AMD has finally entered the fray to compete with Nvidia's new RTX 50-series GPUs, unveiling the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT with aggressive pricing and performance claims. The new graphics cards will ship on March 6th, with the RX 9070 starting at $549 and the RX 9070 XT at $599, directly challenging Nvidia's $549 RTX 5070 and $749 RTX 5070 Ti.

According to AMD, the RX 9070 and 9070 XT offer "4K gaming at a 1440p price," with the RX 9070 XT boasting a 51% performance increase over the four-year-old RX 6900 XT at 4K and max settings, and a 26% increase over the RTX 3090 at the same settings. The RX 9070, meanwhile, is 21% faster than the RX 7900 GRE at 4K, suggesting it's not far off the XT in performance.

Both cards feature 16GB of GDDR6 memory, DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b ports, and are PCIe 5.0 cards. They also utilize standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The RX 9070 and 9070 XT are built on a 4nm monolithic chip, which AMD claims is "the most efficient GPU we've ever built," with a board power of 220 watts.

The new cards are the first to ship with RDNA 4, which AMD says offers twice the rasterization (non-ray traced) graphics performance per compute unit as RDNA 2. The company has also made significant strides in ray tracing and machine learning performance, with the RX 9070 XT capable of up to 779 TOPS.

AMD's FSR 4 technology, which comes with a new AI upscaling algorithm for super resolution, will be exclusive to RDNA 4 and newer cards. The company claims FSR 4 can increase frame rates "while looking just as good as native rendering" at 4K resolution. AMD has also upgraded its Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) technology to AFMF 2.1, with less ghosting and smearing of details.

The RX 9070 and 9070 XT will have 30 FSR4 games at launch, with over 75 expected by the end of the year. Notably, many of these games are PS5 titles, raising questions about the relationship between AMD's FSR 4 and the PS5 Pro's "PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution" AI upscaler.

AMD expects "strong availability at launch" and is working with its partners to ensure competitive pricing worldwide. The company has also teased the upcoming RX 9060 series cards, which will arrive in the second quarter to "broaden the family even further."

The aggressive pricing and performance claims of the RX 9070 and 9070 XT mark a significant shift in the GPU market, as AMD seeks to challenge Nvidia's dominance. With the cards set to ship on March 6th, the tech world will be watching closely to see if AMD can deliver on its promises and shake up the GPU landscape.