CONCLUSION

    When AMD announced that they weren’t going to be competing with NVIDIA in the high-end segment of the consumer graphics market many people were disappointed, me included. It’s not just a matter of available choices at this point, competition also drives innovation, better performance and of course reduces prices. Still, I was very glad to see that the Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming was able to compete (and even surpass in some tests) with both the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the GeForce RTX 4080, even in raytracing (AMD did point out that they made leaps in RT performance, and I can confirm this – also do keep in mind that these are early drivers). Yes, these are all previous generation models but I’ve yet to test any of the new GeForce RX 5xxx series cards. Still but from what I see the RX 9070 XT should easily compete with the GeForce 5070/Ti variants so that’s a very good thing. FSR 4 AI is a clear step over FSR 3 (both in performance and image quality) and should be yet another incentive for people to get one of the new RDNA 4 cards. Overclocking potential is also very good and results in a good boost in performance across the board. Moving to power consumption things here are a bit more complicated than what I show in my charts. Yes, the Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Pulse went up to 346W during my tests but for the most part it sat around 260-300W (in Furmark which I always use for stress testing it didn't even surpass 270W) which again is not a bad number. That being said however almost 350W maximum power consumption is not something I was expecting, not after all this talk about energy efficiency (still, it could be worse). Finally, both temperatures and noise levels were kept relatively low during my tests so nothing really to point out here.

    The brand new Radeon RX 9070 XT cards will be making their debut tomorrow and as for the Pulse model which I reviewed today according to Sapphire it has an MSRP of USD599 (whether or not this will be the actual retail price remains to be seen). Overall, the Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming delivered very good performance and if it does make it to store shelves at around the provided MSRP it will offer an impressive price/performance ratio in which case the Platinum Award is in order.

PROS

- Build Quality (Materials / Backplate)
- Very Good Performance (RT Included)
- Overclocking Headroom
- Noise Levels & Temperatures
- Supported Technologies
- TRIXX Software

CONS

- Power Consumption (For Some)