AMD confirms Radeon RX 9070 XT name was chosen to match Ryzen and GeForce products

AMD is changing its GPU naming with the announcement of its next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs at CES 2025. Starting with the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070, which will be followed by the Radeon RX 9060 Series, the reason for the name change comes down to two things.

3

First, calling it the Radeon RX 9000 Series brings the naming in line with the current desktop Ryzen 9000 Series for brand synergy. Second, the decision to change what would have been the Radeon RX 8800 XT (if it followed the same naming convention as the Radeon RX 6800 XT and 7800 XT) to the Radeon RX 9070 XT will make the process of purchasing a brand new GPU easier for the consumer by matching the competition - aka NVIDIA.

This means the Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 will be positioned as alternatives to the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, as well as the upcoming GeForce RTX 5070 and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti - which are expected to launch in February.

This isn't the first time AMD has changed its naming for GPUs; the Radeon RX 400 evolved into Vega for the subsequent generation and then the RX 5000 Series with the arrival of RDNA.

3

AMD confirmed the name change during its CES 2025 presentation, providing this explanation. It makes sense, however, it does mean that AMD is following NVIDIA's lead - where the GeForce brand currently dominates the PC gaming market. With AMD announcing the Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 at CES, it didn't provide a release date or performance benchmarks outside of the RDNA 4 architecture, including improved hardware and a significant boost to raytracing performance.

With the new naming, AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 9060 XT and RX 9060 will be direct competitors to the upcoming GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060.