Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC is a very capable card. Across most tests, the card had no issues delivering 4K at 50 to 60FPS when maxing out game settings. In the odd case where games were too intense for the card, tweaking FSR would result in better performance.
Speaking of FSR, the latest iteration of the technology, FSR 4 does an incredible job on its own too. The tech is a night and day difference compared to FSR 3 when you look at the sheer quality of the games. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart was likely the best example here as the game’s performance was up there with high end cards that cost a lot more than this GPU while at the same time, the sheer visual fidelity was almost like there was no upscaling taking place at all.
The Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC also handles its cooling very well. I struggled to get the card higher than 57C during long tests. The fans reached 1800RPM during this time with the game clock peaking at 2845MHz and the card pulling 305W of power.
The nice thing about this performance is that the numbers are quite low without causing any thermal issues already on the card. The sheer overclocking headroom here means you can easily send these clock speeds into the mid 3000MHz range without worrying about cooling. I can see this card getting to at least 3400MHz or higher with slight power increases.
From a noise point of view, this Gaming OC card isn’t the quietest I have tested. At first, the fan curve was set to 100% at 50C which is obviously insane. I tweaked this a bit and found a sweet spot with 78% fan speed keeping the card cool at 57C. I did hear the GPU even with my case fans but it wasn’t annoyingly loud by any means. This means the card was sitting at about 48dBA. This is much better compared to the 60dBA at 100%.
I do need to note that this isn’t the first AMD GPU I have reviewed from Gigabyte to have this crazy 100% fan curve issue out of the box. I am not sure how it happens and why the brand hasn’t nailed down the problem yet. The knowledgable user will know to turn down the curve but I am sure people out there freak out when they hear it thinking something could be wrong.
In the end, the Radeon RX 9070 XT is a very good card. The GPU can be pushed to at least 17% more performance than the non-XT model thanks to its fantastic undervolting. I would say the performance boost is definitely worth it for the small price difference. At the same time, it is hard to find these cards at the recommended retail price so again, you have to kind of take what you can get.
But the card sits just below the 5080 in some tests and above the 5060 and 5070 Ti. The performance and value you’re getting here is rather fantastic. Granted, you have to keep in mind that FSR 4 games are far and few between right now but hopefully, by the end of the year, there will be loads more.
Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC
Summary
The Gigabyte AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GAMING OC is a phenomenal GPU that packs fantastic performance and power. FSR 4 further adds to the value here with the cleanest upscaling yet.
