AMD’s next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs have arrived, bringing the usual questions about their performance leap over the previous generation. The first models to debut are the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, positioning them as mid-range options in AMD’s lineup. But how do they compare to the RDNA 3 flagship RX 7900 series?
RDNA 4 introduces both advantages and limitations. On the downside, AMD will not release high-end GPUs to compete directly with NVIDIA’s upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080. However, the good news is that the RDNA 4 architecture promises major improvements in areas notably weaker in RDNA 2 and RDNA 3, addressing past performance concerns.
4. Large increase in AI performance
According to AMD’s benchmarks, the RDNA 4 architecture significantly boosts AI processing. In FP16 tasks, the RX 9070 XT achieves twice the performance of the RX 7900 XT, making it a compelling option for professionals working with artificial intelligence.
But that’s not all—RDNA 4 also marks the launch of FSR 4, AMD’s latest upscaling technology, which focuses on performance and image quality enhancements, much like NVIDIA’s DLSS advancements.
Among all the improvements in RDNA 4, the second-generation AI accelerators have seen the biggest leap forward, surpassing advancements in rasterization and ray tracing performance.
3. Superiority in Ray Tracing
AMD first introduced ray tracing support with its RDNA 2 architecture. While improvements in RDNA 3 were relatively modest, the Radeon RX 9070 brings a much more significant leap—offering twice the ray tracing performance of the RX 6000 series and about 70% more than the RX 7000 series.
AMD’s internal testing shows that the RX 9070 XT delivers up to 68% better ray tracing performance in select games than the RX 7900 GRE, the lowest high-end RDNA 3 GPU. This suggests that RDNA 4’s ray tracing capabilities could bring its actual performance closer to the RX 7900 XTX in this area.
This is a major and much-needed improvement for AMD GPUs. Radeon graphics cards have been seen as weaker for years in ray-traced games, while NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX series maintained a clear advantage. With RDNA 4, AMD is finally seriously pushing to close that gap.
2. Benefit of FSR 4 in games
With the Radeon RX 9070 launch, AMD has also introduced FSR 4, a next-generation upscaling and frame generation technology that leverages machine learning to enhance visual quality while boosting performance. Thanks to API optimizations tailored for RDNA 4, FSR 4 delivers more efficient and responsive upscaling.
This new technology is positioned as a direct competitor to NVIDIA’s DLSS 4, which has exclusive features for the newly released RTX 50 series. FSR 4 and DLSS 4 rely on neural networks powered by each company’s proprietary AI accelerators, continuously improving through software updates and refinements.
1. Do more with less
An interesting detail is that AMD claims the Radeon RX 9070 can deliver performance close to high-end RDNA 3 GPUs despite being positioned as a mid-range option. For example, the RX 9070 XT comes with 64 RDNA 4 compute units, whereas the RX 7900 GRE, which AMD used for comparison, features 80 RDNA 3 compute units.
In other words, the new GPU achieves superior performance with fewer cores, highlighting the efficiency gains of the RDNA 4 architecture—at least on paper.
Once we conduct tests and publish our full review of AMD’s latest graphics cards, we’ll get a clearer picture of how the Radeon RX 9070 stacks up against the RX 7900 series.
