Radeon RX 9070 non-XT modded with new BIOS gives it Radeon RX 9070 XT performance

A new report at PC Games Hardware has shown that you can flash the BIOS on a Radeon RX 9070 non-XT GPU with the BIOS for the Radeon RX 9070 XT to achieve higher boost clock speeds, raise the power limit, and boost performance. Of course, there are still some key hardware differences between the two cards - the Radeon RX 9070's GPU features 56 Compute Units compared to 64 in the Radeon RX 9070 XT.

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By flashing the ASUS PRIME Radeon RX 9070 with the BIOS from the ASUS PRIME Radeon RX 9070 XT, the lower-tier RDNA 4 offers saw its boost clock speed increase from around 2.5 GHz to 3.1 GHz, with the power limit (TGP) increased to 317W from 220W. With that, the Radeon RX 9070 "XT" can outperform a Radeon RX 9070 XT with stock settings in various 3DMark benchmarks.

This is a pretty impressive bit of modding, as it boosts the performance of the non-XT RDNA 4 variant by around 15%. However, modding or changing the vBIOS will always be risky, and no official tool automates the process.

Using ASUS PRIME models for both makes sense as these cards share a common board design, which could be a restriction when attempting to BIOS flash using a file from a different make/model. To flash the BIOS, PC Games Hardware used a hardware flashing tool connected to the 8-pin BIOS ROM chip on the graphics card.

The mod resulted in a stable card; however, some idle mode issues and minor instabilities were recorded. Naturally, there are risks associated with such a mod, so it's not something recommended for most gamers or those looking to unlock a new tier of performance with their Radeon RX 9070. That said, for those who love experimenting with hardware and are happy to take on the risks with such a mod - it could prove to be as impressive as what we see here - a Radeon RX 9070 that performs like a Radeon RX 9070 XT.