AMD RDNA4 Architecture Speculation

Now that we’ve seen the 5070 Ti what can AMD do to make a splash. The 5070 Ti trades blows with the 7900 XTX in raster and they end up within 5% of each other on average. The 5070 Ti is 55-70% faster in RT according to HUB’s lineup of “games with impressive RT”.

Surprises aside it’s probably safe to assume the 9070 XT’s performance will fall in line with its specs. It has 20% higher clocks, 80% of the flops and 66% of the bandwidth of the 7900 XTX. RT is also improved but we don’t know how much. Based on those numbers it’s unlikely to get close to the current flagship and likely lands right between the 5070 and 5070 Ti.

$600 with good availability should be enough to turn heads. Of course it’ll be much more fun if performance is greater than specs indicate.
500$ for the 9070 XT. They will be comparable in general performance at best, much slower in RT, and won't have any answer for DLSS.
 
... and won't have any answer for DLSS.

Uh, FSR4?

I agree 9070XT should be $499 simply because the 7800XT was. It was their true x7 tier class card last gen and is a similar die size/same memory layout so I see no reason for the 9070XT to be more expensive. Of course I doubt it will be because the market is weird. $550-600 for close to 5070Ti raster, 25% slower RT or so and FSR4 bringing close enough results to DLSS4 would be a good enough deal. Priced higher than that without performing better and it's DOA.

The spanner in the works is being able to find a 5070Ti/5070 for close to MSRP. I'm dubious whether the MSRP models will be restocked in any meaningful quantities.
 
Uh, FSR4?

I agree 9070XT should be $499 simply because the 7800XT was. It was their true x7 tier class card last gen and is a similar die size/same memory layout so I see no reason for the 9070XT to be more expensive. Of course I doubt it will be because the market is weird. $550-600 for close to 5070Ti raster, 25% slower RT or so and FSR4 bringing close enough results to DLSS4 would be a good enough deal. Priced higher than that without performing better and it's DOA.

The spanner in the works is being able to find a 5070Ti/5070 for close to MSRP. I'm dubious whether the MSRP models will be restocked in any meaningful quantities.
FSR 4 will almost certainly not be a match for DLSS and game support will be very thin.
 
People who saw FSR4 said it looked very good. And lots of games have FSR3, and AMD is going to offer the same driver-level override to add FSR4 (I think). Support should be very good.
If AMD was that confident they would have compared it to DLSS directly. It’s very unrealistic to expect them to close such a massive gap.
 
People who saw FSR4 said it looked very good. And lots of games have FSR3, and AMD is going to offer the same driver-level override to add FSR4 (I think). Support should be very good.
No need to think, everything supporting FSR 3.1 supports FSR 4 (3.1 is the one where they switched to DLL method which makes it easy)
If AMD was that confident they would have compared it to DLSS directly. It’s very unrealistic to expect them to close such a massive gap.
Not on expo before even releasing said tech officially.
 
If AMD was that confident they would have compared it to DLSS directly. It’s very unrealistic to expect them to close such a massive gap.

My personal feeling is that a little too much is made of upscaling quality. FSR is pretty bad right now, but they don't need to really beat or match DLSS. It just has to be good enough. I think DLSS TNN looks better than CNN in the majority of cases, but I've been using the CNN for years and it was fine. For all of the ... whining ... online, I think most people can just turn on DLSS and not think about it. FSR4 just has to be good enough, and hopefully that's what it'll be.
 
My personal feeling is that a little too much is made of upscaling quality. FSR is pretty bad right now, but they don't need to really beat or match DLSS. It just has to be good enough. I think DLSS TNN looks better than CNN in the majority of cases, but I've been using the CNN for years and it was fine. For all of the ... whining ... online, I think most people can just turn on DLSS and not think about it. FSR4 just has to be good enough, and hopefully that's what it'll be.

FSR4 needs a "pass" from reviewers and tech tubers. Then it becomes less of a talking point. It needs to hang out between XeSS and DLSS to do that. Certainly possible.

On the RT side, i'm sure they'll do something but these cards aren't going at flagship tier so if anything, focus RT performance with uDNA and get your denoiser upto to RR TNA levels and launch it fresh.

For a 9070/XT to gain market share my takes are following:
- Be 25% or cheaper to equivalent nvidia card in raster performance
- Get FSR4 to deliver above XeSS and slightly below or close to DLSS CNN

These aren't impossible tasks but if they start doing stupid things like "oh our upscaling is close so let's price it within 5-15% of the nvidia card" it'll just crash and burn as previous generations.
 
Last edited:
If we say one upscaler is good enough compared to another upscaler to make it not worth factoring them into the comparison - even if it produces a noticably inferior output, where does that leave us in like for like comparisons? We could argue for example that 1800p is good enough compared with 4k, but does that mean we could say for example that because a 4080 at 1800p is as fast as a 5080 at 2160p these GPU's can be considered equivalent?

My point here is that while FSR4 may well be good enough for most (like 1800p), if DLSS 4 Performance is equivalent to FSR4 Quality (which there's a very good chance of IMO) then in every game that supports DLSS4 the 5070 is probably going to be performing similarly to, or above a 9070XT (before RT). That's got to be factored into the comparison.
 
My point here is that while FSR4 may well be good enough for most (like 1800p), if DLSS 4 Performance is equivalent to FSR4 Quality (which there's a very good chance of IMO) then in every game that supports DLSS4 the 5070 is probably going to be performing similarly to, or above a 9070XT (before RT). That's got to be factored into the comparison.

That’s already the case today where performance of FSR is considered equivalent to DLSS with the quality difference as a qualifier. I don’t see why that needs to change. We can still say FSR quality and DLSS 4 quality offer similar performance while acknowledging DLSS 4 produces higher quality output. It’s impossible to control for equivalent IQ.
 
That’s already the case today where performance of FSR is considered equivalent to DLSS with the quality difference as a qualifier. I don’t see why that needs to change. We can still say FSR quality and DLSS 4 quality offer similar performance while acknowledging DLSS 4 produces higher quality output. It’s impossible to control for equivalent IQ.

My post was in response to the suggestion that FSR4 being good enough meant DLSS didn't need to be considered as part of the purchasing decision or value proposition of a particular GPU.
 
Back
Top