AMD might’ve already lost the war with the RX 9070 XT

It looks like I may have played myself again. I was genuinely excited about AMD’s RX 9070 XT, but now, I’m starting to worry about its future. I always knew that the new AMD flagship wouldn’t be able to compete against some of Nvidia’s best graphics cards, but I had a lot of hope that it’d still be a great competitor for a number of other reasons.

I’m not doubting the performance of the RX 9070 XT. I have no reason to, as we don’t know a thing about it — and that’s exactly why I’m worried. Not only are the GPUs still a complete mystery, but they’ve also reportedly been delayed. At this rate, I fear that AMD may have lost the war before it even started, and I’m not alone.

What’s going on with RDNA 4?

I felt pretty excited for the RX 9070 XT, but so far, the launch of RDNA 4 has been a harsh lesson in managing your expectations.

First, the GPUs barely got a mention during AMD’s 45-minute-long CES 2025 keynote. Then, the few slides that AMD released to the press offered very little information; we basically only learned a little bit about the RDNA 4 architecture and AMD’s performance goals. The information was vague, too — think “improved ray tracing performance” and the like.

The GPUs themselves were spotted at CES, but only those made by AMD’s partners, and they didn’t come with any specifications. So, at this stage, it’s been revealed that the RX 9070 XT comes with three fans in its Gigabyte design. That’s… not a lot.

But wait — there’s hope, or so I thought. AMD told Digital Trends that RDNA 4 would be released “in a matter of weeks,” and that the company thought that the new RX 9000 series deserved its own event. But only silence has followed.

The first update came not from AMD itself, but from B&H. The retailer put the RX 9070 XT up for sale with a January 22 preorder date. The cards had been taken down, but then they reappeared with a release date of March 22. Finally, this tracks.

Radeon 9000 series hardware and software are looking great and we are planning to have a wide assortment of cards available globally.  Can’t wait for gamers to get their hands on the cards when they go on sale in March!

— David McAfee (@McAfeeDavid_AMD) January 20, 2025

David McAfee, AMD’s vice president and general manager of the Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics division, revealed on X (Twitter) that the cards will go on sale in March. McAfee later added that AMD is holding onto the GPUs a little while longer in order to optimize their software stack, including FSR 4.

Meanwhile, various leakers and tipsters are having a field day with AMD’s troubled RDNA 4 launch. Recent whispers point to AMD still holding off to see how Nvidia fares. At this rate, AMD will likely get to see the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 5070 in their full glory before it launches the RX 9070 XT.

AMD wanted to announce its new graphics cards alongside Nvidia, but it clearly didn’t have a solid plan for actually releasing them. Now, we’ve had to cobble together various ideas about the cards from leaks, board partners, and social media posts, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

I’m losing faith, and I’m not alone

As soon as I saw David McAfee announce that RDNA 4 wouldn’t be here until March, I knew what was coming — and I wasn’t wrong. PC gaming enthusiasts, including both AMD and Nvidia fans, weren’t happy with the way it’s all gone down.

Scrolling through the hundreds of comments under McAfee’s post reveals just how badly the general public wants to know what’s going on.

Not even, a proper announcement with slides of performance, features. Could be even "price will be reveled at, a later date". This is so bad PR… i have no words.

— Tomasz Gawroński (@GawroskiT) January 20, 2025

Sitting at over 500 likes, a comment from GawroskiT on X makes a dig at AMD’s PR team. “Not even a proper announcement. […] This is [such] bad PR. I have no words.”

Another user, PlaysRingle, promises to ditch AMD for Nvidia based on how things are going. “AMD is going to make me upgrade my RX 7900 XTX to an RTX 5080. I can’t keep defending AMD when it keeps doing these things.”

I know that I’m being fairly critical of AMD here myself, but I can’t help feeling bad when reading these comments and seeing the reactions. Some of it is really quite harsh, such as this comment from noremac258: “Does AMD ever not fail to capitalize on an opportunity? […] AMD’s graphics division is a disaster.”

What ARE you guys doing? What sort of "marketing" is this "stealth" reveal??? Your CES presence was so uninformative you'd have been better off not showing up at all, and all we get since then is THIS?

— DGBurns (@davidgburns) January 21, 2025

I tried to find more supportive comments, but there are very few of those to be found. However, Hardware Unboxed made a separate post defending AMD, which is what prompted McAfee to clarify that the delayed launch comes down to software optimization.

AMD delaying the launch of RDNA4 to March is the right move. The last thing they want is stuffing up the launch yet again, which they risk doing if they launch before Nvidia.

And very few people would have bought a 9070 XT just because it launched a week or two before the 5070.…

— Hardware Unboxed (@HardwareUnboxed) January 20, 2025

I know that X is a tough crowd, so I decided to check Reddit for more reactions. Long story short — it wasn’t pretty.

The comments under this post, sharing that RDNA 4 won’t arrive until March, are still harsh. One commenter said: “Nvidia’s release was looking rather underwhelming, so AMD had to pull out all the stops to make sure they miss the opportunity this time.”

“I perceive this as having no confidence in your own product. [AMD] had the opportunity here to seize this midrange market segment by coming out first,” said another user, pointing out that waiting for Nvidia’s RTX 5070 might backfire.

In search of people who are more in favor of AMD than Nvidia, I ventured into the r/AMD community. This post quickly showed me that people aren’t willing to cut AMD any slack.

Other than the top comment thread pictured above, all the other highly-rated comments criticize AMD. “Absolute incompetence from AMD’s GPU division, again,” says one poster. “Doesn’t a significant amount of retailers already have the cards in stock? What a fumble,” adds another.

I could go on, but you get the gist. It’s clear that people aren’t pleased, and while the internet at large is hardly ever satisfied, some of this might’ve been avoided if AMD had been more forthcoming about the RX 9000 series. People are frustrated with the delay, but also with the lack of information.

AMD could still make the RX 9070 XT a success

Things are looking a little bleak for RDNA 4 right now, but the internet is quick to forget. It’s still entirely possible for AMD to turn this around and make the launch of the RX 9000 series a success.

My opinion is that sharing some information would be better than sharing next to none; even a basic spec sheet would go a long way. Although McAfee plays a key role in AMD’s GPU strategy, most fans don’t check his X account on a daily basis. Those people are either kept in the dark or they’re left to rely on third parties to tell them what’s going on.

Letting the general public figure out AMD’s plans based on social media means that a lot of people who might have otherwise been happy to wait will now be influenced by people who are decidedly not happy. If there are hundreds of comments all saying that AMD is doing a bad job, it’s easy to start believing it yourself if you don’t have anyone telling you otherwise.

Unfortunately, right now, AMD is really not doing much to dispel that notion. A quick X post, even when coming from an AMD executive, doesn’t cut it.

Aside from some marketing efforts to drive up the hype, I think it’s now more important than ever for AMD to lean into that performance-per-dollar metric that makes GPUs like Intel’s Arc B580 such a great deal. The fact is that the RX 9070 XT might still be an exceptional GPU even if it won’t be able to beat all of its Nvidia rivals.

Most people won’t be spending $2,000 (or more) on an RTX 5090. The GPU market needs graphics cards that provide value while being able to run the latest games, and to that end, AMD’s usually done a pretty good job. Strangely enough, some of its best GPUs are the ones that didn’t get a lot of love from the marketing department, such as the RX 7900 GRE — but that’s no reason for the RX 9070 XT to also be launched with so little fanfare.

In the consumer graphics market, AMD is a small fish; Nvidia is a massive shark. Following a troubled launch, AMD may therefore now face an uphill climb with the RX 9070 XT — but I’m still hopeful.

If AMD gets the pricing right, the RX 9070 XT might still turn out to be an amazing card. On the other hand, if it’s too expensive when compared to its Nvidia rivals, it might end up being overlooked regardless of AMD’s marketing efforts. And let’s hope that those efforts actually begin soon, because so far, Nvidia’s winning the battle — but AMD could still walk away unscathed from the war.