AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Is Finally Available For $599 With A Free Bonus
It took a lot longer than we would have liked, but AMD's flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT is up for grabs at its baseline MSRP. Same goes for the Radeon RX 9070 (read: non-XT model). We won't go so far as to call this a deal in the true sense of the word, but it's noteworthy, given that add-in board (AIB) partners have routinely sold these cards for markups over AMD's suggested pricing.
ASRock Challenger Radeon RX 9070 XT Is $599 Plus Get A Free Gift
The partner model in question is ASRock's Challenger Radeon RX 9070 XT, which can be found for $599.99 at Newegg (save $50). The markdown represents a 7% discount compared to ASRock's own MSRP for its custom model. In addition, Newegg is sweetening the pot with a Rosewill (Newegg's house brand) graphics card support bracket valued at $9.99. It's a small perk, but a perk all the same.
Whereas NVIDIA offers a Founders Edition version of its own flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090, AMD opted not to release a reference Radeon RX 9070 XT. That put the onus on AIBs to either adhere to AMD's suggested pricing, or not. For the most part, they chose the latter.
That changes with this discount, which is effectively a reference model in terms of clock speeds (2,400MHz game clock and up to a 2,970MHz boost clock).
Outside of sticking to reference clocks, the Challenger model sports a custom cooling solution with three striped axial fans, multiple LED indicators (there's a physical switch to turn the RGB lighting on or off), and a metal backplate. Underneath the hood, ASRock touts a Honeywell PTM7950 phase-change thermal pad, a nickle-plated copper base, high-density metal welding, and purportedly high end components (premium power chokes, Japanese SP caps, and a 2-ounce copper PCB).
Radeon RX 9070 Is Available At MSRP Too
For those interested in the non-XT model, PowerColor's Reaper Radeon RX 9070 is on sale for $549.99 at Amazon (5% off). It doesn't come with any bonus perks, but hey, it's available at AMD's baseline MSRP for its second-fastest RDNA 4 graphics card.
Here again, we're looking at a partner model that adheres to AMD's reference specifications. That translates to a 2,070MHz game clock and up to a 2,520MHz boost clock. It also features the same 16GB of GDDR6 memory as the XT model, along with the same 256-bit bus for the same 20Gbps of memory bandwidth.
The main differences are that the Radeon RX 9070 has fewer compute units (56 versus 64), streaming processors (3,584 versus 4,096), and AI accelerators (112 versus 128).
Both are solid cards, and the MSRP pricing comes right as AMD clarifies its GPU support strategy for old and new Radeon cards. In short, AMD is not abandoning new game support for RDNA 1 and 2 cards like its recent messaging suggested, which further means that longer term support for its newer models (like the 9070 XT / 9070) is still in play.
Not digging a stock-clocked card? If you're willing to splurge $10 extra, one other option is PowerColor's Hellhound Radeon RX 9070, which is marked down to $559.99 at Amazon (20% off). in OC mode, the Hellhound model bumps the game clock to 2,120MHz and the boost clock to 2,590MHz. Those are huge overclocks, but it does possibly point to better binned silicon.
