AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT perf leaks: similar to 7900 XTX in raster, but RDNA 4 smokes RDNA 3 in RT

AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 9070 XT shouldn't be much further from being detailed, with new gaming performance leaks arriving to tease what to expect from RDNA 4.

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In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, we're getting a look at the flagship RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card being benched against the RX 9070 XT, and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards based on the RDNA 3 GPU architecture, as well the RX 7900 XT.

The benchmarks include Black Myth: Wukong (RT on High, 1080p upscale to 4K), Hitman 3 (High settings), F1 23 (High settings), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Ultra settings), and finally, Cyberpunk 2077 (RT + Ultra settings). You can see that the new RX 9070 XT either falls just short of the RX 7900 XTX, equals it, or just beats it (we're talking about 1FPS more).

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Not great, not bad... but RDNA 4 is all about optimization and tweaks under hood, with MLID leaking out with ray tracing (RT) benchmarks of the new RDNA 4 GPU and that is far more surprising. With RT enabled, the new Radeon RX 9070 XT smokes the RDNA 3-based RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, and the RX 7900 non-XT almost doubles the performance of the RX 7800 XT, too.

• Read more: AMD's gimped RDNA 4 launch at CES 2025: strategy to hurt RTX 50 launch
• Read more: AMD's next-gen Navi 48 GPU: 3.0GHz to 3.3GHz, up to RX 7900 XTX performance

RDNA 4 will be exciting, but so too will be FSR, which an MLID source working for AMD leaked: "What I (AMD) can tell you about FSR 4 is that we think people will be pleasantly surprised by the drastic quality uplift over FSR 3.1, and what you've seen so far at CES is only an alpha build! Oh, and although I heard the initial FSR 4 launch will only support RDNA 4, there is currently at least a plan to support RDNA 3 and RDNA 3.5 as well".

• Read more: AMD says 'King of the Hill' GPU strategy hasn't worked: RDNA 4 mainstream only, no high-end GPU

"Eventually, we want there to be two branches of FSR 4 - one that fully leverages RDNA 4's hardware, and one that brings as many of the newer features as possible to RDNA 3/3.5 by leveraging their more limited (although better than RDNA 2) hardware".

AMD's new Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card benchmarked leaked by MLID, we're looking at 304W for the flagship RDNA 4 GPU, and just 220W for the RX 9070. That should make for cheaper coolers, meaning cheaper prices for Radeon RX 9070 series "RDNA 4" graphics cards.