AMD Release Info and Pricing for 9070 Graphics Cards

"Another Mild Disappointment"

Serial disappointers and late to the party non-competitors AMD have finally released information and pricing for their new 9070 range of graphics cards.

(Image from https://videocardz.com/newz/final-specifications-of-amd-radeon-rx-9070-xt-and-rx-9070-gpus-leaked)

AMD have a long history of being a step being Nvidia and on a technological level, that has been true for almost a decade at least. AMD cards are not terrible, but they are always the second best option. That was until Nvidia started pricing their GPU range using moon math and too many multiplications in their calculus. 

This gave AMD a chance to increase their measly 10% market share over Nvidia's 90% with either better hardware, better software or better pricing. So which did AMD choose...? Little of column A, little of B.

It really appears that AMD are happy trailing behind Nvidia, offering their "not as good as DLSS" FSR technology, targeting equality with not-so-great Nvidia cards and pricing themselves as shown today, a little too high to really win the amount of customers they need to compete. 

UK pricing is currently unknown, but the 9070 non-XT is coming in at $549 (US) and the XT variant at $599. It's slightly baffling also that there is only a $50 difference between two cards where one is significantly less appealing that the other. The XT is likely to sell reasonably well (for AMD) but the 9070 in my opinion is dead in the water. Is this a sneaky way to promote the XT version, with AMD making very few non-XT variants? That's unknown for now.

What is known, is that AMD didn't bodge this reveal; but they didn't win it either. Nvidia has the market share and AMD needed something very tempting to bring over the Team Green loyalists and I don't think this was it. It'll be nice to be able to buy a card for under $600 sure, but both 9070 cards don't compete as well as they could have against Nvidia's offerings at these prices and specs. 

Only time will tell if this changes the tides. The 9070's go on sale next week in most territories and stock is apparently meant to be better than the 5000 series from Nvidia so we'll see.