AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Preorder Date Leaked By A Popular US Retailer
AMD is taking a patient approach to launching its Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 after introducing the cards at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month. The company followed this up a couple weeks later by confirming the cards will land at retail in March. If some early retail listings are accurate, it will be in the latter part of March.
Why the patient approach? AMD's Frank Azor explained in a recent X/Twitter post that "teams are working hard" to ensure that the software delivers "great performance" right out of the gate. He also said that teams are "working on some nice FSR 4 bring-ups that I'm excited to announce soon. Doing all we can to make it worth the wait."
In another X/Twitter post, AMD's David McAfee elaborated a touch, saying the company is "taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles." He also suggested that AMD is working to get more cards into the hands of its retail partners.
To that end, a handful of Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 listings at B&H Photo have popped up. By our count, there are four models in all, including ASUS Prime and TUF variants of both SKUs. What's especially interesting, however, is each listing indicates that preorders will being on Sunday, March 23 at precisely 9:00am ET.
The presale date replaces an apparent "January 23" placeholder that previously adorned the listings. That lends some additional credibility to the release, though as pointed out by Videocardz, which noticed the listings, B&H Photo could be confusing an embargo lift with preorder availability. Likewise, March 23 could be another placeholder until there's more clarity on an actual retail launch.
There's probably more to the story on the Radeon RX 9000 delay, such as strategic timing in response to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series roll out. That said, perhaps the additional time will ensure that there's plenty of stock. That may not be the case with the GeForce RTX 5090, which has scalpers trying to pre-sell cards for up to $7,000 on eBay.
