Gamers won’t be waiting too much longer for the new AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards to launch, as AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed when to expect the new GPUs. In a call with investors, the company said that the first RX 9070 series GPUs will launch in “early March,” while an unconfirmed rumor has separately pointed to March 6 as the launch date.
These new AMD graphics cards look set to challenge the best graphics cards in the middle ground, with RX 9070 XT performance rumors placing the new card close to last-gen Nvidia GPUs, such as the RTX 4070 Ti, and potentially rivaling the RTX 5070 once that particular card launches later in February.
AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su commented on the RX 9070 XT release date window in the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call, stating specifically that the “first Radeon 9070 series GPUs [will] go on sale in early March.” She also stated that AMD’s focus with this new generation of GPUs is “to address the highest volume portion of the enthusiast gaming market,” referring to the mid-range sector.
The new GPUs will be based on the company’s RDNA 4 GPU architecture, which AMD has already suggested improves ray tracing performance compared with last-gen cards such as the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT.
This isn’t entirely unsurprising news, however. AMD executive David McAfee recently confirmed the March RX 9070 XT launch window in a post on X (formerly Twitter) post a few weeks ago, but didn’t say if it would be early or late in the month. That leaves Nvidia with the potentially poisoned chalice of launching its new RTX 5070 cards first, following shortly after the release of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080.
Meanwhile, a launch date of March 6 has been suggested in a leak reported by Chinese media outlet Uniko’s Hardware. Translated from the original post, Uniko’s Hardware reports that the March 6 date has been “obtained through a reliable source,” with a suggestion that the strategy to launch after Nvidia is deliberate.
Of course, March 6 is firmly in “early March” territory, so would match up with AMD’s own comments. However, AMD hasn’t confirmed this March 6 date for itself, so take it with a grain of salt for now.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are both rumored to have specs that can rival the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti. If AMD can land the launch of these cards with decent raw performance, helped especially with the new AI-powered FSR 4 upscaling that we tested in our RX 9070 XT hands-on during CES this year, this latest GPU round might just end up being more appealing for the average gamer than the last.
Everything will depend on whether the RX 9070 XT’s price and overall performance match up against the best of Nvidia’s new mid-tier cards. With no new AMD cards to test just yet, and with Nvidia yet to launch the new RTX 5070 or 5070 Ti, check out our RTX 5090 review and RTX 5080 review for our thoughts on how well this new GPU generation is shaping up so far.
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