For AMDs upcoming GPU launch there had been rumors for months but this past week AMD confirmed that they were launching both the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT. Both cards being their first RDNA 4 architecture cards. Today the performance embargo for both cards lifts and we can check out how they perform ahead of them hitting stores tomorrow. So let's dive in and find out how they compare to yesterday's announced RTX 5070 and more!
Product Name: Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC
Review Sample Provided by: AMD
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
What is the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT?
The most interesting thing about AMDs new RDNA 4 architecture was the change in focus from the higher end to targeting the larger upper mid-range market with a targeted price of around $700. With that where some architectures are only focused on how to get the best possible performance, AMD wanted to find the best performance per dollar. RDNA 4 compute unit features an enhanced memory subsystem, improved scaler units, dynamic register allocation, increased efficiency per CU, and clock speeds that are a lot higher than RDNA 3. With all of that, they were able to improve performance per compute unit and offer (according to them) performance similar to their previous generation RX 7900 Series but with a lower compute unit count which helps keep the costs down.
They upgraded their Raytracing Accelerators to their third-generation design with a second ray intersection engine and optimized some of the overhead needed to execute raytracing calculations. This doubled the capabilities when compared to RDNA 3. They also have their 2nd generation AI Accelerators as well to improve performance in AI-accelerated games, content creation, and generative AI. They did this by adding new math pipelines for AI calculations, adding support for new data types like FP8, and support for inference optimization techniques like structured sparsity.
Exclusive to the new RDNA 4 cards, they also introduced FSR 4. FSR 4 improves image quality over FSR 3.1 with an ML-based algorithm designed to improve temporal stability, better preserve detail, and reduce ghosting. By utilizing features that were already part of the FidelityFX API when game developers integrated FSR 3.1, FSR 4 will be available on over 30 games at launch on the 9070 and 90070 XT. It’s always good when the game developers don’t have to push updates out to support!
I touched on it before that AMDs focus was on increasing value but one of the slides in their presentation caught my eye where they highlighted that they are aiming for 4k gaming at a 1440p price. They have the RX 9070 series targeted to sit in between their RX 7800 XT and XTX and the RX 7900 GRE for launch pricing with both 4K and 1440p gaming being possible.
Both the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT have a lot fewer compute units than any of the 7900 Series cards but how do they compare to each other? The regular RX 9070 has 56 CUs to the XT’s 64. The same can be seen with the raytracing accelerators and for the AI accelerators, those numbers are just doubled up. The RX 9070 has a boost clock of 2.52 GHz and the XT is significantly higher at an impressive 2.97 GHz. You can see how much the clock speed changes things with the AI performance included in the chart, the XT has 14% more AI Accelerators but it does 33% more performance due to the clock speeds as well. Both cards have 16GB of VRAM which is needed for 4k gaming and both cards run on PCIe 5.0 at x16. They have DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b connections. Then for power with the lower clock speed, the RX 9070 has a board power of 220 watts whereas the XT is 304 watts.
Before getting into testing I also ran GPUz to double-check that our clock speeds match up with the specifications. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is an overclocked RX 9070 and has a clock speed of 2700 MHz. GPUz confirmed that. I tested using the 24.30.31.03 beta driver that AMD provided to press ahead of the launch.
Packaging
The box for the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is compact compared to most other video cards, but what stood out to me the most was how it doesn’t mention the card's name at all. The picture in the background has a picture of another planet with a rock shaped into their Nitro logo, but I didn’t even figure that out until I looked up the Nitro logo. The back of the box has a few basic features from AMD listed out but doesn’t highlight anything specific about the card itself and there aren’t any pictures of the card design or specifications for anyone shopping in retail. You do get a line drawing that breaks down the display connections which is nice, but the card dimensions would be good for those shopping in person to make sure it will fit in your system.
Inside the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is sitting in a thick foam tray that keeps it from moving around. They kept things simple and there wasn’t any other documentation or accessories to note.
Card Layout and Photos
The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is a triple fan card with a mix of silver and black for its styling. They have silver running along the top edge and also dropping down around the center fan. Then below that everything is black. The silver section has an angled overhand and the part that wraps around the center fan bulges out slightly. The black half has a matching section to that at the bottom as well. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC does stick up past the PCI bracket slightly, but only by 8mm making it a short card by today's standard. It is just under 50 mm thick making it a 2 ½ slot design. It is 300 mm long which is longer but not long by today's standards.
The triple fan layout has three 90mm wide fans. Each fan has 9 blades and is an axial design pushing down into the aluminum fin heatsink below them. The fans do have all of the blades linked together which gives them a little more strength and helps focus the air down into the card. But for any air that bleeds out, they do have the center fan spinning in the opposite direction to cut down the turbulence where those fans are close to each other.
Up on the top edge, a few things are going on. The backplate does wrap around in a few spots with one of those including the Radeon branding being printed on it in silver. Then in the center, the fan shroud has angled groves in it with the Nitro logo in the center. The top also has the power connections and AMD cards once again have kept things simple with the standard PCIe power plugs, for the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC you have two 8-pin plugs with both flipped around with the clip side notched into the PCB. This lets the heatsink stay tight up against the plugs when you don’t have to have room to get your finger down in there for the clip. The plugs themselves are 5 mm down below the top of the card, not completely recessed but it does help not to have them sticking completely up and out of the top.
Looking at the top and bottom edges as well as the end of the card gives us a better understanding of the cooler design. Both the top and bottom are mostly open air to allow for the air from the fans to vent out. The bottom view lets us see that the heatsink is split into three sections. They have the heat plate sitting over the GPU and VRAM and in that area, the heatpipes drop down for better contact. Then on both sides of that, there are gaps in the cooler where the heatpipes move up to be centered in the heatsink. The left side is a small section, most cards don’t split that apart and just keep it all combined with the section over top of the GPU, it feels like that might be losing more surface area than it's worth. On the right side, there is a long section that covers the end of the PCB and then drops down to be thicker in the blow-through section. At the top of the card and on the back you see the rear backplate is bent around, this gives that backplate a lot more strength and helps prevent the card from flexing. The end of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC doesn’t have any ventilation, nor would it be needed with the horizontal layout of the heatsink. It does have two threaded holes for use with cases that have support brackets.
The back of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC has a full-length aluminum backplate. It is cut around the support bracket behind the GPU and there is a second cutout up at the top for the two power connections. Then down at the end, after the PCB ends the blow-through section has a honeycomb design cutout for it to vent through. I like the honeycomb design, it gives that area as much support as possible but doesn’t blow airflow too much. The backplate is black with a brushed finish. Then Acer has given it a LOT of silver accent lines that radiate out from the GPU. The AMD Radeon branding is there as well and then they have their Nitro branding in the larger font. Both of those are upside down here so that they will be readable when installed in most cases.
For display connections, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC has four in total. You get the standard layout with three DisplayPorts and one HDMI with the HDMI being down at the bottom of the PCI bracket. The bracket doesn’t have a tinted finish at all, it is just bare metal, and above the display connections, Acer did include horizontal and vertical slots for some extra ventilation. But the cooler itself isn’t pushing air in this direction.
Test Rig and Procedures
Test System
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D – Live Pricing
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero – Live Pricing
Cooling: Enermax LIQMAXFLO 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler - Live Pricing
Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing
Memory: G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB Series (2x16GB) 6000MT/s CL28-36-36-96 – Live Pricing
Storage: Viper VP4300 Lite 4TB – Live Pricing
Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1600W- Live Pricing
Case: Primochill Wetbench - Live Pricing
OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing
Synthetic Benchmarks
As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. For the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC, this is our first look at the RX 9070 so I want to check out how it compares with Nvidia’s recently launched 5070 and 5070 Ti and I want to see how it compares to all three of the AMD 7900 cards.
The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC scored a 62531 in the base Fire Strike, putting it right where AMD said it would be above the 7900 GRE and below the 7900 XT. For Nvidia, it is under the RTX 4080 and 6000 points ahead of the RTX 5070. In Fire Strike Extreme the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC scored a 31391 sitting behind the 7900 XT and ahead of the 4070 Ti, the gap between it and the 5070 is a little closer here but still 9.5% over it. Then in Fire Strike Ultra, it scored 16020, 13% over the RTX 5070.
The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. In the base Time Spy test, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC scored 26954, outperforming the RX 7900 XT. This was 21% over the RTX 5070. Time Spy Extreme was similar with it outperforming the stock-clocked 7900 XT once again and sitting 22% over the RTX 5070.
I did also test using the new 3DMark Speed Way which is one of their latest benchmarks and Port Royal as well. Speed Way is DX12 as well but combines more future-focused tech like Ray Tracing which up until its release where only used in feature tests, not full benchmarks. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is sitting right behind the RX 7900 XTX in Port Royal and ahead of the RTX 4070 Ti. This was 14% ahead of the RTX 5070. In Speed Way on the other hand the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is just ahead of the stock-clocked RTX 5070 but this does still have it way ahead of the 7900 XT and GRE which are farther down the chart.
The last test is the newer 3Dmark Steel Nomad benchmark. Officially this is the replacement for the Time Spy benchmark. It is a DX12 benchmark and doesn’t include ray tracing but is updated to better take advantage of modern cards. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC scored 6149 and is sitting between the 3090 Ti and the 5070 Ti. It is ahead of the 7900 XT and 23% ahead of the RTX 5070.
I did also run the 3DMark FSR2 comparison. It isn’t FSR 3.1 or FSR that was introduced with this launch but it does give a nice comparison in the range that FSR can get you depending on the detail levels you go with. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is sitting between the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT and even just with FSR 2 you can see performance improvements up to 328% in perfect conditions.
In-Game Benchmarks
Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 8 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of whether turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. Cyberpunk 2077 is also tested with Super Sampling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS). In total, each video card is tested 60 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors, and 240 helps show the performance ideal for the latest higher refresh displays.
So how did the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC do? At 1080p every result was over 60 FPS, with all but one over 120 FPS, and 10 were even over 240 FPS. For comparison with the 5070, the 9070 has two more results in the over 240 FPS range. At 1440p, once again none of the results are under 60 FPS, three are in the 60-119 range, 9 are in the 120-239 FPS range, and 6 are over 240. The 5070 was similar but had 4 results over 240 FPS. Then at 4k, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC has one result in that questionable 30-59 FPS range, 9 in the 60-119 range, 7 in the 120-239 range, and then one over 240 FPS. The 5070 was similar but once again the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC has two more results in the 120+ range in comparison.
To get a better look at some of the cards that are the closest competition to the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC I have the results averaged out by each resolution and listed out in the table below. While AMD’s slideshow talked about targeting between the 7900 XT and the 7900 GRE the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC came in in front of the RX 7900 XT in all three resolutions. It is close at 4k with just a 2 FPS gap there but the gap is wider at 1440p and 1080p. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC when compared to the RTX 5070 was 1.7% faster at 1080p, 7.8% at 1440p, and 4.1% at 4k. That doesn’t tell the complete picture though because that does include our Cyberpunk SS tests which had the 5070 out in front with DLSS 4. Removing those the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is 5.7% ahead at 1080p, 11.2% at 1440p, and 9.9% at 4k which is a raster-to-raster comparison.
Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below.
Another new addition to my testing was a few additional tests using Cyberpunk 2077. This is one of only a few games that support most of the tech from all three of the GPU companies. So I did tests at medium and ultra detail while having Super Sampling on for all of the cards. Using whatever the latest and greatest is supported. In this case, I tested with FSR 3. Just a note here, the AMD cards only allowed FSR when running windowed mode whereas Nvidia only performed well in fullscreen mode, I’m not sure why that happens. In the medium detail results the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is just above the 7900 XT in the base test, it moves up the chart farther with FSR on at 1440p but does struggle a little more at 4k and comes in behind the 5070 at that resolution. The ultra detail tests were similar with the 5070 out in front with its DLSS 4, I hope we see FSR 4 on Cyberpunk soon to see how they compare then.
AI Benchmarks
Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases, people who game also do work on the side. AI performance importance has increased quickly recently as well. So it is also important to check out the compute and AI performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. My first test was Geekbench AI, a cross platform AI benchmark that uses real-world machine learning tasks giving three results, a full precision score, half precision score, and quantized score. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC came in surprisingly close to the RX 7900 XTX here and is sitting in front of the RTX 5070.
I would typically also include Blender tests here but AMD didn’t have support on the Blender Benchmarks 4.3 but did have support with the actual 4.4 Blender program but with the launches stacked up I wasn’t able to fit that testing in.
Cooling Noise and Power
For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage.
With our PCat v2 powered testing I ran into a few issues including damaging our PCat. With that, I did two rounds of testing our RX 9070’s with one round showing too high for the wattage and one showing too low. Rather than put out information that could be wrong I have to skip those results for now until I can get the issue worked out.
My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC came in at 41.4 dB when testing at 50% fan speed, this put it up in the top 1/3 of our chart. Interestingly though cranking the fans all the way up it was down in the bottom 1/3 of our chart with 57.2 dB. The Fan RPM chart shows that the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC punched above its weight class with the fan cranked.
I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Here the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC was the second loudest tested. The second chart, which shows what percentage the fans were running when under load helps explain that when combined with our previous test that had the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC being noisier than most at 50% fan speed. When under load it has the fans running at 63% which was only behind the old blower reference cards.
To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up (on everything except the 5090 which was tested on a similarly matched OCCT workload). Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC leveled off in temperatures at 73c which was only behind some of the older Founders Edition cards and reference cards. This was by far the warmest of any card with an aftermarket cooler on it tested. It did that with the fans running at 63% as well. For the memory temps on the stock fan profile, it was running even warmer at 88c. Cranking the fans up to 100% didn’t change much for the memory temperatures, they ran at 84c, 4 degrees less. For the GPU temperatures, at 100% fan speed the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC moved up into the top spot on our chart at 69c making the difference between the stock fan profile and 100% just 4c. With this being our first 9070 tested, I don’t know how much of that is from the GPU and how much is from Acers cooler, but it is surprising either way.
While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. On the fan side of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC, the card ranged from 33c down to around 20c with the left side of the card being the warmest and the blow-through end of the card being the coolest. You can see that same thing happen across the top of the card but it is more obvious because the top down view gives us a peak at the PCB temperatures as well which at the end near the power connection is our hottest spot at 57c. On the back of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC with the exposed PCB directly behind the GPU that is by far the hottest spot at 80.9c. The rest of the backplate is between 37c and 38c then down at the end the blow-through section is running cooler at 27.4c.
Overall and Final Verdict
The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is both our first look at the new RX 9070 and also my first look at an Acer video card and both have been eye opening. The hype for this launch has been huge and in most ways it has met or surpassed that. The RX 9070 performed really well, especially in any of our pure raster-focused benchmarks. When I took out our in-game benchmarks that included DLSS and FSR testing the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC outperformed the new RTX 5070 by 11% at 1440p, that gap was smaller at 1080p and 4k, but it was still impressive no matter how you slice it. AMD has made big strides when it comes to ray tracing and AI but Nvidia is still ahead in those areas. As that gap shrinks however Nvidia’s justification for a more premium price does as well. I am sad to not see AMD bringing out a flagship high-end GPU but targeting the $500 to $700 range in their product design does focus more on where there are more customers and with that they were able to improve performance while using fewer compute units, saving money to allow room for more VRAM. In the end, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is capable of handling anything at 1440p you throw at it and the same goes for 4k as long as you are okay with smooth but not 120+ FPS in every game.
As far as the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC itself, I do have some questions still that I won’t know the answer to until I test another RX 9070. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC struggled when it came to cooling performance. This is an overclocked card with a surprisingly large overclock over the stock speeds listed by AMD. I’m not sure how much of the heat issues come from the GPU and how much was the cooler design. But I know I wouldn’t want a card that was running as hot as this was. That also translated to the card pushing the fans at 63% when under load and it being noisy. The cards styling wasn’t too bad and it was at least a relatively compact design compared to most cards these days. As for the name, I know that Acer uses the Nitro brand in their Displays, Laptops, and PCs so it does make sense, but it does add to the confusion when Sapphire has had Nitro branded GPUs for a very long time.
As always, pricing is what can make a good video card bad or a bad video card good. AMDs launch MSRP for the RX 9070 is $549 which with the performance we have seen is impressive. At that price, the RX 9070 dominates our performance per dollar chart above by a large margin. Of course, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC is overclocked to 2700 MHz when the stock RX 9070 clock speed is 2520 MHz so that plays some part in things. Especially when we know the overclocked cards aren’t selling for the MSRP price point. Because I’m writing this just after the cards hit the stores we know that a majority of those overclocked cards were $630 up to $799, I haven’t seen any of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC available though so its price is a bit of a mystery. Overall though it looks like the RX 9070 and the RTX 5070 are selling for similar prices when it comes to those overclocked cards. Pricing going forward is still going to be fluid with tariffs and supply dictating that a lot. But even if the RX 9070 is at the same price as the RTX 5070, its overall performance still makes it the best option.
Live Pricing: HERE
