Eyes and ears might be turned towards Nvidia's impending RTX 50-series graphics cards right now, but don't forget that AMD's next-gen cards, the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, aren't far off, either. At least not in the grand scheme of things, but they're certainly further off than we originally expected. Now, AMD is giving us more information about why exactly that is.
According to AMD VP and GM David McAfee, the company is "taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles."
The Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT were expected to launch at CES 2025, but instead AMD didn't give a release date and revealed very few details about the new GPUs. We only got an RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT release date a couple of days ago when McAfee said they'll "go on sale in March".
Aside from speculation about possible changes of plans regarding the GPUs—switching from a chiplet to non-chiplet design—many have suspected that the main reason for the delayed launch was Nvidia's announcement of surprisingly cheap price tags for the upcoming RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, which the AMD GPUs will almost certainly be competing against.
This reason, at least, is not speculation. AMD's Frank Azor confirmed as much to us at CES, saying the RTX 50-series announcement "went into our decision" to hold off on dishing out the deetz on the new desktop GPUs. Although, Azor clarified that it wasn't the only factor, saying "it isn't any one thing."
I really appreciate the excitement for RDNA4. We are focused on ensuring we deliver a great set of products with Radeon 9000 series. We are taking a little extra time to optimize the software stack for maximum performance and enable more FSR 4 titles. We also have a wide range…January 22, 2025
There are many reasons why such a thing could cause a delay, least of which being needing time to let the dust settle around the RTX 50-series cards and figure out a new price point. And if this meant reducing the price of the GPUs to better compete with the RTX 50-series, this could have caused problems with board partners that had already bought up a load of GPUs at the original higher price.
Now, however, Azor seems to be implying the delay is to do with getting "maximum performance" out of the cards. Of course, that's something we'd hope the company was aiming for anyway, but if it takes a little extra time to achieve, so be it.
And really, this new statement doesn't conflict with the old one. Improving performance and getting more FSR 4 titles up and running could be one of the "multitude of different things" Azor originally mentioned. Plus, of course, any improvements will help improve the AMD chips' value proposition against the 50-series chips.
So, it does track—could track, at least. But that doesn't detract from the fact that the RX 9070 and RX 9070 were delayed, which doesn't exactly scream confidence in the product. We won't know until we get our hands on the GPUs for testing. We were hoping that'd have been following CES, but alas, "maximum performance" calls.
