Performance leaks for AMD’s RX 9070 XT are all over the place

We’re in that exciting period leading up to the release of some of next year’s best graphics cards, and that means leaks and predictions are coming out every single day. The last few weeks have really brought into focus AMD’s next-gen flagship, which is now said to be called the RX 9070 XT. But now, more than ever, we’re seeing a lot of conflicting information about the kind of performance we can expect from the top RDNA 4 card. The latest leaks see it falling within a stone’s throw of Nvidia’s RTX 4080.

According to zhangzhonghao on the Chiphell forums (who is a frequent leaker in the CPU and GPU space), the difference between the RX 9070 XT and the RTX 4080 is just 5%. They didn’t specify which card was the winner, though, and we don’t know which games they were tested in.

This falls in line with many previous predictions about the new AMD flagship. Many previous leakers compared it to the RTX 4080, but others placed it at around the level of the RX 7900 XT — which is not at all comparable. The only leaked benchmark we’ve seen for the GPU is a Time Spy test that shows it performing slower than the RX 7900 XT, although a second test reveals that it can compete against the RTX 4070 Ti.

Safe to say, it’s all a bit all over the place.

9070XT Rumor

base2.8 boost3.0-3.1

Power：Reference 26xW，custom variant up to 330W

Gaming performance：Reference ~4080（-5%）https://t.co/JOT3IqnWgo

— HXL (@9550pro) December 26, 2024

Aside from that vague performance prediction, though, zhangzhonghao also revealed some key specs for the card. The leaker believes that the AMD version of the RX 9070 XT will feature a total board power (TBP) of around 260 watts, but models made by AMD’s partners may bump that up to as high as 330 watts. This kind of TBP is comparable to what we expect to see in the RTX 5070 Ti, but of course, that doesn’t have to mean similar performance.

The Chiphell tipster also expects the card to feature a base clock of 2.8GHz that can be boosted to anywhere between 3.0 and 3.1GHz. Those numbers are attainable with overclocking in the current generation, but are still on the higher end of the scale.

We’re just 10 days away from AMD announcing the RX 9070 XT — presumably alongside other cards from the lineup — so it’s important to take all of this with some skepticism. It won’t be long until we know the exact specs, and that’ll give us a good hint about possible performance figures.