Well, we all knew Q1 2025 was going to be spicy. I’m not sure we knew that would mean quite the number of delays and out-of-stock signs that we’ve seen so far, but we knew there was going to be a slew of new GPU shenanigans to watch out for. AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT is certainly one of these, and it now looks like we’re getting something slightly more than word of mouth regarding its specs and performance.
It’s still very much borne of the ever-churning rumour mill, of course, but from X user HKEPC (via VideoCardz) we have a screenshot of GPU-Z showing a ‘Navi 48’ GPU, this being codename for the upcoming RX 9070 XT. And the specs? Well, they’re in-line with what we expected—4,096 shader cores, 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, and a 256-memory bus—but it’s nice to actually see these specs on paper– err, I mean, on-screen.
HKEPC also shared a screenshot of a supposed RX 9070 XT achieving a whopping 211.7 fps in the Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark, albeit at 1080p and with frame gene enabled. But hey, as I discovered in my own testing of this benchmark for our Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark round-up, the game is pretty brutal on the ol’ GPU.
For reference on the core front, by the way, the RX 7800 XT has 3,840 and the RX 7900 XT has 5,376. Just as previous plausible leaks had it, then: the 9070 XT sitting between the two in core/CU count. Again corroborating these previous leaks, we’re (supposedly) looking at a higher boost clock for the RX 9070 XT—in this case, even higher than previously thought at 3,100 MHz, presumably due to a particularly aggressive factory overclock.
All very exciting stuff, and we shouldn’t have too long to wait for it, either, given Dr. Lisa Su has confirmed the GPU is officially arriving in early March. It might even beat the RTX 5070 to market given that it’s rumoured to be delayed until March now, too. Maybe this will make up for AMD’s botched CES appearance wherein they showed our eager eyes practically nada of the GPUs.
Then again, Nvidia’s just announced a February 20 launch date for the RTX 5070 Ti, so the RX 9070 XT will have that card to go up against. But even then-again-er, Nvidia’s recent RTX 50-series launches haven’t exactly given us much hope for, y’know, actual stock on shelves.
Maybe that’s where AMD can find an advantage: by actually having GPUs available to buy. If it can pull that off while pumping out this kind of Monster Hunter Wilds performance with 16 GB of high-bandwidth memory, preferably for cheap, I’ll be one happy chappy. We’ll see.