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Our benchmarking showcases the RX 9070 XT’s price to performance
We’ve got about an hour and a half until these cards go on sale so I’m going to shamelessly promote our benchmarking here on TechRadar. You can check out our full AMD RX 9070 XT review if you want a full spread of tests but I’ve shared the overall final scores above.
While the RX 9070 XT doesn’t quite overpower the very highest-end cards from Nvidia, it does get extremely close to the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 4080 for a very, very compelling price. For reference, we tested the cards on several creative benchmarking tools as well as eight different games at both 1440p and 4K.
It’s pretty obvious why these cards are so hyped right now – they’re looking to offer excellent bang for the buck. As gamers, we’re obviously starved for a decent GPU right now so I hope AMD hits the ground running for this particular launch.
Hmmm, where did Micro Centre’s listings go?
You know, I swear Micro Centre had a number of cards listed earlier with prices. I’ve just tried to find them on the site and they’ve seemingly disappeared. Am I going crazy? Perhaps.
Anyway, regardless of where the retailer has put its listings, you can see a nice little preview of what to expect courtesy of the Radeon subreddit. A user has posted a mobile screenshot (attached above) that clearly shows how many cards at MSRP that the retailer has (or had) listed. The good news? There are plenty of $599 cards here so it should be possible to get yourself a relatively cheap graphics card – at least, for this initial batch.
More details on UK stock – it’s good news and bad news!
Our writer Darren Allen has just posted an interesting news piece on UK stock levels that’s well worth checking out. To summarize, it states that Overclockers in the UK has in fact over 4,000 cards in stock and the retailer thinks that “stock will be fine for a few days”.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the retailer expects the MSRP cards (IE: the cheaper ones) to sell out first and that “MSRP is capped quantity of a few hundred, so prices will jump once those are sold through.” Darren thinks the prices will settle at around £600 for the cheaper models but I’m not so sure – OCUK does have a track record of hiking prices to a certain degree.
Best Buy doesn’t have many cards listed – let’s hope they have the stock
I’m a little puzzled by Best Buy’s initial listings for the RX 9070XT. First up, they do have a sole card listed at $599, but it’s only for the Black color of the XFX Swift. The White version is listed at $749, which is bonkers to me. Are people so desperate for a white card that they’ll pay an extra $150?
On top of that, it looks like the retailer is only stocking five XFX cards at launch, which isn’t much. My hope here is that each individual listing has plenty of stock to back it up! Best Buy is one of the bigger retailers obviously so it usually gets good stock – let’s hope so, at least.
Here are those five XFX cards listed out, if I see any other brands at Best Buy I’ll be sure to post an update.
A correction
Just a minor correction to my last post. I incorrectly stated that no US retailers have listed their stock. There are in fact cards you can already check out at both Best Buy and Micro Centre right now. That includes prices – which I’ll be taking a look at in my next post!
US sales will likely open at 9AM ET / 6AM PT
I’ve just been digging around to find details on availability in the US – specifically, when these cards will go on sale. As a bit of context, we already know that UK stock will be going live at 2PM in the UK since the retailer Overclockers has officially confirmed that.
None of the major retailers have listed times or stock just yet but this widely upvoted Reddit post states that sales will open at 6AM Pacific Time 9AM Eastern Time. These times line up with the confirmed UK time so this is almost certainly when you can expect sales to open.
There’s a wide range of prices on cards already listed
I was just browsing Overclocker’s stock of cards in the UK just now – and as expected, some of these AIB cards are much, much higher priced than the £569 MSRP that AMD stated.
There are a few cards listed at £569, like this Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT at Overclockers but they range all the way up to £799 for this Asus Radeon RX 9070 XT TUF, which is quite a variance for a card of this price point. Just based on traffic, it looks like the cheaper cards are getting more attention at the retailer right now so it could be worth jumping on those quickly if you’re interested.
It’s looking good for stock at one UK retailer
We’re used to getting burnt when it comes to GPU launches recently – most people are still waiting to get their hands on one of the latest Nvidia cards, for example. It’s too early to say whether the AMD RX 9070 and AMD RX 9070 XT will be any different, but Overclockers in the UK has teased that they have over 1,000 cards in stock on its official forum.
This is a stark contrast to the RTX 5090 and 5080 launches last month where most retailers were reportedly selling stock in the single digits. Again, it’s too early to say whether these cards will sell out but availability is looking much, much better this time around.
When are retailers going live with sales?
Right now, the only retailer that I can see with a confirmed time for sales is Overclockers in the UK, which has stated that cards will be available to buy from 2PM GMT. That will be 9AM ET for those of us joining in the US.
As of writing, I haven’t seen any word from US retailers but I expect that 2PM GMT / 8AM ET is the world wide embargo for sales. We’ll of course be on the lookout for stock in the meantime, however.
