AMD’s New Radeon 9 9070 Series Graphics Cards Launch Soon, Support FSR4 Upscaling
Today at CES 2025, AMD announced its new 9070-series graphics cards, the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070. While the company did not reveal prices or availability for these new components, it did offer a preview of the new GPUs’ features and performance.
Specific specs were not disclosed during the company’s presentation, both the Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are built on AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture, featuring AMD’s second-gen AI accelerators, second-gen radiance display engine, and third-gen ray-tracing accelerators. AMD claims the performance benchmarks will be roughly in the range of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Super. That would put the RX 9070 series within a mid-range line of GPUs, rather high-end models–though we’re curious to see how they’ll stack up against Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 5000-series GPUs, which are also expected to be unveiled at CES this week.
What was confirmed, however, is that the GPUs’ RNA 4 architecture will support the new FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) AI-powered resolution upscaling, which AMD also previewed at CES. FSR is similar to Nvidia’s DLSS and PS5 Pro’s PSSR upscaling tech (which was based on FSR), but FSR 4 is built specifically for the RX 9070 series’ new AI accelerators. FSR 4 will launch alongside the new Radeon 9070 GPUs and will support any games that already use FSR 3.1 and above, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, as confirmed by Microsoft’s Matt Booty during AMD’s presentation. The company did not specify how FSR 4 upscaling will compare to its current FSR 3.5 or Nvidia’s DLSS.
AMD did not reveal prices or specific release dates for the Radeon RX 9070 GPUs, but the first wave is expected to launch in Q1 2025, with models planned from multiple manufacturers, including Acer, Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, and more.
New Ryzen 9 Flagship CPUs
Alongside these new GPUs, AMD also unveiled its new flagship desktop CPUs, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D, during its CES 2025 presentation. Pricing and specific release date were once again not confirmed, but we did get a more concrete release window of March 2025, and a clearer overview of its specs and performance.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D features 16 Zen 5 CPU cores (32 threads), a maximum boost frequency of 5.7GHz, 144MB of total cache, and 170 watt TDP. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D features 12 cores (24 threads), a 5.5GHz maximum boost, 140MB of cache, and a 120-watt TDP. AMD says the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is 10% faster on average than Intel’s current Core Ultra 9 285K flagship CPU, and up to 20% faster for gaming. Its gaming performance benchmarks are also within 1% of AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is widely considered the best gaming CPU currently on the market–and one that is notoriously difficult to find in stock.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D are both set to launch in March, but no prices have been revealed yet.
If you’re in the market for an AMD processor but don’t want to wait, Amazon has restocked the popular Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU for $479. The 8-core, 16-thread processor launched in November and can reach clock speeds up to 5.2GHz. Amazon also has deals on multiple older Ryzen 7 processors that still offer great speeds and reliable performance, including the Ryzen 7 7700X for $325 (was $399) and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D for $359 (was $449). For a budget CPU, check out the Ryzen 5 7600X for $219 (was $299).