AMDs RX 9070 launch, even through availability issues and questions on pricing has been exciting. I previously took a look at the stock-clocked Steel Legend and was impressed. Sapphire also sent over their stock-clocked RX 9070 XT Pulse and while I was impressed with ASRock’s offering, if anyone can outdo it, Sapphire can. Over the years they always still manage to find a way to impress so I’m excited to see what the RX 9070 XT Pulse has to offer and to see how it performs. So let’s dive in and see what sets the Pulse apart before getting to testing!
Product Name: Sapphire RX 9070 XT Pulse
Review Sample Provided by: Sapphire
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 Sapphire RX 9070 XT Pulse has a stock clock speed and GPUz confirmed that with it’s 2970 MHz boost clock. I tested the RX 9070 XT Pulse with the Beta prelaunch 24.30.31.03 Adrenalin driver provided by AMD and the card's BIOS version is noted just in case we need to reference that in the future.
