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.
