AMD Unveils Red-Hot Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs With Big AI Focus

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AMD’s highly anticipated RDNA 4 graphics cards will launch soon, headed by Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT GPUs, the company announced at CES 2025. The new RDNA 4 graphics architecture has several improvements, according to the chip maker, including faster graphics performance, more powerful AI processing, and AMD’s third-generation ray-tracing accelerators.

It isn’t yet clear how these GPUs will stack up against Nvidia's inevitable GeForce RTX competition when these new Radeons drop during AMD's vague timeline of "Q1 2025," but you can be sure the next few months will be exciting as we discover more about them, and what they're up against.

Meet the AMD Radeon RX 9070—No, That’s Not a Typo

If you’re familiar with AMD’s existing graphics cards, the first thing you likely noticed is that the number scheme here is slightly different. You may even think I've typed it wrong. This is because AMD has traditionally used the hundreds digit to differentiate its graphics cards, like the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT versus the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT. That stops here, however, and for the time being, AMD will instead use the tens digits for this purpose, similar to what Nvidia does.

AMD is not coy about the reason for this: The company clearly stated this was to better match up with its competitors, i.e., Nvidia. I have no complaints here! While I liked the older way AMD numbered its graphics cards, this new system will better indicate which of AMD's latest graphics cards compare with which models from Nvidia or Intel for consumers who don’t spend all day keeping score in the GPU world.

AMD's information tipped off that a Radeon RX 9060 series is in the offing, too, but it gave no other details on these products.

AMD's RDNA 4 Highlights: More Speed, More AI

AMD didn’t provide a deep dive (yet) into what has changed inside of the new RDNA 4 architecture or the latest Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards. We don’t know what resources these GPUs will have, or the clock speeds at which any RDNA 4 GPU will operate. Those details will undoubtedly come closer to the actual launch of these GPUs, but for now, we have a few interesting bits of info to chew on.

The RDNA 4 architecture looks to be a significant update from the existing RDNA 3 that powers current Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs. According to AMD, the design is optimized for more instructions per clock and higher clock speeds, which is peculiar as improving both simultaneously tends to be exceedingly difficult. These efforts were undoubtedly helped by the transition to a new 4-nanometer manufacturing process, presumably from TSMC. AMD didn't explicitly say that TSMC is fabricating these GPUs, but it was the manufacturer for the last several generations of AMD GPUs, so that would make the most sense.

In addition to the faster clocks and shader improvements, AMD said that RDNA 4 GPUs have third-generation AMD ray-tracing accelerators. We don’t have a clear idea how the ray tracing compares with the previous generation, but I hope we see considerable improvement here, or at least a significant increase in the number of ray-tracing accelerators, as this has been a notable weakness for AMD GPUs across several generations.

AMD’s second-gen AI accelerator technology, used to power several AI software utilities that will launch alongside Radeon 9000-series GPUs, received more attention. The most exciting of these looks to be a new version of AMD’s FSR technology, now referred to as FSR 4. Per AMD, this technology uses machine learning to upscale lower-resolution content to 4K while maintaining high image fidelity. RDNA 4 also works with frame generation to boost performance even more, and it works with AMD’s Anti-Lag 2 technology to help reduce input latency.

However, unlike most FSR technologies, this one isn’t backward-compatible with previous graphics cards. To use FSR 4, you will need an AMD Radeon 9000-series graphics card.

Like Nvidia, AMD is also pushing AI utilities as part of its graphics software suite. Initially, this will include three utilities that could prove helpful. First, AMD has a document-summarization tool that, as you can guess, will give you a summary of a block of text you feed it, powered locally by the GPU. Next up is a support tool that uses AI to answer questions you ask related to AMD products. The most useful—and probably most fun—AI utility that AMD will serve up allows you to generate images via a text prompt. However, none of these AI functions is groundbreaking; instead, they catch AMD's GPUs up to current expectations for AI functionality.

AMD's Plans for Positioning the Radeon 9000 Series

That covers the bulk of AMD's information related to its RDNA 4-based Radeon 9000-series GPUs, but AMD shared one interesting slide that may provide insight into how these cards will compare with existing products, despite the lack of any pricing information so far.

As you can see in the image, the Radeon RX 9070 series is set at a similar level to AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XT and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti at the top end, while the RX 9060 series is set roughly on a level with the RX 7700 XT and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. AMD gave no context around this chart, but it seems clearly meant to indicate relative performance.

If this is comparing performance, then it seems the Radeon RX 9070 series won’t be quite as fast as AMD’s current flagship, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which could suggest a Radeon RX 9080-series card to come in the future. However, I still suspect that AMD is focused on the midrange and budget PC graphics markets, where it can reach more customers. So it's possible an RX 9070 XT may end up being the peak card.

Then again, in the past, we have seen AMD and Nvidia kick off new generations of graphics cards with midrange cards, so this wouldn’t be so surprising, assuming AMD still wants to fight in the heavyweight class. AMD's larger plans for its place in the GPU market in 2025 and beyond aren't yet clear, but we're eager to test these products once they're available, regardless.