I have the Silicon Power US75 in the labs – a Gen4 NVMe SSD that offers high-end performance for mainstream builds without trying to get too fancy. It slots into the middle of the Silicon Power range and is one of the cheaper 7GB/s-class Gen4 drives available. It’s aimed at creators and gamers who are after fast yet affordable PCIe Gen4 storage.
The 1TB US75 (as tested) is rated for 7,000 MB/s sequential reads and 6,000 MB/s sequential writes – making it a good fit for handling large media files, giving fast game access or other storage-heavy tasks.
(Image credit: Future)
The US75 is a single-sided module and uses the Maxio MAP1602 controller that offers decent efficiency.
While currently hard to find in every capacity (depending on your location), Silicon Power offers it in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB or 4TB versions. The endurance is 300 TBW for 500GB, 600 TBW for 1TB, 1,200 TBW for 2TB and 2,400 TBW for the 4TB drive. That's pretty normal endurance for this class of drive and if you need higher, look at the Silicon Power Xpower XS70, which tops out at 3,000 TBW for the 4TB model.
The US75 is backed by a 5-year warranty, which is typical for a mid-range drive, but is better than most budget offerings.
(Image credit: Future)
In CrystalDiskMark, the US75 hit 7,356 MB/s sequential reads and 6,233 MB/s writes, and the real world profile (which mimics everyday file work more closely) gave 4,412 MB/s reads and 5,806 MB/s writes.
Using the Blackmagic speed test, I got 5,847 MB/s reads and 5,626 MB/s writes. In Iometer, the drive gave 690k read IOPS and 982k write IOPS – a great result that keeps up with pricier Gen4 drives.
Even in sustained runs, the US75 stayed reasonably cool despite the lack of a heatsink, but adding one is still a good idea for hot gaming builds and must-have for PS5 upgrades. You can get the US75 in a variant with a heatsink (and it's also PS5 compatible), but while readily available in the US, it's harder to find in the UK and rarely seen in Australia.
All in all, the Silicon Power US75 gives excellent Gen4 speeds at a price that few other drives can match.
You want a fast yet affordable SSD upgrade The US75 gives great bang for buck and compares well with similar performance drives.
You want peace of mind The US75 comes with great endurance numbers and a long 5-year warranty, so you can depend on it for a long time.
Don't buy it if…
You want ultimate performance The US75 is fast, but performance is capped by the Gen4 interface. For PCIe 5 speeds, consider the Silicon Power US85.
You need very large capacity The US75 maxes out at 4TB, so if you need more storage, then consider the Silicon Power Xpower XS70, which has models up to 8TB.
Silicon Power US75 SSD review: Also consider
Orico O7000 SSD It's another high performance but affordable SSD for those after Gen4 speeds without blowing the budget. Read our Orico O7000 SSD review for the full story.
After something different? Take a look at our guide to the best SSDs, or let me know what you would like to see reviewed next in the comments below.
Netgear’s new management continues its quest to provide more affordable options for home users who want to upgrade their Wi-Fi. The company has recently launched a number of affordable Wi-Fi 7 routers, and it’s now bringing that approach to its Orbi range of mesh Wi-Fi systems too.
Like many of the more affordable Wi-Fi 7 routers and mesh systems that we’ve seen recently, the Orbi 370 series keeps its price down by providing basic dual-band Wi-Fi 7 that uses just the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz frequency bands, and omits the faster 6.0GHz band that is available with both Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7.
However, Wi-Fi doesn’t just focus on speed alone, and is also designed to be more reliable when connecting to lots of devices within your home all at the same time.
This means that a dual-band Wi-Fi 7 system such as the Orbi 370 series can still provide a useful upgrade for owners of older routers and mesh systems - especially for people who live in larger homes that need a far-reaching Wi-Fi network that can cover their entire home.
(Image credit: Future)
This also ensures that the Orbi 370 remains fully compatible with older computers and other devices that use the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands. However, owners of shiny new PCs or mobile devices that do have Wi-Fi 7 might prefer to opt for a more expensive router or mesh system that provides full support for the high-speed 6.0GHz band.
Netgear Orbi 373: Price & availability
How much does it cost? $349.99/£299.99/AU$349.99
When is it available? Available now
Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia
Most mesh Wi-Fi systems consist of two or more routers that are identical in terms of both design and features.
However, Netgear’s Orbi range takes a different approach, with each system consisting of a primary router along with one or more ‘satellite’ units. The Orbi 370 series can be bought as a two-pack mesh system (Orbi 372) that consists of the main router and one satellite for $249.99/£209.99/AU$249.99.
For this review, we tested the three-pack option (Orbi 373) that includes one router and two satellites, priced at $349.99/£299.99/AU$349.99. Netgear states that this should cover an area of up to 6,000 sq.ft – although that figure may vary due to differences in regional regulations, so check Netgear’s local web site in your own country before buying.
There’s also a four-pack available in the US and Australia, which adds a third satellite for $449.99/AU$449.99. However, that option doesn’t seem to be available for the quaint little hovels in the tiny island state of Great Britain.
Router provides 2.5Gb ports for broadband and wired connections
Satellites only have one Ethernet port
The Orbi 373 follows the upright mini-tower design that Netgear introduced last year, with each slimline unit standing just 204mm high, 75mm wide and 120mm deep.
They’re small enough to sit easily on any convenient table or shelf, although the white plastic casing feels a little flimsy, so it’s probably a good idea for parents to keep them out of reach of eager young hands.
There are some other compromises required to keep the price down too. The main satellite just has two Ethernet ports – one each for your broadband connection (WAN), and for providing a wired connection (LAN) for a PC or other devices.
(Image credit: Future)
The satellite units are even more basic, with just a single Ethernet port to provide a wired connection. Thankfully, though, the ports on both router and satellites all support 2.5Gb speeds so you can still use the Orbi 370 series with high-speed broadband services. However, if you do need additional Ethernet ports – perhaps for an office network – then you might prefer to look for an alternative that provides additional ports.
Design: 3 / 5
Netgear Orbi 373: Features
Easy to set up and use
Parental controls require a subscription
Provides Guest and IoT networks
One feature that helps to justify the price of Netgear products is that they’re very easy to use, and setting up the Orbi 373 proved to be a piece of cake (albeit a piece of cake that moves at a rather leisurely pace).
All you have to do is scan the QR code that’s printed on the main router and then download the Orbi app. This guides you through the set-up process automatically, connecting you to the new network created by the main router, and then linking the satellites to the router in order to complete your new mesh network.
It takes a little while – the Orbi app warns that it can take up to 20 minutes to connect the satellites to the main router – but the process is completely automatic. And, to keep things simple, the app merges the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands into a single network. The only thing that you need to think about is whether you want to use the default log-in details for the Orbi network, or assign a new name and password that you can choose yourself.
The app isn’t exactly overflowing with additional features though, because – even with its lower pricing – Netgear always wants to sell you some additional subscriptions.
(Image credit: Netgear)
You can view a network map that lists all the devices connected to the network, and block any device that you don’t trust (or if you just want to get the kids to put their phones down at dinner time).
You can also create a guest network for visitors, and an IoT network (Internet Of Things) for any smart devices in your home. However, additional security features and parental controls will require a subscription to Netgear’s Armor security or Smart Parental Controls services.
You do get a 30-day trial for both services when you buy the Orbi, but after that you’ll need to pay for a subscription. The Smart Parental Controls subscription costs $7.99 per month (around £6/AU$12) or $69.99 per year (around £50/AU$110). The Armor security service offers a discount for the first year, costing $33.33 per year (around £25/AU$50), rising to $99.99 (around £75/AU$150) after one year.
Features: 3 / 5
Netgear Orbi 373: Performance
Dual-band Wi-Fi 7
5Gbps Wi-Fi speed (3.6Gbps in UK)
2.5Gb Ethernet ports
There’s one minor oddity here, as Netgear states that the Orbi 370 series provides a Wi-Fi speed of 5Gbps in the US and Australia, but only 3.6Gbps in the UK.
That’s the first time we’ve come across a regional difference like that but, in any event, 3.6Gbps should still be more than adequate to handle most domestic broadband services.
Netgear Orbi 373: Benchmarks
Ookla Speed Test (download/upload) Within 5ft, no obstructions: 150/150Mbps Within 30ft, three partition walls: 150/150Mbps
20GB Steam download Within 5ft, no obstructions: 150Mbps Within 30ft, three partition walls: 150Mbps
The Orbi 373 that we tested certainly gave my office Wi-Fi a welcome boost. It runs at 150Mbps, but my aging router can only manage a top speed of 120Mbps even for devices that are in the same room.
I also have an office towards the back of the building that my old office router can’t reach at all, leaving me with an annoying Wi-Fi deadspot that means I have to use powerline adaptors to provide a wired connection instead.
The Orbi 373 immediately kicked my office Wi-Fi up a gear, hitting the maximum 150Mbps for devices in the same room for both the Ookla Speed Test and file downloads on Steam.
To reach the back office, I placed one of the satellites inside that office and the second satellite in a hallway, roughly halfway between the main router and the other satellite.
And, as I wandered along the corridor to the back office with my laptop still downloading files from Steam, I was pleased to find that the Orbi held steady at 150Mbps the whole time.
Netgear’s fondness for selling add-on subscriptions remains irksome, but at least you can ignore that if you want to. Some people might also prefer a router or mesh system that provides additional Ethernet ports.
But, if you simply want a reliable and easy-to-use mesh Wi-Fi system that can cover larger homes or offices, then the Orbi 370 series fits the bill at a competitive price.
Performance: 4 / 5
Should you buy the Netgear Orbi 373?
Value
Its dual-band Wi-Fi 7 means that the Orbi 373 is very much an entry-level option, but it’s competitively priced and should be fast enough for most domestic broadband services.
4 / 5
Design
The lightweight plastic casing could be a little sturdier, and it doesn’t offer too much in the way of wired connectivity either. However, 2.5Gb Ethernet ports still provide good performance for high-speed broadband services.
3.5 / 5
Features
The Orbi’s well-designed app is certainly easy to ease. However, its modest price is matched by a fairly modest selection of features, and Netgear really wants you to pay a subscription fee for parental controls.
3 / 5
Performance
Lack of support for the 6.0GHz band means that the Orbi 373 is no speed demon (especially for UK users). Even so, it should still be a good upgrade for people that are using an older router with Wi-Fi 5 or 6.
3.5 / 5
Final Score
Gamers or power users who want maximum performance should look elsewhere. However, the Orbi 373 is an affordable upgrade for people who need more reliable Wi-Fi for larger homes.
4 / 5
Buy it if...
You have lots of bedrooms There are faster routers available, but the Orbi 370 series is a good option for larger homes that need far-reaching Wi-Fi coverage.
You’re on a budget Wi-Fi 7 routers and mesh systems are still fairly expensive, so the Orbi 370 series provides a worthwhile upgrade without breaking the bank.
Don't buy it if...
You’re a gamer Dual-band Wi-Fi 7 is very much an entry-level option, so gamers who need lighting response times should look at a faster tri-band option.
You want parental controls The Orbi 370 series is affordable, but it skimps on extra features and tries to sell you subscriptions for parental controls and other features.
Netgear Nighthawk RS100 Smaller homes with one or two bedrooms can probably get by with a single, conventional router. The RS100 is one of Netgear’s most affordable Wi-Fi 7 routers, with a top speed of 3.6Gbps and price of just $129.99/£129.99/ AU$259.
Acer Predator Connect T7 If it’s speed you’re after then Acer’s T7 is a high-end gaming router that provides tri-band Wi-Fi 7 with a top speed of 11Gbps. It can be used as part of a mesh system in larger homes too.
Used the Ookla Speed Test app and tested game download speeds
We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.
Having missed the initial AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review cycle earlier this month for logistical reasons, I wanted to do more with this review than just try to play catch-up with my peers who got to review the 16GB card prior to launch.
Fortunately, doing this post-launch meant that I was able to get my hands on both 16GB and 8GB versions of the RX 9060 XT for a single review, and I'm honestly glad I waited.
Both AMD RX 9060 XT cards bring a compelling value, with the 8GB version starting at $299.99 / £269.99 / AU$569 and the 16GB versions starting at $349.99 / £329.99 / AU$689. This puts it roughly in the middle of the price pack for the best cheap graphics cards of the current generation.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Spec-wise, the only difference between the two cards is really the amount of GDDR6 video memory available, either 16GB or 8GB.
This matters, as that extra 8GB VRAM does improve the performance of the RX 9060 XT (and even makes modest 4K gaming possible), but the difference between the two isn't so large that it overrides any consideration of the additional cost.
However, Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5060 (an 8GB card) offer better performance vis-à-vis the RX 9060 XT 16GB and RX 9060 XT 8GB, respectively. In the case of the RTX 5060, there's no difference in price with the RX 9060 XT 8GB, so that is a much tougher call between the two for reasons I'll dig into in a bit.
On the other hand, the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB offers better performance over the RX 9060 XT 16GB, but not so much better that it justifies the much higher price.
In the end, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB strikes the best balance of price and performance in this class, making it easy to recommend as the best graphics card in this segment for most people, and both are two of the best AMD graphics cards the company's ever put out.
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much is it? $299.99 / £269.99 / AU$569 for 8GB, $349.99 / £329.99 / AU$689 for 16GB
When can you get it? Now
Where is it available? Available in the US, UK, and Australia
There's a much more direct comparison between the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT 16GB and the RX 9060 XT 16GB, as both are very comparable spec-wise. In that regard, the RX 9060 XT is a slight price increase over the RX 7600 XT (about $20 in the US), but it's not really large enough to ding its score.
The RX 7600 XT and RX 7600 are very similar, but there are differences beyond just their memory pools, so the RX 9060 XT is not quite as comparable to the RX 7600, meaning even though the RX 9060 XT is slightly more expensive (about $30 in the US), it's much more reasonable given the comparably faster clock speeds.
The RX 9060 XT 8GB is one of the cheapest graphics cards on the market right now, and unlike many others out there, it's easy enough to find at its MSRPView Deal
The RX 9060 XT 16GB is easily the best graphics card you can get this generation under $400, and with 16GB VRAM, it comes with a solid bit of future-proofing built into it.View Deal
Nvidia's competing cards, the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5060, are more expensive ($429 / £419.99 / AU$799 for the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB) or about the same price or slightly more expensive ($299 / £269.99 / AU$599) for the RTX 5060.
Neither RX 9060 XT version has an AMD reference card, so you'll need to buy one from a third-party manufacturer, such as Asus, Gigabyte, or XFX.
The same is true for Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060, though, so it's hard to knock the 9060 XT cards too hard for this, especially as we've seen fairly wide availability of MSRP cards for sale online that you can actually buy.
Fortunately, we also haven't seen any real stock shortages of the RX 9060 XT cards, so finding stock at MSRP is fairly easy right now.
Value: 4.5 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT: Specs
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
PCIe 5.0
16GB and 8GB VRAM
AMD RX 9060 XT Specs
RX 9060 XT (16GB)
RX 9060 XT (8GB)
Process Node
TSMC N4P
TSMC N4P
Transistor Count (Billion)
29.7
29.7
Compute Units
32
32
Shaders
2,048
2,048
Ray Accelerators
32
32
AI/Matrix Processors
64
64
Render Output Units
64
64
Cache (MB)
32
32
Base Clock (MHz)
1,700
1,700
Boost Clock (MHz)
3,130
3,130
Memory Clock (MHz)
2,518
2,518
Memory Type
GDDR6
GDDR6
Memory Pool (GB)
16
8
Memory Interface (bits)
128
128
Effective Memory Speed (Gbps)
20.1
20.1
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)
322.3
322.3
PCIe Interface
5.0 x16
5.0 x16
TGP (W)
160
150
Recommended PSU (W)
450
700
Power Connector
1 x 8-pin
1 x 8-pin
Both versions of the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT have effectively identical specs, other than different memory pools and the slightly higher TDP for the 16GB version to account for powering the additional memory.
Otherwise, they use the exact same GPU die with identical clock speeds, so your decision between the two is really about whether that 8GB of additional GDDR6 VRAM is worth the extra investment.
The number of compute units, ROPs, and available cache on the RX 9060 XT is unchanged over the RX 7600 XT and RX 7600, so the RX 9060 XT is effectively an upgraded version of those cards using the new RDNA 4 architecture and faster game and memory clock speeds.
There's also the issue of whether 8GB is enough for a modern graphics card, even at a sub-$300 price point. Given the performance I found while testing, an 8GB card can perform well right now, even at 1440p, on many games, so long as you don't go anywhere near ray tracing. How much longer will that be the case? It's hard to say, but 8GB cards are already starting to struggle, so even a 10GB card would have been better, much less a 12GB version for the lower-end 9060 XT.
Add to this AMD's maddening decision to stick with a 128-bit memory bus for these cards, which unnecessarily constrains memory bandwidth and inevitably limits the potential performance of the RX 9060 XT. This alone knocks some points off, because if the Intel Arc B570 can use a 160-bit memory bus, there's no reason why AMD or Nvidia continue to do so on their 60-class cards.
That simple widening of the bus could noticeably improve gaming frame rates, and it's something neither AMD nor Nvidia has been able to explain to me beyond vaguely gesturing at cost constraints. If Intel can afford a 160-bit bus, so can AMD, and it makes me wonder how much better these cards might have otherwise been.
OK, end of rant.
Specs & features: 3.5 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT: Design
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
No AMD reference card
Good for SFF cases
There is no AMD reference cards for either of the RX 9060 XT versions, so the design of the card you get will depend on the manufacturer.
The two cards I tested, the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB and the Asus Dual Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB, are both fairly slender and compact cards.
Neither have any RGB lighting, so if you're looking for something with more bling, other cards can definitely offer that.
Also, there are some cards from some manufacturers that use triple-fan designs, which seems overkill to me, but if you want a bigger-looking card for a specific build, you'll definitely have that option.
Design: 3.5 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Big difference between 16GB and 8GB versions
RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5060 offer slightly better performance than the two RX 9060 XT cards
A note on my data
The charts shown below offer the most recent data I have for the cards tested for this review. They may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The 'average of all cards tested' includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
As far as performance goes, there's a lot to like about both AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT cards, from their modest power draw to their solid 1440p gaming performance.
It's not all positive though, as there are several points where Nvidia's competing cards outperform AMD's latest offerings, making the final assessment much closer than I initially thought it would be when I began testing these cards.
Across synthetic benchmarks, the RX 9060 XT and RTX 5060 Ti are more or less tied across resolutions, with Nvidia's card only edging out AMD's in ray tracing performance. The RX 9060 XT 16GB is only about 15% slower than the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in synthetic ray tracing performance. While this is expected, it's not as wide as it's been in previous generations.
The RX 9060 XT 8GB, meanwhile, outperforms the RTX 5060 in 1080p (about 4% better), in 1440p (about 10% better), and in 4K (about 10% better), though the RTX 5060 does hold a slight lead in ray-tracing performance (about 3%).
In creative benchmarks, the RX 9060 XT cards are largely competitive against Nvidia's GPUs in everything but 3D model rendering. Unfortunately, I can't say more about this since Blender Benchmark wasn't able to run on either RX 9060 XT card, so I can't say how they'd fare against the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16GB.
The RTX 5060, interestingly enough, couldn't run Blender Benchmark either, so this will have to be an issue I'll investigate further and update my results once I have them, but given that Blender Benchmark Cycles renderer is optimized for Nvidia CUDA (as is nearly all 3D modeling software), I am very confident that the RX 9060 XT cards aren't going to be competitive on this workload, it's really just a matter of how far behind the RX 9060 XT cards land in the end.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Creative workloads aren't what AMD Radeon cards are most known for, though. PC gaming is where these cards really compete, and in this regard, the RX 9060 XT 8GB comes in about 4% slower than the RTX 5060 in 1080p overall, while the RX 9060 XT 16GB comes up about 9% slower than the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB at 1080p overall.
Gen-on-gen, though, the RX 9060 XT 16GB outperforms the RX 7600 XT by about 44% at 1080p, overall, while the RX 9060 XT 8GB similarly comes in about 46% faster than the RX 7600 at 1080p overall.
At 1440p, the story is similar for the RX 9060 XT, with it coming in about 9% slower than the RTX 5060 Ti, overall. For the RX 9060 XT 8GB, the gap widens a bit as it comes in about 8% slower than the RTX 5060, overall.
At 1440p, the gen-on-gen performance improvement is even greater, with the RX 9060 XT 16GB outperforming the RX 7600 XT by about 53% overall, while the RX 9060 XT 8GB outperforms the RX 7600 by a massive 62.5% overall.
In terms of power consumption, the peak power consumption of the RX 9060 XT cards are in line with where the RTX 5060 Ti lands and slightly above the listed TDP for the two cards. The RTX 5060, meanwhile, comes in a good bit lower at peak, in my tests.
Temperature, meanwhile, will largely depend on the model card you end up buying, as they will all have different cooling systems. That said, the Sapphire Pulse RX 9060 XT 16GB stayed a few degrees cooler than the Asus Dual RX 9060 XT 8GB in my tests, buy your mileage may vary.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
In the end, the RX 9060 XT cards kept things pretty close to their respective competition from Nvidia, though couldn't quite overtake them, even considering that I didn't factor Blender Benchmark's results into the final creative score for any of the cards tested, given that I wasn't able to run it on three of the cards in question.
Had those tests run successfully and been factored into the final scores, the two Nvidia cards would have pulled further ahead, most likely.
But would they have pulled far enough ahead to justify buying them? In the case of the RX 9060 XT 8GB, the RTX 5060 simply offers you a better value given that both can be purchased for MSRP right now, but if you don't want to give Nvidia your money, you're not really losing anything by going with the RX 9060 XT 8GB instead.
For the RX 9060 XT 16GB, though, it comes within just a few points of the RTX 5060 Ti at a much lower price, making it the one I'd recommend to anyone shopping for a GPU in this price range.
Performance: 4.5 / 5
Should you buy the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Scorecard
Category
Notes
Score
Value
Both RX 9060 XT cards offer great value for their price.
4.5 / 5
Specs & features
While the 16GB option for the RX 9060 XT is great, 8GB is just too little for a modern GPU.
3.5 / 5
Design
Since there's no AMD reference card for either version of the RX 9060 XT, your design will vary depending on which card you get. The ones I tested were fine, but nothing spectacular.
3.5 / 5
Performance
Both RX 9060 XT versions are capable cards with fantastic gen-on-gen performance, though Nvidia's competing offerings edge them out slightly.
4.5 / 5
Final score
While both RX 9060 XT cards don't quite overtake Nvidia's competing cards, they offer a very compelling value for gamers, especially those who are getting tired of what Nvidia has been offering lately.
4 / 5
Buy the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT if...
You want excellent 1080p gaming If you're still gaming at 1080p, these cards are fantastic.
You're making the move to 1440p gaming If you just got a new 1440p gaming monitor and want to upgrade your GPU to handle the higher resolution, both of these cards are solid picks for 1440p.
You don't want to spend a fortune While $300-350 isn't cheap, for graphics cards with this kind of performance, they're both excellent values.
Don't buy it if...
You want the best possible performance While the RX 9060 XT cards performed very well, Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5060 are still the better GPUs if you want the best performance.
You want to game at 4K The RX 9060 XT 16GB can play some titles at 4K without ray tracing, largely thanks to upscaling, though it definitely struggles. The RX 9060 XT 8GB can only game at this resolution with some pretty heavy compromises.
You can afford to get the AMD RX 9070 If you have some room in your budget, moving up to the RX 9070 is definitely recommended if you want a more future-proofed gaming rig.
How I tested the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT
I spent about three weeks with the RX 9060 XT 16GB and 8GB versions
I used my complete GPU testing suite to analyze the card's performance
I tested the card in everyday, gaming, creative, and AI workload usage
Test System Specs
Here are the specs on the system I used for testing:
I spent about three weeks with both RX 9060 XT cards, using my standard suite of benchmark tests with industry standard tools like 3DMark, PassMark, PugetBench for Creators, and more.
For gaming, I use built-in benchmark tools in games like Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024.
I also used both cards for about a week each as the GPU in my own PC at home where I used it for work, content creation, and gaming outside of formal testing.
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is a card that just might be saved by the economic chaos engulfing the GPU market right now.
With 'normal' price inflation pretty much rampant with every current-gen GPU, the price proposition for the RX 9070 might actually make it an appealing pick for gamers who're experiencing sticker shock when looking for the best graphics card for their next GPU upgrade.
That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that the AMD RX 9070 is going to be one of the best cheap graphics cards going, even by comparison with everything else that's launched since the end of 2024. With an MSRP of $549 / £529.99 / AU$1,229, the RX 9070 is still an expensive card, even if it's theoretically in line with your typical 'midrange' offering.
And, with the lack of an AMD reference card that might have helped anchor the RX 9070's price at Team Red's MSRP, you're going to pretty much be at the mercy of third-party manufacturers and retailers who can charge whatever they want for this card.
Comparatively speaking, though, even with price inflation, this is going to be one of the cheaper midrange GPUs of this generation, so if you're looking at a bunch of different GPUs, without question this one is likely to be the cheapest graphics card made by either AMD or Nvidia right now (yes, that's even counting the RTX 5060 Ti, which is already selling for well above 150% of MSRP in many places).
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Does that make this card worth the purchase? Well, that's going to depend on what you're being asked to pay for it. While it's possible to find RX 9070 cards at MSRP, they are rare, and so you're going to have to make a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if this card is going to offer you the best value in your particular circumstance.
I'm fairly confident, however, that it will. Had I the time to review this card when it first launched in March, I might have scored it lower based on its performance and price proximity to the beefier AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.
Looking at both of those cards based on their MSRPs, there's no question that the RX 9070 XT is the much better graphics card, so I'd have recommended you spend the extra cash to get that card instead of this one.
Unfortunately, contrary to my hopes, the RX 9070 XT has been scalped almost as badly as the best Nvidia graphics cards of this generation, so that relatively small price difference on paper can be quite large in practice.
Given that reality, for most gamers, the RX 9070 is the best 1440p graphics card going, and can even get you some solid 4K gaming performance for a lot less than you're likely to find the RX 9070 XT or competing Nvidia card, even from the last generation.
If you're looking at this card and the market has returned to sanity and MSRP pricing, then definitely consider going for the RX 9070 XT instead of this card. But barring that happy contingency, given where everything is right now with the GPU market, the RX 9070 is the best AMD graphics card for 1440p gaming, and offers some of the best bang for your (inflationary) buck as you're likely to find today.
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much is it? MSRP is $549 / £529.99 / AU$1,229, but retail price will likely be higher
When can you get it? The RX 9070 is available now
Where is it available? The RX 9070 is available in the US, UK, and Australia
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is available now in the US, UK, and Australia for an MSRP of $549 / £529.99 / AU$1,229, respectively, but the price you'll pay for this card from third-party partners and retailers will likely be higher.
Giving credit where it's due, the RX 9070 is the exact same MSRP as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which you can argue the RX 9070 is replacing. It's also coming in at the same price as the RTX 5070's MSRP, and as I'll get into in a bit, for gaming performance, the RX 9070 offers a better value at MSRP.
Given how the RTX 5070 can rarely be found at MSRP, the RX 9070 is in an even stronger position compared to its competition.
Value: 4 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Specs
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
PCIe 5.0
16GB VRAM
Specs & features: 4 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Design & features
No AMD reference card
Will be good for SFF cases
In terms of design, the RX 9070 doesn't have a reference card, so the card I reviewed is the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070.
This card, in particular, is fairly straightforward with few frills, but for those who don't want a whole lot of RGB lighting in their PC, this is more of a positive than a negative. RGB fans, however, will have to look at other AMD partner cards for their fix.
The card is a noticeably shorter dual-fan design compared to the longer triple-fan RX 9070 XT cards. That makes the RX 9070 a great option for small form factor PC cases.
Design: 3.5 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Performance
About 13% slower than RX 9070 XT
Outstanding 1440p gaming performance
Decent 4K performance
A note on my data
The charts shown below offer the most recent data I have for the cards tested for this review. They may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The 'average of all cards tested' includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
When it comes down to performance, the RX 9070 is a very strong graphics card that is somewhat overshadowed by its beefier 9070 XT sibling, but goes toe-to-toe against the RTX 5070 where it counts for most users, which is gaming.
On the synthetic side, the RTX 9070 puts up some incredibly solid numbers, especially in pure rasterization workloads like 3DMark Steel Nomad, beating out the RTX 5070 by 13%. In ray tracing heavy workloads like 3DMark Speed Way, meanwhile, the RX 9070 manages to comes within 95% of the RTX 5070's performance.
As expected though, the RX 9070's creative performance isn't able to keep up with Nvidia's competing RTX 5070, especially in 3D modeling workloads like Blender. If you're looking for a cheap creative workstation GPU, you're going to want to go for the RTX 5070, no question.
But that's not really what this card is about. AMD cards are gaming cards through and through, and as you can see above, at 1440p, the RX 9070 goes blow for blow with Nvidia's midrange card so that the overall average FPS at 1440p is 114 against Nvidia's 115 FPS average (72 FPS to 76 FPS average minimums/1%, respectively).
Likewise, at 4K, the two cards are effectively tied, with the RX 9070 holding a slight 2 FPS edge over the RTX 5070, on average (50 FPS to 51 FPS minimum/1%, respectively).
Putting it all together, one thing in the Nvidia RTX 5070's favor is that it is able to tie things up with the RX 9070 at about 26 fewer watts under load (284W maximum power draw to the RTX 5070's 258W).
That's not the biggest difference, but even 26W extra power can mean the difference between needing to replace your PSU or sticking with the one you have.
Under normal conditions, I'd argue that this would swing things in favor of Nvidia's GPU, but the GPU market is hardly normal right now, and so what you really need to look at is how much you're being asked to pay for either of these cards. Chances are, you're going to be able to find an RX 9070 for a good bit cheaper than the RTX 5070, and so its value to you in the end is likely going to be higher.
Performance: 4.5 / 5
Should you buy the AMD Radeon RX 9070?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy the AMD Radeon RX 9070 if...
You want a fantastic 1440p graphics card The RX 9070 absolutely chews through 1440p gaming with frame rates that can fully saturate most 1440p gaming monitors' refresh rates.
You don't want to spend a fortune on a midrange GPU While the RX 9070 isn't cheap, necessarily, it's among the cheapest midrange cards you can get, even after factoring in scalping and price inflation.
Don't buy it if...
You want great creative performance While the RX 9070 is a fantastic gaming graphics card, its creative performance (especially for 3D modeling work) lags behind Nvidia midrange cards.
Also consider
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT The RX 9070 XT is an absolute barnburner of a gaming GPU, offering excellent 4K performance and even better 1440p performance, especially if you can get it close to MSRP.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 The RTX 5070 essentially ties the RX 9070 in gaming performance in 1440p and 4K gaming, but has better power efficiency and creative performance.
I used my complete GPU testing suite to analyze the card's performance
I tested the card in everyday, gaming, creative, and AI workload usage
Test System Specs
Here are the specs on the system I used for testing:
Motherboard: ASRock Z790i Lightning WiFi CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K CPU Cooler: Gigabyte Auros Waterforce II 360 ICE RAM: CorsairDominator DDR5-6600 (2 x 16GB) SSD: Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB SSD PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W Platinum Case: Praxis Wetbench
I spent about two weeks with the AMD RX 9070, using it as my primary workstation GPU for creative work and gaming after hours.
I used my updated benchmarking process, which includes using built-in benchmarks on the latest PC games like Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, and Civilization VII. I also used industry-standard benchmark tools like 3DMark for synthetic testing, while using tools like PugetBench for Creators and Blender Benchmark for creative workload testing.
I've reviewed more than three dozen graphics cards for TechRadar over the past three years, which has included hundreds of hours of dedicated GPU testing, so you can trust that I'm giving you the fullest picture of a graphics card's performance in my reviews.
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is a card that just might be saved by the economic chaos engulfing the GPU market right now.
With 'normal' price inflation pretty much rampant with every current-gen GPU, the price proposition for the RX 9070 might actually make it an appealing pick for gamers who're experiencing sticker shock when looking for the best graphics card for their next GPU upgrade.
That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that the AMD RX 9070 is going to be one of the best cheap graphics cards going, even by comparison with everything else that's launched since the end of 2024. With an MSRP of $549 / £529.99 / AU$1,229, the RX 9070 is still an expensive card, even if it's theoretically in line with your typical 'midrange' offering.
And, with the lack of an AMD reference card that might have helped anchor the RX 9070's price at Team Red's MSRP, you're going to pretty much be at the mercy of third-party manufacturers and retailers who can charge whatever they want for this card.
Comparatively speaking, though, even with price inflation, this is going to be one of the cheaper midrange GPUs of this generation, so if you're looking at a bunch of different GPUs, without question this one is likely to be the cheapest graphics card made by either AMD or Nvidia right now (yes, that's even counting the RTX 5060 Ti, which is already selling for well above 150% of MSRP in many places).
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Does that make this card worth the purchase? Well, that's going to depend on what you're being asked to pay for it. While it's possible to find RX 9070 cards at MSRP, they are rare, and so you're going to have to make a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if this card is going to offer you the best value in your particular circumstance.
I'm fairly confident, however, that it will. Had I the time to review this card when it first launched in March, I might have scored it lower based on its performance and price proximity to the beefier AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.
Looking at both of those cards based on their MSRPs, there's no question that the RX 9070 XT is the much better graphics card, so I'd have recommended you spend the extra cash to get that card instead of this one.
Unfortunately, contrary to my hopes, the RX 9070 XT has been scalped almost as badly as the best Nvidia graphics cards of this generation, so that relatively small price difference on paper can be quite large in practice.
Given that reality, for most gamers, the RX 9070 is the best 1440p graphics card going, and can even get you some solid 4K gaming performance for a lot less than you're likely to find the RX 9070 XT or competing Nvidia card, even from the last generation.
If you're looking at this card and the market has returned to sanity and MSRP pricing, then definitely consider going for the RX 9070 XT instead of this card. But barring that happy contingency, given where everything is right now with the GPU market, the RX 9070 is the best AMD graphics card for 1440p gaming, and offers some of the best bang for your (inflationary) buck as you're likely to find today.
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much is it? MSRP is $549 / £529.99 / AU$1,229, but retail price will likely be higher
When can you get it? The RX 9070 is available now
Where is it available? The RX 9070 is available in the US, UK, and Australia
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is available now in the US, UK, and Australia for an MSRP of $549 / £529.99 / AU$1,229, respectively, but the price you'll pay for this card from third-party partners and retailers will likely be higher.
Giving credit where it's due, the RX 9070 is the exact same MSRP as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which you can argue the RX 9070 is replacing. It's also coming in at the same price as the RTX 5070's MSRP, and as I'll get into in a bit, for gaming performance, the RX 9070 offers a better value at MSRP.
Given how the RTX 5070 can rarely be found at MSRP, the RX 9070 is in an even stronger position compared to its competition.
Value: 4 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Specs
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
PCIe 5.0
16GB VRAM
Specs & features: 4 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Design & features
No AMD reference card
Will be good for SFF cases
In terms of design, the RX 9070 doesn't have a reference card, so the card I reviewed is the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070.
This card, in particular, is fairly straightforward with few frills, but for those who don't want a whole lot of RGB lighting in their PC, this is more of a positive than a negative. RGB fans, however, will have to look at other AMD partner cards for their fix.
The card is a noticeably shorter dual-fan design compared to the longer triple-fan RX 9070 XT cards. That makes the RX 9070 a great option for small form factor PC cases.
Design: 3.5 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070: Performance
About 13% slower than RX 9070 XT
Outstanding 1440p gaming performance
Decent 4K performance
A note on my data
The charts shown below offer the most recent data I have for the cards tested for this review. They may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The 'average of all cards tested' includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
When it comes down to performance, the RX 9070 is a very strong graphics card that is somewhat overshadowed by its beefier 9070 XT sibling, but goes toe-to-toe against the RTX 5070 where it counts for most users, which is gaming.
On the synthetic side, the RTX 9070 puts up some incredibly solid numbers, especially in pure rasterization workloads like 3DMark Steel Nomad, beating out the RTX 5070 by 13%. In ray tracing heavy workloads like 3DMark Speed Way, meanwhile, the RX 9070 manages to comes within 95% of the RTX 5070's performance.
As expected though, the RX 9070's creative performance isn't able to keep up with Nvidia's competing RTX 5070, especially in 3D modeling workloads like Blender. If you're looking for a cheap creative workstation GPU, you're going to want to go for the RTX 5070, no question.
But that's not really what this card is about. AMD cards are gaming cards through and through, and as you can see above, at 1440p, the RX 9070 goes blow for blow with Nvidia's midrange card so that the overall average FPS at 1440p is 114 against Nvidia's 115 FPS average (72 FPS to 76 FPS average minimums/1%, respectively).
Likewise, at 4K, the two cards are effectively tied, with the RX 9070 holding a slight 2 FPS edge over the RTX 5070, on average (50 FPS to 51 FPS minimum/1%, respectively).
Putting it all together, one thing in the Nvidia RTX 5070's favor is that it is able to tie things up with the RX 9070 at about 26 fewer watts under load (284W maximum power draw to the RTX 5070's 258W).
That's not the biggest difference, but even 26W extra power can mean the difference between needing to replace your PSU or sticking with the one you have.
Under normal conditions, I'd argue that this would swing things in favor of Nvidia's GPU, but the GPU market is hardly normal right now, and so what you really need to look at is how much you're being asked to pay for either of these cards. Chances are, you're going to be able to find an RX 9070 for a good bit cheaper than the RTX 5070, and so its value to you in the end is likely going to be higher.
Performance: 4.5 / 5
Should you buy the AMD Radeon RX 9070?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy the AMD Radeon RX 9070 if...
You want a fantastic 1440p graphics card The RX 9070 absolutely chews through 1440p gaming with frame rates that can fully saturate most 1440p gaming monitors' refresh rates.
You don't want to spend a fortune on a midrange GPU While the RX 9070 isn't cheap, necessarily, it's among the cheapest midrange cards you can get, even after factoring in scalping and price inflation.
Don't buy it if...
You want great creative performance While the RX 9070 is a fantastic gaming graphics card, its creative performance (especially for 3D modeling work) lags behind Nvidia midrange cards.
Also consider
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT The RX 9070 XT is an absolute barnburner of a gaming GPU, offering excellent 4K performance and even better 1440p performance, especially if you can get it close to MSRP.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 The RTX 5070 essentially ties the RX 9070 in gaming performance in 1440p and 4K gaming, but has better power efficiency and creative performance.
I used my complete GPU testing suite to analyze the card's performance
I tested the card in everyday, gaming, creative, and AI workload usage
Test System Specs
Here are the specs on the system I used for testing:
Motherboard: ASRock Z790i Lightning WiFi CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K CPU Cooler: Gigabyte Auros Waterforce II 360 ICE RAM: CorsairDominator DDR5-6600 (2 x 16GB) SSD: Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB SSD PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W Platinum Case: Praxis Wetbench
I spent about two weeks with the AMD RX 9070, using it as my primary workstation GPU for creative work and gaming after hours.
I used my updated benchmarking process, which includes using built-in benchmarks on the latest PC games like Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, and Civilization VII. I also used industry-standard benchmark tools like 3DMark for synthetic testing, while using tools like PugetBench for Creators and Blender Benchmark for creative workload testing.
I've reviewed more than three dozen graphics cards for TechRadar over the past three years, which has included hundreds of hours of dedicated GPU testing, so you can trust that I'm giving you the fullest picture of a graphics card's performance in my reviews.
It's very hard to say that a drive that sequentially reads nearly 12,500MB a second doesn't live up to expectations, especially not when its performance everywhere else is better than anything else I've tested, but that sticker on the box of the Samsung 9100 Pro that promises up to 14,800MB/s sticks in the craw of an otherwise perfect M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD.
Starting at $199.99 for a 1TB capacity drive (about £155/AU$315), the 9100 Pro is Samsung's first 'true' PCIe 5.0 SSD after the Samsung 990 EVO and Samsung 990 EVO Plus. Both those drives are PCIe 5.0, but they only use two PCIe 5.0 lanes, which limits their practical speeds to PCIe 4.0 standards.
The 9100 Pro, meanwhile, is a full-fat PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 drive, meaning its theoretical max speed for sequential reads is upwards of roughly 15,000MB/s and 14,000MB/s for sequential writes (this number has been edging up over the past 3-5 years, so take that theoretical maximum with a grain of salt at this point).
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Samsung promises that its latest drive can hit up to 14,800MB/s sequential read and 13,400MB/s sequential write, and the Samsung 9100 Pro gets there somewhat. It clocks in a max sequential write rate of 13,066MB/s in my testing, but the 9100 Pro's maximum sequential read speed only hit 12,427MB/s. This is still incredibly fast—but, it's not what's promised on the box.
Could that change with BIOS or firmware updates, sure. Possibly. But it's not like other PCIe 5.0 drives like the Crucial T705 aren't hitting close to 14,500MB/s. The T705 hits a max sequential read speed of 14,390MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8 on the same testbench with a Gigabyte Aorus X870E motherboard, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor, and 32GB Corsair Dominator DDR5 running at 6,600MT/s and integrated graphics, so there's no interference from a graphics card.
Meanwhile, compared to its predecessor, the Samsung 990 Pro, the 9100 Pro is a much better overall drive, but there are circumstances where the 990 Pro still manages to outperform its successor such as same and secondary drive copy time and random read and write speeds.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
On balance, the Samsung 9100 Pro isn't the undisputed best SSD you can buy, and for some users (such as gamers or general-use enthusiasts), you will likely be happier with other PCIe 5.0 or even PCIe 4.0 drives on the market, many of which will be cheaper than the 9100 Pro.
That said, this is a drive for professional users and for those who need to save or otherwise write large files to disk regularly, and for that, the Samsung 9100 Pro is the best M.2 SSD on the market.
Gamers won't find much here worth the investment, unfortunately, with even the 990 Pro outperforming the 9100 Pro in 3DMark's SSD benchmark, which is a gaming-exclusive test. It also falls about 17% behind the Corsair MP700 Elite PCIe 5.0 SSD on this benchmark as well.
For general business users, the 9100 Pro is better than its predecessor but lags behind the Crucial T705 in PCMark 10, which tests general productivity speed and performance as well as its performance as a data drive rather than your main system drive.
Given all this, you'd think that the 9100 Pro should score lower, but it really comes in strong on sequential write performance, which is a very big deal for professional users who might need to save media projects that are many, many gigabytes large.
Nothing disrupts a workflow more than a project autosaving for up to half a minute or more, and this is where the 9100 Pro shines. Offering up to 39% faster sequential write performance than the Crucial T705, its nearest competitor in this category, the Samsung 9100 Pro really leans into its pro branding here.
The 9100 Pro unit I tested did not come with a built-in heatsink, so its thermal performance is largely a factor of the excellent PCIe 5.0 heatsink on the Gigabyte Auros X870E motherboard I used for testing (I also used the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and 32GB of Corsair Dominator DDR5 RAM at 6,600MT/s), so I can't speak much to the heatsink's quality in this review.
Also, I tested a 9100 Pro with a 4TB capacity, whereas every other drive I tested had a 2TB capacity. This, in itself, shouldn't impact baseline scores too much, if at all, but it's worth pointing out that while I still consider this an apples-to-apples comparison, it's more of a Cosmic Crisp-to-Red Delicious comparison, so your actual experienced performance might vary slightly from mine.
All that said, the other major problem with this drive is its price. It's an expensive drive, and for a lot of gamers and those who are more interested in faster loading times for their programs and files, the Crucial T705 is simply a better option with comparable write speeds but close-to-max read speeds for a lower price.
If you're looking for a drive that you can use in more of a professional capacity with frequent saves of very large files like video projects or video game packages in Unreal Engine, the Samsung 9100 Pro is the best SSD you're going to get for that purpose and it will absolutely speed up your everyday workflow considerably.
Samsung 9100 Pro: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much does it cost? Starting at $199.99 (about £155/AU$315)
When is it available? Available now
Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia
The Samsung 9100 Pro is available in the US, UK, and Australia starting on March 18, 2025, for $199.99 (about £155/AU$315) for a 1TB drive.
Higher capacities will cost you more, with the 2TB capacity going for $299.99 (about £230/AU$470)and the 4TB capacity going for $549.99 (about £425/AU$865).
The 9100 Pro 8TB capacity drive is expected to launch in H2 2025, though its price hasn't been released yet.
This puts the 9100 Pro roughly 30% more expensive to start over the Crucial T705 1TB, and slightly more expensive than the launch MSRP of the Samsung 990 Pro it replaces.
Samsung 9100 Pro: Specs
Should you buy the Samsung 9100 Pro?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy it if...
You need pro-level sequential write performance Are you writing 20GB files to disk every time you save your architecture project? This drive is for you.
You want an M.2 SSD with high-capacity options With a 4TB drive available now and 8TB capacity coming later this year, this is one of the most spacious M.2 SSDs on the market.
Don't buy it if...
You're on a budget This is hardly the cheapest PCIe 5.0 drive out there, even at this level of performance.
You're looking for a PS5 SSD If you want a new SSD for your PS5 console, this drive is way too fast for the PS5's PCIe 4.0 interface. You're better off getting the 990 Pro.
Samsung 9100 Pro: Also consider
If my Samsung 9100 Pro review has you looking for other options, here are two more M.2 SSDs to consider...
Crucial T705 The Crucial T705 is the best all-around PCIe 5.0 drive you can buy, with stellar performance across the board and a fairly accessible price point.
Samsung 990 Pro The Samsung 990 Pro is the best PCIe 4.0 SSD going, and for 95% of users, this drive will be more than enough for your needs at a decent enough price.
I used it for gaming, content creation, and general storage use
I used my standard suite of SSD benchmarks as well as daily use
To test the 9100 Pro, I ran it through our standard benchmark suite, including CrystalDiskMark 8, PassMark, PCMark 10, 3DMark, and our proprietary 25GB file copy test.
I used this drive as my main system storage (C:\) drive for over a week on my test bench, where I used it extensively for loading games for graphics card benchmarking purposes, content creation, and more. This included loading games and large batches of photos for editing in Lightroom and Photoshop for various reviews.
I've been testing hardware components for TechRadar for over three years now, including several major SSD reviews from Samsung, PNY, and others, so I know what the latest SSDs are best for and whether they are worth your hard-earned money.
So the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D has something of a high bar to clear given the strength of AMD's first Zen 5 3D V-Cache chip, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but having spent a week testing this chip, I can say unequivocally that AMD has produced the best processor ever made for the consumer market.
Whether it's gaming, creating, or general productivity work, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D doesn't suffer from the same hang-ups that held its predecessor, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, from completely dominating its competition among the previous generation of processors.
Like its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D will sell for $699 / £699 / AU$1,349 when it goes on sale on March 12, 2025. This makes it the most expensive consumer processor on the market, so definitely be prepared to invest quite a bit for this chip, especially if you're upgrading from an Intel or AMD AM4 system. As an AM5 chip, you'll need to upgrade some major components, including motherboard and possibly RAM.
Unlike nearly all other X3D chips besides the 9800X3D and 9900X3D, however, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is fully overclockable thanks to AMD rearchitecting the way the 3D V-cache sits on the compute die, so there's a lot more that this chip can do that other X3D chips can't.
That includes beating out the current champ for the best gaming CPU, the 9800X3D, in most games while also offering substantially better general and creative performance thanks to twice as many processing cores.
That doesn't mean that the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is flawless, as there are some things to caveat here (which I'll get into in more depth below), but as an overall package, you simply won't find a better CPU on the market right now that will let you do just about anything you want exceptionally well while still letting you run a more reasonable cooling solution. Just be prepared to pay a premium for all that performance.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much will it cost? US MSRP is $699 / £699 / AU$1,349
When is it available? It goes on sale on March 12, 2025
Where is it available? It will be available in the US, UK, and Australia at launch
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D goes on sale March 12, 2025, for a US MSRP of $699 / £699 / AU$1,349 in the US, UK, and Australia, respectively, making it the most expensive processor on the market.
It comes in at the same price as its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D when it launched, and costs $100 more than the Ryzen 9 9900X3D that launches on the same day.
This is also just over $200 more expensive than the Ryzen 7 9800X3D which has nearly the same level of gaming performance (and in some cases surpasses the 9950X3D), so if you are strictly looking for a gaming CPU, the 9800X3D might be the better value.
Compared to Intel's latest flagship processor, meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is just over $100 more expensive than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, though that chip requires a whole new motherboard chipset if you're coming from an Intel LGA 1700 chip like the Intel Core i9-12900K, so it might represent a much larger investment overall.
Value: 3.5 / 5
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D: Specs
128MB L3 Cache (96MB + 32MB)
Fully overclockable
Not all processing cores have access to 3D V-cache
Compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, there don't seem to be too many changes spec wise, but there's a lot going on under the hood here.
First, the way the 3D V-cache is seated over the CCX for the 9950X3D differs considerably than with the 7950X3D, specifically that its seated underneath the processing die, rather than above it.
This means that the processing cores are now in 'direct' contact with the lid and cooling solution for the chip, allowing the 9950X3D to be fully overclocked, whereas the V-cache in the 7950X3D sat between the lid and the processing cores, making careful thermal design and limiting necessary and ruling out overclocking.
The 9950X3D does keep the same two-module split in its L3 cache as the 7950X3D, so that only one of the eight-core CCXs in the chip actually has access to the added V-cache (32MB + 64MB), while the other just has access to 32MB.
This had some benefit for more dedicated, directy access for individual cores in use more cache. In the last-gen, this honestly produced somewhat mixed results compared to the 7800X3D, which didn't split the V-cache up this way, leading ultimately to high levels of gaming performance for the 7800X3D.
Whatever issue there was with the 7950X3D looks to have been largely fixed with the 9950X3D, but some hiccups remains, which I'll get to in the performance section.
Beyond that, the 9950X3D has slightly higher base and boost clock speeds, as well as a 50W higher TDP, but its 170W TDP isn't completely unmanageable, especially next to Intel's competing chips.
Specs: 4.5 / 5
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Almost best-in-class gaming performance
Strong overall performance
While the Ryzen 7 7800X3D was indisputably a better gaming chip than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D by the numbers, I was very curious going into my testing how this chip would fare against the 9800X3D, but I'm happy to report that not only is it better on the whole when it comes to gaming, it's a powerhouse for general computing and creative work as well, making it the best all-around processor on the market right now.
On the synthetic side, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D goes toe-to-toe with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K in multi-core performance, coming within 2% of Intel's best on average, and chocking up a 10% stronger single-core result than the 285K.
Compared to its predecessor, the 7950X3D, the 9950X3D is about 15% faster in multi-core and single-core performance, while also barely edging out the Ryzen 9 9950X in multi-core performance.
Compared to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the eight-core difference between the two really shows up in the results, with the 9950X3D posting a 61% better multi-core performance, and a roughly 5% better single core score compared to the 9800X3D.
On the creative front, the 9950X3D outclasses Intel's best and anything else in the AMD Ryzen lineup that I've tested overall (we'll see how it fares against the 9900X3D once I've had a chance to test that chip), though it is worth noting that the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is still the better processor for video editing work.
The AMD Ryzen X3D line is all about gaming though, and here, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D posts the best gaming performance of all the chips tested, with one caveat.
In the Total War: Warhammer III Mirrors of Madness benchmark, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D only scores a few fps higher than the non-X3D Ryzen 9 9950X (331 fps to 318 fps, respectively), while also scoring substantially lower than the 9800X3D's 506 fps in that same benchmark. That's a roughly 35% slower showing for the 9950X3D, and given its roughly where the non-X3D chip scored, it's clear that Total War: Warhammer III was running on one of those cores that didn't have access to the extra V-cache.
This is an issue with the Windows process scheduler that might be fixed in time so that games are run on the right cores to leverage the extra cache available, but that's not a guarantee the way it is with the 9800X3D, which gives all cores access to its added V-cache so there aren't similar issues.
It might be a fairly rare occurence, but if your favorite game does take advantage of the extra cache that you're paying a lot of money for, that could be an issue, and it might not be something you'll ever know unless you have a non-X3D 9950X handy to test the way I do.
With that in mind, if all you want is a gaming processor, and you really don't care about any of these other performance categories, you're probably going to be better served by the 9800X3D, as you will get guaranteed gaming performance increases, even if you don't get the same boost in other areas.
While that's a large caveat, it can't take away from the overall performance profile of this chip, which is just astounding pretty much across the board.
If you want the best processor on the market overall, this is it, even with its occasional blips, especially since it runs much cooler than Intel's chips and its power draw is much more acceptable for midrange PCs to manage.
Performance: 4.5 / 5
Should you buy the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D if...
You want spectacular performance no matter the workload While gamers will be especially interested in this chip, it's real strength is that it's strong everywhere.
You want the best gaming performance When using 3D V-cache, this processor's gaming chops are unbeatable.
Don't buy it if...
You want consistent top-tier gaming performance When games run on one of this chip's 3D V-cache cores, you're going to get the best performance possible, but Windows might not assign a game to those cores, so you might miss out on this chip's signature feature.
You're on a budget This chip is crazy expensive, so only buy it if you're flush with cash.
Also consider
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D If you want consistent, top-tier gaming performance, the 9800X3D will get you performance nearly as good as this chip's, though more consistently.
I used the chip as my main workstation processor and used my updated battery of benchmarks to measure its performance
I used it for general productivity, creative, and gaming workloads
I spent about a week with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D as my main workstation CPU, where I ran basic computing workloads as well as extensive creative work, such as Adobe Photoshop.
I also spent as much time as I could gaming with the chip, including titles like Black Myth: Wukong and Civilization VII. I also used my updated suite of benchmark tools including industry standard utilities like Geekbench 6.2, Cyberpunk 2077, and PugetBench for Creators.
I've been reviewing components for TechRadar for three years now, including more than a dozen processor reviews in that time, so you can trust my testing process and recommendations if you're looking for the best processor for your needs and budget.
AMD had one job to do with the launch of its RDNA 4 graphics cards, spearheaded by the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, and that was to not get run over by Blackwell too badly this generation.
With the RX 9070 XT, not only did AMD manage to hold its own against the GeForce RTX monolith, it perfectly positions Team Red to take advantage of the growing discontent among gamers upset over Nvidia's latest GPUs with one of the best graphics cards I've ever tested.
The RX 9070 XT is without question the most powerful consumer graphics card AMD's put out, beating the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX overall and coming within inches of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 in 4K and 1440p gaming performance.
It does so with an MSRP of just $599 (about £510 / AU$870), which is substantially lower than those two card's MSRP, much less their asking price online right now. This matters because AMD traditionally hasn't faced the kind of scalping and price inflation that Nvidia's GPUs experience (it does happen, obviously, but not nearly to the same extent as with Nvidia's RTX cards).
That means, ultimately, that gamers who look at the GPU market and find empty shelves, extremely distorted prices, and uninspiring performance for the price they're being asked to pay have an alternative that will likely stay within reach, even if price inflation keeps it above AMD's MSRP.
The RX 9070 XT's performance comes at a bit of a cost though, such as the 309W maximum power draw I saw during my testing, but at this tier of performance, this actually isn't that bad.
This card also isn't too great when it comes to non-raster creative performance and AI compute, but no one is looking to buy this card for its creative or AI performance, as Nvidia already has those categories on lock. No, this is a card for gamers out there, and for that, you just won't find a better one at this price. Even if the price does get hit with inflation, it'll still likely be way lower than what you'd have to pay for an RX 7900 XTX or RTX 4080 (assuming you can find them at this point) making the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT a gaming GPU that everyone can appreciate and maybe even buy.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much is it? MSRP is $599 (about £510 / AU$870)
When can you get it? The RX 9070 XT goes on sale March 6, 2025
Where is it available? The RX 9070 XT will be available in the US, UK, and Australia at launch
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is available as of March 6, 2025, starting at $599 (about £510 / AU$870) for reference-spec third-party cards from manufacturers like Asus, Sapphire, Gigabyte, and others, with OC versions and those with added accoutrements like fancy cooling and RGB lighting likely selling for higher than MSRP.
At this price, the RX 9070 XT comes in about $150 cheaper than the RTX 5070 Ti, and about $50 more expensive than the RTX 5070 and the AMD Radeon RX 9070, which also launches alongside the RX 9070 XT. This price also puts the RX 9070 XT on par with the MSRP of the RTX 4070 Super, though this card is getting harder to find nowadays.
While I'll dig into performance in a bit, given the MSRP (and the reasonable hope that this card will be findable at MSRP in some capacity) the RX 9070 XT's value proposition is second only to the RTX 5070 Ti's, if you're going by its MSRP. Since price inflation on the RTX 5070 Ti will persist for some time at least, in many cases you'll likely find the RX 9070 XT offers better performance per price paid of any enthusiast card on the market right now.
Value: 5 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT: Specs
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
PCIe 5.0, but still just GDDR6
Hefty power draw
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is the first RDNA 4 card to hit the market, and so its worth digging into its architecture for a bit.
The new architecture is built on TSMC's N4P node, the same as Nvidia Blackwell, and in a move away from AMD's MCM push with the last generation, the RDNA 4 GPU is a monolithic die.
As there's no direct predecessor for this card (or for the RX 9070, for that matter), there's not much that we can apples-to-apples compare the RX 9070 XT against, but I'm going to try, putting the RX 9070 XT roughly between the RX 7800 XT and the RX 7900 GRE if it had a last-gen equivalent.
The Navi 48 GPU in the RX 9070 XT sports 64 compute units, breaking down into 64 ray accelerators, 128 AI accelerators, and 64MB of L3 cache. Its cores are clocked at 1,600MHz to start, but can run as fast as 2,970MHz, just shy of the 3GHz mark.
It uses the same GDDR6 memory as the last-gen AMD cards, with a 256-bit bus and a 644.6GB/s memory bandwidth, which is definitely helpful in pushing out 4K frames quickly.
The TGP of the RX 9070 XT is 304W, which is a good bit higher than the RX 7900 GRE, though for that extra power, you do get a commensurate bump up in performance.
Specs: 4 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT: Design
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
No AMD reference card
High TGP means bigger coolers and more cables
There's no AMD reference card for the Radeon RX 9070 XT, but the unit I got to test was the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT, which I imagine is pretty indicative of what we can expect from the designs of the various third-party cards.
The 304W TGP all but ensures that any version of this card you find will be a triple-fan cooler over a pretty hefty heatsink, so it's not going to be a great option for small form factor cases.
Likewise, that TGP just puts it over the line where it needs a third 8-pin PCIe power connector, something that you may or may not have available in your rig, so keep that in mind. If you do have three spare power connectors, there's no question that cable management will almost certainly be a hassle as well.
After that, it's really just about aesthetics, as the RX 9070 XT (so far) doesn't have anything like the dual pass-through cooling solution of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, so it's really up to personal taste.
As for the card I reviewed, the Sapphire Pulse shroud and cooling setup on the RX 9070 XT was pretty plain, as far as desktop GPUs go, but if you're looking for a non-flashy look for your PC, it's a great-looking card.
Design: 4 / 5
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Near-RTX 4080 levels of gaming performance, even with ray tracing
Non-raster creative and AI performance lags behind Nvidia, as expected
Likely the best value you're going to find anywhere near this price point
A note on my data
The charts shown below offer the most recent data I have for the cards tested for this review. They may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The 'average of all cards tested' includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
Simply put, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is the gaming graphics card that we've been clamoring for this entire generation. While it shows some strong performance in synthetics and raster-heavy creative tasks, gaming is where this card really shines, managing to come within 7% overall of the RTX 4080 and getting within 4% of the RTX 4080's overall gaming performance. For a card launching at half the price of the RTX 4080's launch price, this is a fantastic showing.
The RX 9070 XT is squaring up against the RTX 5070 Ti, however, and here the RTX 5070 Ti does manage to pull well ahead of the RX 9070 XT, but it's much closer than I thought it would be starting out.
On the synthetics side, the RX 9070 XT excels at rasterization workloads like 3DMark Steel Nomad, while the RTX 5070 Ti wins out in ray-traced workloads like 3DMark Speed Way, as expected, but AMD's 3rd generation ray accelerators have definitely come a long way in catching up with Nvidia's more sophisticated hardware.
Also, as expected, when it comes to creative workloads, the RX 9070 XT performs very well in raster-based tasks like photo editing, and worse at 3D modeling in Blender, which is heavily reliant on Nvidia's CUDA instruction set, giving Nvidia an all but permanent advantage there.
In video editing, the RX 9070 XT likewise lags behind, though it's still close enough to Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti that video editors won't notice much difference, even if the difference is there on paper.
Gaming performance is what we're on about though, and here the sub-$600 GPU holds its own against heavy hitters like the RTX 4080, RTX 5070 Ti, and Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
In 1440p gaming, the RX 9070 XT is about 8.4% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti and RX 7900 XTX, just under 4% slower than the RTX 4080, and about 7% slower than the RTX 5070 Ti.
This strong performance carries over into 4K gaming as well, thanks to the RX 9070 XT's 16GB VRAM. Here, it's about 15.5% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti and about 2.5% faster than the RX 7900 XTX. Against the RTX 4080, the RX 9070 XT is just 3.5% slower, while it comes within 8% of the RTX 5070 Ti's 4K gaming performance.
When all is said and done, the RX 9070 XT doesn't quite overpower one of the best Nvidia graphics cards of the last-gen (and definitely doesn't topple the RTX 5070 Ti), but given its performance class, it's power draw, its heat output (which wasn't nearly as bad as the power draw might indicate), and most of all, it's price, the RX 9070 XT is easily the best value of any graphics card playing at 4K.
And given Nvidia's position with gamers right now, AMD has a real chance to win over some converts with this graphics card, and anyone looking for an outstanding 4K GPU absolutely needs to consider it before making their next upgrade.
Performance: 5 / 5
Should you buy the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT?
Buy the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT if...
You want the best value proposition for a high-end graphics card The performance of the RX 9070 XT punches way above its price point.
You don't want to pay inflated prices for an Nvidia GPU Price inflation is wreaking havoc on the GPU market right now, but this card might fare better than Nvidia's RTX offerings.
Don't buy it if...
You're on a tight budget If you don't have a lot of money to spend, this card is likely more than you need.
You need strong creative or AI performance While AMD is getting better at creative and AI workloads, it still lags far behind Nvidia's competing offerings.
How I tested the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
I spent about a week with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
I used my complete GPU testing suite to analyze the card's performance
I tested the card in everyday, gaming, creative, and AI workload usage
Test System Specs
Here are the specs on the system I used for testing:
I spent about a week with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, which was spent benchmarking, using, and digging into the card's hardware to come to my assessment.
I used industry standard benchmark tools like 3DMark, Cyberpunk 2077, and Pugetbench for Creators to get comparable results with other competing graphics cards, all of while have been tested using the same testbench setup listed on the right.
I've reviewed more than 30 graphics cards in the last three years, and so I've got the experience and insight to help you find the best graphics card for your needs and budget.
A lot of promises were made about the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, and in some narrow sense, those promises are fulfilled with Nvidia's mainstream GPU. But the gulf between what was expected and what the RTX 5070 actually delivers is simply too wide a gap to bridge for me and the legion of gamers and enthusiasts out there who won't be able to afford—or even find, frankly—Nvidia's best graphics cards from this generation.
Launching on March 5, 2025, at an MSRP of $549 / £549 / AU$1,109 in the US, UK, and Australia, respectively, this might be one of the few Nvidia Blackwell GPUs you'll find at MSRP (along with available stock), but only for lack of substantial demand. As the middle-tier GPU in Nvidia's lineup, the RTX 5070 is meant to have broader appeal and more accessible pricing and specs than the enthusiast-grade Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, but of all the cards this generation, this is the one that seems to have the least to offer prospective buyers over what's already on the market at this price point.
That's not to say there is nothing to commend this card. The RTX 5070 does get up to native Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 performance in some games thanks to Nvidia Blackwell's exclusive Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) technology. And, to be fair, the RTX 5070 is a substantial improvement over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, so at least in direct gen-on-gen uplift, there is a roughly 20-25% performance gain.
If we're just talking framerates, then in some very narrow cases this card can do that, but at 4K with ray tracing and cranked-up settings, the input latency for the RTX 5070 with MFG can be noticeable depending on your settings, and it can become distracting. Nvidia Reflex helps, but if you take RTX 4090 performance to mean the same experience as the RTX 4090, you simply won't get that with MFG, even in the 80 or so games that support it currently.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Add to all this the fact that the RTX 5070 barely outpaces the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super when you take MFG off the table (which will be the case for the vast majority of games played on this card) and you really don't have anything to show for the extra 30W of power this card pulls down over the RTX 4070 Super.
With the RTX 5070 coming in at less than four percent faster in gaming without MFG than the non-OC RTX 4070 Super, and roughly 5% faster overall, that means that the RTX 5070 is essentially a stock-overclocked RTX 4070 Super, performance-wise, with the added feature of MFG. An overclocked RTX 4070 Super might even match or exceed the RTX 5070's overall performance in all but a handful of games, and that doesn't even touch upon AMD's various offerings in this price range, like the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE or AMD's upcoming RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 cards.
Given that the RTX 4070 Super is still generally available on the market (at least for the time being) at a price where you're likely to find it for less than available RTX 5070 cards, and competing AMD cards are often available for less, easier to find, and offer roughly the same level of performance, I really struggle to find any reason to recommend this card, even without the questionable-at-best marketing for this card to sour my feelings about it.
I caught a lot of flack from enthusiasts for praising the RTX 5080 despite its 8-10% performance uplift over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super, but at the level of the RTX 5080, there is no real competition and you're still getting the third-best graphics card on the market with a noticeable performance boost over the RTX 4080 Super for the same MSRP. Was it what enthusiasts wanted? No, but it's still a fantastic card with few peers, and the base performance of the RTX 5080 was so good that the latency problem of MFG just wasn't an issue, making it a strong value-add for the card.
You just can't claim that for the RTX 5070. There are simply too many other options for gamers to consider at this price point, and MFG just isn't a strong enough selling point at this performance level to move the needle. If the RTX 5070 is the only card you have available to you for purchase and you need a great 1440p graphics card and can't wait for something better (and you're only paying MSRP), then you'll ultimately be happy with this card. But the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 could have and should have been so much better than it ultimately is.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much is it? MSRP/RRPstarting at $549 / £549 / AU$1,109
When can you get it? The RTX 5070 goes on sale on March 5, 2025
Where is it available? The RTX 5070 will be available in the US, UK, and Australia at launch
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 is available starting March 5, 2025, with an MSRP of $549 / £549 / AU$1,109 in the US, UK, and Australia, respectively.
This puts it at the same price as the current RTX 4070 MSRP, and slightly less than that of the RTX 4070 Super. It's also the same MSRP as the AMD's RX 7900 GRE and upcoming RX 9070, and slightly cheaper than the AMD RX 9070 XT's MSRP.
The relatively low MSRP for the RTX 5070 is one of the bright spots for this card, as well as the existence of the RTX 5070 Founders Edition card, which Nvidia will sell directly at MSRP. This will at least put something of an anchor on the card's price in the face of scalping and general price inflation.
Value: 4 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070: Specs
GDDR7 VRAM and PCIe 5.0
Higher power consumption
Still just 12GB VRAM, and fewer compute units
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 is a mixed bag when it comes to specs. On the one hand, you have advanced technology like the new PCIe 5.0 interface and new GDDR7 VRAM, both of which appear great on paper.
On the other hand, it feels like every other spec was configured and tweaked to make sure that it compensated for any performance benefit these technologies would impart to keep the overall package more or less the same as the previous generation GPUs.
For instance, while the RTX 5070 sports faster GDDR7 memory, it doesn't expand the VRAM pool beyond 12GB, unlike its competitors. If Nvidia was hoping that the faster memory would make up for keeping the amount of VRAM the same, it only makes a modest increase in the number of compute units in the GPU (48 compared to the RTX 4070's 46), and a noticeable decrease from the RTX 4070 Super's (56).
Whatever performance gains the RTX 5070 makes with its faster memory, then, is completely neutralized by the larger number of compute units (along with the requisite number of CUDA cores, RT cores, and Tensor cores) in the RTX 4070 Super.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
The base clock on the RTX 5070 is notably higher, but its boost clock is only slightly increased, which is ultimately where it counts while playing games or running intensive workloads.
Likewise, whatever gains the more advanced TSMC N4P node offers the RTX 5070's GPU over the TSMC N4 node of its predecessors seems to be eaten up by the cutting down of the die. If there was a power or cost reason for this, I have no idea, but I think that this decision is what ultimately sinks the RTX 5070.
It seems like every decision was made to keep things right where they are rather than move things forward. That would be acceptable, honestly, if there was some other major benefit like a greatly reduced power draw or much lower price (I've argued for both rather than pushing for more performance every gen), but somehow the RTX 5070 manages to pull down an extra 30W of power over the RTX 4070 Super and a full 50W over the RTX 4070, and the price is only slightly lower than the RTX 4070 was at launch.
Finally, this is a PCIe 5.0 x16 GPU, which means that if you have a motherboard with 16 PCIe lanes or less, and you're using a PCIe 5.0 SSD, one of these two components is going to get nerfed down to PCIe 4.0, and most motherboards default to prioritizing the GPU.
You might be able to set your PCIe 5.0 priority to your SSD in your motherboard's BIOS settings and put the RTX 5070 into PCIe 4.0, but I haven't tested how this would affect the performance of the RTX 5070, so be mindful that this might be an issue with this card.
Specs: 2.5 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070: Design
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
No dual-pass-through cooling
FE card is the same size as the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super FE cards
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition looks identical to the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 that preceeded it, but with some very key differences, both inside and out.
One of the best things about the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 FE cards was the innovative dual pass-through cooling solution on those cards, which improved thermals so much that Nvidia was able to shrink the size of those cards from the gargantuan bricks of the last generation to something far more manageable and practical.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
It would have been nice to see what such a solution could have done for the RTX 5070, but maybe it just wasn't possible to engineer it so it made any sense. Regardless, it's unfortunate that it wasn't an option here, even though the RTX 5070 is hardly unwieldy (at least for the Founders Edition card).
Otherwise, it sports the same 16-pin power connector placement as the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, so 90-degree power connectors won't fit the Founders Edition, though you will have better luck with most, if not all, AIB partner cards which will likely stick to the same power connector placement of the RTX 40 series.
The RTX 5070 FE will easily fit inside even a SFF case with ease, and its lighter power draw means that even if you have to rely on the included two-to-one cable adapter to plug in two free 8-pin cables from your power supply, it will still be a fairly manageable affair.
Lastly, like all the Founders Edition cards before it, the RTX 5070 has no RGB, with only the white backlight GeForce RTX logo on the top edge of the card to provide any 'flair' of that sort.
Design: 3.5 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Almost no difference in performance over the RTX 4070 Super without MFG
Using MFG can get you native RTX 4090 framerates in some games
Significantly faster performance over the RTX 4070
A note on my data
The charts shown below offer the most recent data I have for the cards tested for this review. They may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The 'average of all cards tested' includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
Boy howdy, here we go.
The best thing I can say about the performance of this card is that it is just barely the best 1440p graphics card on the market as of this review, and that DLSS 4's Multi Frame Generation can deliver the kind of framerates Nvidia promises in those games where the technology is available, either natively or through the Nvidia App's DLSS override feature.
Both of those statements come with a lot of caveats, though, and the RTX 5070 doesn't make enough progress from the last gen to make a compelling case for itself performance-wise, especially since its signature feature is only available in a smattering of games at the moment.
On the synthetic side of things, the RTX 5070 looks strong against the card it's replacing, the RTX 4070, and generally offers about 25% better performance on synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark Steel Nomad or Speed Way. It also has higher compute performance in Geekbench 6 than its direct predecessor, though not be as drastic a margin (about 10% better).
Compared to the RTX 4070 Super, however, the RTX 5070's performance is only about 6% better overall, and only about 12% better than the AMD RX 7900 GRE's overall synthetic performance.
Again, a win is a win, but it's much closer than it should be gen-on-gen.
The RTX 5070 runs into similar issues on the creative side, where it only outperforms the RTX 4070 Super by about 3% overall, with its best performance coming in PugetBench for Creators' Adobe Premiere benchmark (~13% better than the RTX 4070 Super), but faltering somewhat with Blender Benchmark 4.3.0.
This isn't too surprising, as the RTX 5070 hasn't been released yet and GPUs tend to perform better in Blender several weeks or months after the card's release when the devs can better optimize things for new releases.
All in all, for this class of cards, the RTX 5070 is a solid choice for those who might want to dabble in creative work without much of a financial commitment, but real pros are better off with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti if you're looking to upgrade without spending a fortune.
It's with gaming, though, where the real heartbreak comes with this card.
Technically, with just 12GB VRAM, this isn't a 4K graphics card, but both the RTX 4070 Super and RTX 5070 are strong enough cards that you can get playable native 4K in pretty much every game so long as you never, ever touch ray tracing, global illumination, or the like. Unfortunately, both cards perform roughly the same under these conditions at 4K, with the RTX 5070 pulling into a slight >5 fps lead in a few games like Returnal and Dying Light 2.
However, in some titles like F1 2024, the RTX 4070 Super actually outperforms the RTX 5070 when ray tracing is turned on, or when DLSS is set to balanced and without any Frame Generation. Overall and across different setting configurations, the RTX 5070 only musters a roughly 4.5% better average FPS at 4K than the RTX 4070 Super.
It's pretty much the same story at 1440p, as well, with the RTX 5070 outperforming the RTX 4070 Super by about 2.7% across configurations at 1440p. We're really in the realm of what a good overclock can get you on an RTX 4070 Super rather than a generational leap, despite all the next-gen specs that the RTX 5070 brings to bear.
OK, but what about the RTX 4090? Can the RTX 5070 with DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation match the native 4K performance of the RTX 4090?
Yes, it can, at least if you're only concerned with average FPS. The only game with an in-game benchmark that I can use to measure the RTX 5070's MFG performance is Cyberpunk 2077, and I've included those results here, but in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Dragon Age: Veilguard (using the Nvidia App's override function) I pretty much found MFG to perform consistently as promised, delivering substantially faster FPS than DLSS 4 alone and landing in the ballpark of where the RTX 4090's native 4K performance ends up.
And so long as you stay far away from ray tracing, the base framerate at 4K will be high enough on the RTX 5070 that you won't notice too much, if any, latency in many games. But when you turn ray tracing on, even the RTX 5090's native frame rate tanks, and it's those baseline rendered frames that handle changes based on your input, and the three AI-generated frames based on that initial rendered frame don't factor in whatever input changes you've made at all.
As such, even though you can get up to 129 FPS at 4K with Psycho RT and Ultra preset in Cyberpunk 2077 on the RTX 5070 (blowing way past the RTX 5090's native 51 average FPS on the Ultra preset with Psycho RT), only 44 of the RTX 5070's 129 frames per second are reflecting active input. This leads to a situation where your game looks like its flying by at 129 FPS, but feels like it's still a sluggish 44 FPS.
For most games, this isn't going to be a deal breaker. While I haven't tried the RTX 5070 with 4x MFG on Satisfactory, I'm absolutely positive I will not feel the difference, as it's not the kind of game where you need fast reflexes (other than dealing with the effing Stingers), but Marvel Rivals? You're going to feel it.
Nvidia Reflex definitely helps take the edge off MFG's latency, but it doesn't completely eliminate it, and for some games (and gamers) that is going to matter, leaving the RTX 5070's MFG experience too much of a mixed bag to be a categorical selling point. I think the hate directed at 'fake frames' is wildly overblown, but in the case of the RTX 5070, it's not entirely without merit.
So where does that leave the RTX 5070? Overall, it's the best 1440p card on the market right now, and it's relatively low MSRP makes it the best value proposition in its class. It's also much more likely that you'll actually be able to find this card at MSRP, making the question of value more than just academic.
For most gamers out there, Multi Frame Generation is going to be great, and so long as you go easy on the ray tracing, you'll probably never run into any practical latency in your games, so in those instances, the RTX 5070 might feel like black magic in a circuit board.
But my problem with the RTX 5070 is that it is absolutely not the RTX 4090, and for the vast majority of the games you're going to be playing, it never will be, and that's essentially what was promised when the RTX 5070 was announced. Instead, the RTX 5070 is an RTX 4070 Super with a few games running MFG slapped to its side that look like they're playing on an RTX 4090, but may or may not feel like they are, and that's just not good enough.
It's not what we were promised, not by a long shot.
Performance: 3 / 5
Should you buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 if...
You don't have the money for (or cannot find) an RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 4070 Super This isn't a bad graphics card, but there are so many better cards that offer better value or better performance within its price range.
You want to dabble in creative or AI work without investing a lot of money The creative and AI performance of this card is great for the price.
Don't buy it if...
You can afford to wait for better Whether it's this generation or the next, this card offers very little that you won't be able to find elsewhere within the next two years.
Also consider
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti The RTX 5070 Ti is a good bit more expensive, especially with price inflation, but if you can get it at a reasonable price, it is a much better card than the RTX 5070.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super With Nvidia RTX 50 series cards getting scalped to heck, if you can find an RTX 4070 Super for a good price, it offers pretty much identical performance to the RTX 5070, minus the Multi Frame Generation.
I spent about a week testing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, using it as my main workstation GPU for creative content work, gaming, and other testing.
I used my updated testing suite including industry standard tools like 3DMark and PugetBench for Creators, as well as built-in game benchmarks like Cyberpunk 2077, Civilization VII, and others.
I've reviewed more than 30 graphics cards for TechRadar in the last two and a half years, as well as extensively testing and retesting graphics cards throughout the year for features, analysis, and other content, so you can trust that my reviews are based on experience and data, as well as my desire to make sure you get the best GPU for your hard earned money.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti definitely had a high expectation bar to clear after the mixed reception of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 last month, especially from enthusiasts.
And while there are things I fault the RTX 5070 Ti for, there's no doubt that it has taken the lead as the best graphics card most people can buy right now—assuming that scalpers don't get there first.
The fact that the RTX 5070 Ti beats both of those cards handily in terms of performance would normally be enough to get it high marks, but this card even ekes out a win over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super, shooting it nearly to the top of the best Nvidia graphics card lists.
As one of the best 4K graphics cards I've ever tested, it isn't without faults, but we're really only talking about the fact that Nvidia isn't releasing a Founders Edition card for this one, and that's unfortunate for a couple of reasons.
For one, and probably most importantly, without a Founders Edition card from Nvidia guaranteed to sell for MSRP directly from Nvidia's website, the MSRP price for this card is just a suggestion. And without an MSRP card from Nvidia keeping AIB partners onside, it'll be hard finding a card at Nvidia's $749 price tag, reducing its value proposition.
Also, because there's no Founders Edition, Nvidia's dual pass-through design to keep the card cool will pass the 5070 Ti by. If you were hoping that the RTX 5070 Ti might be SFF-friendly, I simply don't see how the RTX 5070 Ti fits into that unless you stretch the meaning of small form factor until it hurts.
Those aren't small quibbles, but given everything else the RTX 5070 Ti brings to the table, they do seem like I'm stretching myself a bit to find something bad to say about this card for balance.
For the vast majority of buyers out there looking for outstanding 4K performance at a relatively approachable MSRP, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the card you're going to want to buy.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti: Price & availability
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
How much is it? MSRP is $749/£729 (about AU$1,050), but with no Founders Edition, third-party cards will likely be higher
When can you get it? The RTX 5070 Ti goes on sale February 20, 2025
Where is it available? The RTX 5070 Ti will be available in the US, UK, and Australia at launch
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti goes on sale on February 20, 2025, starting at $749/£729 (about AU$1,050) in the US, UK, and Australia, respectively.
Unlike the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, there is no Founders Edition card for the RTX 5070 Ti, so there are no versions of this card that will be guaranteed to sell at this MSRP price, which does complicate things given the current scalping frenzy we've seen for the previous RTX 50 series cards.
While stock of the Founders Edition RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 might be hard to find even from Nvidia, there is a place, at least, where you could theoretically buy those cards at MSRP. No such luck with the RTX 5070 Ti, which is a shame.
The 5070 Ti MSRP does at least come in under the launch MSRPs of both the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Ti Super, neither of which had Founders Edition cards, so stock and pricing will hopefully stay within the bounds of where those cards have been selling for.
The 5070 Ti's MSRP puts it on the lower-end of the enthusiast-class, and while we haven't seen the price for the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT yet, it's unlikely that AMD's competing RDNA 4 GPU will sell for much less than the RTX 5070 Ti, but if you're not in a hurry, it might be worth waiting a month or two to see what AMD has to offer in this range before deciding which is the better buy.
Value: 4 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti: Specs
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
GDDR7 VRAM and PCIe 5.0
Slight bump in power consumption
More memory than its direct predecessor
Like the rest of the Nvidia Blackwell GPU lineup, there are some notable advances with the RTX 5070 Ti over its predecessors.
First, the RTX 5070 Ti features faster GDDR7 memory which, in addition to having an additional 4GB VRAM than the RTX 4070 Ti's 12GB, means that the RTX 5070 Ti's larger, faster memory pool can process high resolution texture files faster, making it far more capable at 4K resolutions.
Also of note is its 256-bit memory interface, which is 33.3% larger than the RTX 4070 Ti's, and equal to that of the RTX 4070 Ti Super. 64 extra bits might not seem like a lot, but just like trying to fit a couch through a door, even an extra inch or two of extra space can be the difference between moving the whole thing through at once or having to do it in parts, which translates into additional work on both ends.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
There's also the new PCIe 5.0 x16 interface, which speeds up communication between the graphics card, your processor, and your SSD. If you have a PCIe 5.0 capable motherboard, processor, and SSD, just make note of how many PCIe 5.0 lanes you have available.
The RTX 5070 Ti will take up 16 of them, so if you only have 16 lanes available and you have a PCIe 5.0 SSD, the RTX 5070 Ti is going to get those lanes by default, throttling your SSD to PCIe 4.0 speeds. Some motherboards will let you set PCIe 5.0 priority, if you have to make a choice.
The RTX 5070 Ti uses slightly more power than its predecessors, but in my testing it's maximum power draw came in at just under the card's 300W TDP.
As for the GPU inside the RTX 5070 Ti, it's built using TSMC's N4P process node, which is a refinement of the TSMC N4 node used by its predecessors. While not a full generational jump in process tech, the N4P process does offer better efficiency and a slight increase in transistor density.
Specs & features: 5 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti: Design & features
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
No Nvidia Founders Edition card
No dual-pass-through cooling (at least for now)
There is no Founders Edition card for the RTX 5070 Ti, so the RTX 5070 Ti you end up with may look radically different than the one I tested for this review, the Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.
Whatever partner card you choose though, it's likely to be a chonky card given the card's TDP, since 300W of heat needs a lot of cooling. While the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 Founders Edition cards featured the innovative dual pass-through design (which dramatically shrank the card's width), it's unlikely you'll find any RTX 5070 Ti cards in the near future that feature this kind of cooling setup, if ever.
With that groundwork laid, you're going to have a lot of options for cooling setups, shroud design, and lighting options, though more feature-rich cards will likely be more expensive, so make sure you consider the added cost when weighing your options.
As for the Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, the sleek shroud of the card lacks the RGB that a lot of gamers like for their builds, but for those of us who are kind of over RGB, the Prime's design is fantastic and easily worked into any typical mid-tower case.
The Prime RTX 5070 Ti features a triple-fan cooling setup, with one of those fans having complete passthrough over the heatsink fins. There's a protective backplate and stainless bracket over the output ports.
The 16-pin power connector rests along the card's backplate, so even if you invested in a 90-degree angled power cable, you'll still be able to use it, assuming your power supply meets the recommended 750W listed on Asus's website. There's a 3-to-1 adapter included with the card, as well, for those who haven't upgraded to an ATX 3.0 PSU yet.
Design: 4 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
RTX 4080 Super-level performance
Massive improvement over the RTX 4070 Ti Super
Added features like DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation
A note on my data
The charts shown below offer the most recent data I have for the cards tested for this review. They may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The 'average of all cards tested' includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
And so we come to the reason we're all here, which is this card's performance.
Given the...passionate...debate over the RTX 5080's underwhelming gen-on-gen uplift, enthusiasts will be very happy with the performance of the RTX 5070 Ti, at least as far as it relates to the last-gen RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Ti Super.
Starting with synthetic scores, at 1080p, both the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 5070 Ti are so overpowered that they get close to CPU-locking on 3DMark's 1080p tests, Night Raid and Fire Strike, though the RTX 5070 Ti does come out about 14% ahead. The RTX 5070 Ti begins to pull away at higher resolutions and once you introduce ray tracing into the mix, with roughly 30% better performance at these higher level tests like Solar Bay, Steel Nomad, and Port Royal.
In terms of raw compute performance, the RTX 5070 Ti scores about 25% better in Geekbench 6 than the RTX 4070 Ti and about 20% better than the RTX 4070 Ti Super.
In creative workloads like Blender Benchmark 4.30, the RTX 5070 Ti pulls way ahead of its predecessors, though the 5070 Ti, 4070 Ti Super, and 4070 Ti all pretty much max out what a GPU can add to my Handbrake 1.9 4K to 1080p encoding test, with all three cards cranking out about 220 FPS encoded on average.
Starting with 1440p gaming, the gen-on-gen improvement of the RTX 5070 Ti over the RTX 4070 Ti is a respectable 20%, even without factoring in DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation.
The biggest complaint that some have about MFG is that if the base frame rate isn't high enough, you'll end up with controls that can feel slightly sluggish, even though the visuals you're seeing are much more fluid.
Fortunately, outside of turning ray tracing to its max settings and leaving Nvidia Reflex off, you're not really going to need to worry about that. The RTX 5070 Ti's minimum FPS for all but one of the games I tested at native 1440p with ray tracing all pretty much hit or exceeded 60 FPS, often by a lot.
Only F1 2024 had a lower-than-60 minimum FPS at native 1440p with max ray tracing, and even then, it still managed to stay above 45 fps, which is fast enough that no human would ever notice any input latency in practice. For 1440p gaming, then, there's absolutely no reason not to turn on MFG whenever it is available since it can substantially increase framerates, often doubling or even tripling them in some cases without issue.
For 4K gaming, the RTX 5070 Ti native performance is spectacular, with nearly every title tested hitting 60 FPS or greater on average, with those that fell short only doing so by 4-5 frames.
Compared to the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Ti Super, the faster memory and expanded 16GB VRAM pool definitely turn up for the RTX 5070 Ti at 4K, delivering about 31% better overall average FPS than the RTX 4070 Ti and about 23% better average FPS than the RTX 4070 Ti Super.
In fact, the average 4K performance for the RTX 5070 Ti pulls up pretty much dead even with the RTX 4080 Super's performance, and about 12% better than the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX at 4K, despite the latter having 8GB more VRAM.
Like every other graphics card besides the RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090, playing at native 4K with ray tracing maxed out is going to kill your FPS. To the 5070 Ti's credit, though, minimum FPS never dropped so low as to turn things into a slideshow, even if the 5070 Ti's 25 FPS minimum in Cyberpunk 2077 was noticeable.
Turning on DLSS in these cases is a must, even if you skip turning on MFG, but the RTX 5070 Ti's balanced upscaled performance is a fantastic experience.
Leave ray tracing turned off (or set to a lower setting), however, and MFG definitely becomes a viable way to max out your 4K monitor's refresh rate for seriously fluid gaming.
Overall then, the RTX 5070 Ti delivers substantial high-resolution gains gen-on-gen, which should make enthusiasts happy, without having to increase its power consumption all that much.
Of all the graphics cards I've tested over the years, and especially over the past six months, the RTX 5070 Ti is pretty much the perfect balance for whatever you need it for, and if you can get it at MSRP or reasonably close to MSRP, it's without a doubt the best value for your money of any of the current crop of enthusiast graphics cards.
Performance: 5 / 5
Should you buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti if...
You want the perfect balance of 4K performance and price Assuming you can find it at or close to MSRP, the 4K value proposition on this card is the best you'll find for an enthusiast graphics card.
You want a fantastic creative graphics card on the cheap While the RTX 5070 Ti doesn't have the RTX 5090's creative chops, it's a fantastic pick for 3D modelers and video professionals looking for a (relatively) cheap GPU.
You want Nvidia's latest DLSS features without spending a fortune While this isn't the first Nvidia graphics card to feature DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, it is the cheapest, at least until the RTX 5070 launches in a month or so.
Don't buy it if...
You want the absolute best performance possible The RTX 5070 Ti is a fantastic performer, but the RTX 5080, RTX 4090, and RTX 5090 all offer better raw performance if you're willing to pay more for it.
You're looking for something more affordable While the RTX 5070 Ti has a fantastic price for an enthusiast-grade card, it's still very expensive, especially once scalpers get involved.
You only plan on playing at 1440p If younever plan on playing at 4K this generation, you might want to see if the RTX 5070 or AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 cards are a better fit.
Also consider
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 While more expensive, the RTX 5080 features fantastic performance and value for under a grand at MSRP.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super While this card might not be on the store shelves for much longer, the RTX 5070 Ti matches the RTX 4080 Super's performance, so if you can find the RTX 4080 Super at a solid discount, it might be the better pick.
I spent about a week testing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, using it mostly for creative work and gaming, including titles like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Avowed.
I also used my updated suite of benchmarks including industry standards like 3DMark and Geekbench, as well as built-in gaming benchmarks like Cyberpunk 2077 and Dying Light 2.
I also test all of the competing cards in a given card's market class using the same test bench setup throughout so I can fully isolate GPU performance across various, repeatable tests. I then take geometric averages of the various test results (which better insulates the average from being skewed by tests with very large test results) to come to comparable scores for different aspects of the card's performance. I give more weight to gaming performance than creative or AI performance, and performance is given the most weight in how final scores are determined, followed closely by value.
I've been testing GPUs, PCs, and laptops for TechRadar for nearly five years now, with more than two dozen graphics card reviews under my belt in the past three years alone. On top of that, I have a Masters degree in Computer Science and have been building PCs and gaming on PCs for most of my life, so I am well qualified to assess the value of a graphics card and whether it's worth your time and money.
