AMD RX 9070 Performance Review: Thermals, Clocks, and Real-World FPS

Balancing memory capacity and raw raster performance makes the Radeon RX 9070 an attractive and future-proof choice for midrange gaming builds

Hardware by Katmin on Jun 11, 2025

The Radeon RX 9070, which sits in the middle of AMD's latest GPU portfolio, gives players a robust raster performance and a substantial 16 GB of GDDR6 memory at a price point comparable to that of its Nvidia competitor, the RTX 5070. AMD wants to give consumers looking for high resolutions, and future-proofed frame buffers a strong alternative without having to upgrade to the $600 9070 XT by matching the $550 MSRP.

Below, we explore how this non-XT variant handles thermals, clocks, gaming workloads, power draw, and value, allowing you to decide whether it deserves a place in your next build or if you should opt for the slightly more expensive XT model.

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Pricing and Market Position

AMD's decision to peg the RX 9070 at $550 MSRP places it directly alongside Nvidia's RTX 5070. On paper, the 9070 enjoys an advantage in raster workloads thanks to its larger memory buffer—16 GB versus the 5070's 12 GB—ensuring smoother frame generation at ultra settings and longevity as game textures grow.

Yet when you consider that the 9070 XT costs just $50 more than this price, saving only 8% on the non-XT, it feels like a meager concession for trading away 13% of compute and texture throughput. In practice, you'll need to hunt for sub-MSRP deals—around $500—to make the standard 9070 truly competitive.

Thermal and Clock Performance

In testing three custom models—the Sapphire Pure, PowerColor Hellhound, and XFX Quicksilver—, I found that all three maintained impressively low temperatures under sustained load. Junction temperatures peaked at 59 °C on the Hellhound, 58 °C on the Quicksilver, and just 53 °C on the Pure.

Hotspot readings were equally cool, with the Quicksilver hitting 69 °C, the Pure at 71 °C, and the Hellhound at 76 °C, while memory temperatures rested at 86 °C and VRM thermals stayed below 70 °C.

Fan noise remained virtually inaudible, with the Hellhound spinning at a mere 930 RPM and the others between 1,000 and 1,100 RPM. Clock speeds ranged from 2,745 MHz on the Hellhound to 2,840 MHz on the Pure, delivering consistent, quiet, and cool gaming sessions regardless of board partner.

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Raster Gaming Performance

Across an 18-title suite at 1440p and 4K, the RX 9070 averaged just 8% slower than its XT counterpart while holding a 4% lead over the RTX 5070 in mostly rasterized workloads. In Marvel Rivals at 1440p, you'll see 77 fps—matching the 5070 but trailing the XT by 13—and at 4K, it drops to 41 fps, 7 fps behind the 5070.

Stalker 2 at 1440p nudges 6% ahead of the 5070 but slips into parity at 4K with 32fps. Counter-Strike 2 at 1440p runs slightly behind the Nvidia card by 7%, widening to 10% at 4 K. Space Marine 2 surprisingly puts the 9070 in the same league as an RTX 4070 Super, outperforming the 5070 by 24 % at 1440p and by a whopping 57 % at 4 K.

In Cyberpunk 2077, non-ray-traced at 1440p, the 970 trails the XT by 10 % but beats the 5070 by 15 %, growing that margin to 20 % at 4K.

You'll find similar narratives in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, where the RX 9070 delivers a massive 40 % advantage over the 5070 at 1440p and 44 % at 4K, while Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Hogwarts Legacy trade blows with the Nvidia card to produce neck-and-neck results in many scenarios.

Even The Last of Us Part I sees the 970 matching the 5070's frame rates exactly, despite trailing the XT by up to 23%.

Power Consumption

Efficiency favors the RX 9070 when compared to its more powerful sibling, consuming 15–20% less power across our benchmarks. Compared to the RTX 5070, consumption fluctuates between slight savings and up to 20% higher draw, as observed in Starfield, where a 6% performance improvement is achieved at a significant power cost.

Ray Tracing and Upscaling

Engaging ray tracing shows where Nvidia's architecture retains an edge. In six modern RT-heavy titles at 1440p, the RX 9070 falls 33% behind the XT but sits just 16% under the RTX 5070 and even manages a 9% lead over the previous-generation flagship, the 7900 XTX.

At 4K with upscaling, neither the 9070 nor the 5070 achieves smooth frame rates, with the 9070 trailing Nvidia by 28% when compared to DLSS or FSR equivalents.

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Cost-Per-Frame Considerations

Calculating the MSRP cost-per-frame across 18 games reveals that the 9070 XT remains the sweet spot, delivering the best performance per dollar and rendering the non-XT offering about 4% less efficient.

Against the RTX 5070, the RX 9070 still yields roughly 8% more raster performance per dollar, although that gap narrows significantly when ray tracing is taken into account.

If you find a standard RX 9070 at or below $500, it stands as a respectable midrange contender. Otherwise, you'd be better served stretching to the $600 Radeon RX 9070 XT for its small premium and substantially higher performance or looking at alternatives that more cleanly separate value and speed.

Key-Takeaways

Unless you can't stretch to the $600 price of the 9070 XT—or you find the 9070 discounted to around $500—it's hard to recommend the non-XT model. You give up only 8% of performance on average while paying the same price as its Nvidia rival and saving only $50 compared to its older sibling, for a 14% drop in speed.

If you cherish raw raster power and future-proofed VRAM, you'll want the 9070 XT. But if your budget caps at $550, the RX 9070 still stands as a respectable choice, especially when raster gaming is your priority.

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