00:00:00
oh lonus Sebastian is remoting in from
00:00:03
Texas to present our next Award of the
00:00:05
evening and the least crap dpu of 2025
00:00:09
award goes to AMD for the Radeon 970
00:00:15
XT that's right folks after fumbling for
00:00:18
years AMD has finally figured out how to
00:00:21
manufacture and price a GPU that will
00:00:24
actually sell and all it took for this
00:00:26
to happen was for NVIDIA to slip on a
00:00:29
banana peel fall down An Elevator Shaft
00:00:31
and then have a piano dropped on as for
00:00:34
the 970
00:00:35
non-xt it's also here in all seriousness
00:00:39
though at $599 and 550 both of these
00:00:43
cards are well priced capable of both 4K
00:00:46
gaming and actually good rage tracing
00:00:49
and even add AI powered upscaling
00:00:52
capabilities but as per amd's long proud
00:00:55
tradition they also come with caveats
00:00:58
like performance and productivity and
00:01:00
and power consumption with that said if
00:01:03
they can stay in stock I think we're
00:01:05
going to be able to look past those
00:01:06
little details toward a brighter future
00:01:09
for gamers and a bright segue to our
00:01:13
sponsor are you waiting for that box to
00:01:15
hit me I'll sponsor War Thunder is
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waiting for you to hear out their
00:01:18
comprehensive vehicle comeback in take
00:01:20
control of more than 2500 tanks planes
00:01:22
helicopters and ships go down and join
00:01:24
over 70 million players for free now
00:01:26
otherwi I won
00:01:32
[Music]
00:01:36
AMD says these cards they're for high
00:01:38
resolution gaming so let's talk 1080p
00:01:41
later and jump right into 1440p
00:01:43
rasterization where wow does the 97 EXT
00:01:47
ever make envidia look like a bunch of
00:01:49
greedy buffoons it nearly matches the
00:01:52
performance of the RTX 570 TI while
00:01:55
coming in
00:01:56
$150 below the MSRP of that car
00:02:00
which of course is an imaginary price
00:02:03
that no gamer has ever paid even the
00:02:05
Lesser non-xt variant looks decent here
00:02:08
going blow for blow with the 5070 across
00:02:11
all of our benchmarks we even got the
00:02:13
occasional clear wi for AMD like in
00:02:16
Allen wake 2 where the non-xt beats the
00:02:19
non-ti by a whopping
00:02:21
177% the only definitive loss for AMD in
00:02:25
our suite was in black myth Wukong where
00:02:27
the ti beats the XT by around % but the
00:02:31
second you factor in the price amd's
00:02:34
small L turns into a Big W in our Vulcan
00:02:38
Benchmark Red Dead Redemption 2 we do
00:02:40
see some worrying issues in frame pacing
00:02:43
where both of the new cards drop in
00:02:45
ranking because of their poor 1% lows
00:02:47
despite solid average FPS so hopefully
00:02:50
this is something that amd's team can
00:02:51
work on post launch overall though we
00:02:54
are off to a great start the 970 XT is a
00:02:58
clear winner in performance and value
00:03:00
and as for the 99070 well it's about as
00:03:04
bad a deal as the RTX 570 at least on
00:03:07
paper and we'll talk a bit more about
00:03:09
our Theory as to why later first I want
00:03:12
to talk about 4K because unlike Nvidia
00:03:15
AMD gave their $550 card sufficient vram
00:03:18
for Ultra HD gaming sure it's gddr6 and
00:03:23
not gddr 7 but faster memory is going to
00:03:26
be irrelevant when you don't have the
00:03:28
capacity to keep up and there is no
00:03:30
better illustration of this than the way
00:03:32
that the 9070 extends its lead at higher
00:03:35
resolutions especially when we look at
00:03:38
the all important 1% lows which is what
00:03:40
determines the smoothness of your
00:03:42
gameplay Look At Last of Us Part One
00:03:45
here the 9070 leads by a whopping
00:03:48
23% over the RTX
00:03:51
5070 why we look at the vram usage on
00:03:55
the 5070 it's full which results in
00:03:58
these gameplay hitches that you see here
00:04:00
compare that to the 9070 or to nvidia's
00:04:03
own cards that do have 16 gigs and those
00:04:06
hitches disappear and I mean sure not
00:04:09
everyone has a 4k monitor and these
00:04:11
limitations don't rear their heads in
00:04:13
every game or even most games but still
00:04:16
it's kind of embarrassing when you're
00:04:18
supposed to be the market leader in
00:04:19
gaming gpus right overall the 9000
00:04:23
Series does fall a bit short of true
00:04:25
60fps 4K Ultra gaming and in our tests
00:04:30
it did not achieve the lofty margins
00:04:32
over the 7900 gr that AMD promised in
00:04:35
their slides but we're not that
00:04:37
disappointed yet because AMD included
00:04:40
Ray tracing in their averages and that
00:04:43
is a very different story with these new
00:04:45
cards before we look at those results
00:04:47
though let's dive into what AMD has done
00:04:50
to bring about this generational leap in
00:04:52
performance to me the most impressive
00:04:54
thing is shrinkage the new monolithic
00:04:57
die that underpins both the 970 and 970
00:04:59
XT should have been code named frighten
00:05:00
Turtle it's built on tsmc's n4c process
00:05:04
node and it crams 92% as many
00:05:05
transistors as the 7900 XTX into just
00:05:08
2/3 of the die area this along with some
00:05:12
major improvements in performance per CU
00:05:13
is what makes these cards such a
00:05:15
compelling value diving deeper into the
00:05:17
compute engine we see vastly improved
00:05:18
Matrix operations with support for more
00:05:20
data types a new Dynamic register
00:05:22
allocator and improvements to the
00:05:24
scheduler combine this with dual simd 32
00:05:26
Vector units overhauled AI accelerators
00:05:28
and beefed up rate tracing capabil and
00:05:30
you get a card that can do a lot of
00:05:31
calculations all at once especially when
00:05:34
it comes to rate tracing and AI but wait
00:05:36
there is more both cards get an improved
00:05:39
media engine which provides a
00:05:40
considerable Improvement for low bit
00:05:42
rate en coding during streaming
00:05:43
YouTube's compression might make this
00:05:45
impossible to see but to the human eye
00:05:47
these twitch optimized recordings of
00:05:49
rnal there's a clear improvement over
00:05:51
the 7900 XTX and it's even difficult to
00:05:54
distinguish AMD from nvidia's nank
00:05:56
encoding we'll talk more about encoding
00:05:58
later but it's really great to see AMD
00:06:00
finally catching up here but where AMD
00:06:02
is still behind is in 422 Hardware
00:06:04
encoding and decoding which could make
00:06:06
this a less desirable option for
00:06:08
professional video creators but it's
00:06:10
unlikely to matter for non-pros another
00:06:12
slight disappointment compared to the
00:06:13
RTX 50 Series is amd's display point
00:06:16
2.1a which are only uhb 13.5 rather than
00:06:20
uhb 20 so these new cards can still do
00:06:22
4K 240 Herz but they will rely on
00:06:24
display stream compression to do so not
00:06:26
a huge deal to me I find it nigh
00:06:28
imperceptible but you're M may vary
00:06:30
enough specs let's talk Ray tracing
00:06:33
where both the new cards beat the 7900
00:06:35
XTX a card that was well received at
00:06:38
,000 too bad they don't Faire quite as
00:06:41
well against Nvidia in Allen wake 2 the
00:06:43
970 keeps up with the 570 showing just
00:06:47
how bad the 5070 is but the 5070 TI
00:06:51
provides substantially better
00:06:52
performance than the 970 XT giving
00:06:55
Nvidia one clear win for their
00:06:57
overpriced 50 Series cards or one win so
00:07:01
far in the heavily path traced black
00:07:04
myth Wukong the 9,000 cars handly
00:07:07
outclass the 7,000 series but fall
00:07:09
substantially behind nvidia's latest and
00:07:13
as for
00:07:13
f124 AMD looks great across the board
00:07:16
here while the 5070 gets beaten by its
00:07:19
own predecessor the 4070 super
00:07:23
It the clown show removing black myth
00:07:27
Wukong from the equation the 9070 family
00:07:29
is neck and neck with the competition
00:07:31
showing that AMD is no longer two
00:07:34
generations behind in raid tracing with
00:07:37
that said black myth Wukong does in fact
00:07:39
exist and shows that AMD is still one
00:07:43
generation behind which may matter in
00:07:45
future games and even in amd's own Tech
00:07:49
demo we can see that their path tracing
00:07:50
implementations struggle with boiling
00:07:52
artifacts and ghosting that reminds me
00:07:55
more of last gen's Ray reconstruction
00:07:57
hey but here's hoping that AMD
00:08:00
can continue to catch up and maybe even
00:08:02
surpass Nvidia in the future maybe a guy
00:08:05
can dream hey did we leave a 1080p
00:08:08
raster we ran those numbers so damn it I
00:08:10
want them in the video even if the story
00:08:12
remains largely the same the 57 ETI is
00:08:15
still a pretty bad deal it does win but
00:08:19
its margin of Victory is so small
00:08:20
compared to the pricing Chasm between
00:08:22
these cards that it's really hard to
00:08:24
recommend so if you are looking for an
00:08:26
Overkill 1080p upgrade the 9070 XT looks
00:08:29
like a a great way to push huge FPS
00:08:32
numbers in Esports titles or any title
00:08:34
if you don't mind a little AI upscaling
00:08:36
AMD said it one point that they don't
00:08:38
think AI is necessary for upscaling and
00:08:40
they could get the same results using
00:08:41
more traditional means ah spoken like a
00:08:44
company that did not have ai figured out
00:08:45
yet the good news is that AMD has used
00:08:47
their slow start to squeeze a lot of
00:08:49
image quality out of temporal upscaling
00:08:51
and now that they've added their
00:08:52
proprietary fp8 machine learning model
00:08:54
to improve upscaling even further the
00:08:55
results are very impressive compared to
00:08:58
FSR 3.1 we we see reductions in
00:09:00
artifacting and improvements in the
00:09:01
rendering of Fine Lines there are a few
00:09:03
instances where it even beats dss4 like
00:09:05
with these butterflies in Horizon
00:09:07
forbidden West on FSR 3 there's
00:09:09
unsightly trailing and dissolving and on
00:09:10
dss4 they just kind of are blurry but
00:09:13
with FSR 4 they appear much crisp and
00:09:15
clearer than either of the other
00:09:16
Technologies sure when you look closely
00:09:18
the artifacts are still there but it's a
00:09:20
market Improvement just like haloing
00:09:21
around detailed character models it's
00:09:23
very heavily reduced and motion is just
00:09:25
sharper in general I would say that at
00:09:27
least when upscaling to 4K I found the
00:09:28
image quality of FSR 4 to be no more
00:09:30
distracting than that of dlss 4 but none
00:09:32
of the reduced image quality trade-offs
00:09:34
matter if we don't get better
00:09:35
performance and compared to dlss FSR
00:09:38
gives a less substantial performance
00:09:40
uplift at each quality setting than
00:09:42
Nvidia in both the Last of Us Part One
00:09:44
and in Horizon zero Dawn but we do see
00:09:46
that amd's frame gen provides a better
00:09:48
uplift than nvidia's solution which
00:09:50
indicates that FSR 3.1 frame gen has
00:09:53
less overhead than nvidia's multiframe J
00:09:55
while AMD doesn't quite match Nvidia yet
00:09:57
this is the most competitive their
00:09:58
upsale has been ever except support is a
00:10:03
problem even though you can use the
00:10:04
driver to force the updated FSR 4 model
00:10:07
in games with FSR 3 AMD just has less
00:10:09
games that use FSR 3 and unlike D lss4
00:10:12
older cards are not able to take
00:10:13
advantage of the new machine learning
00:10:15
enhanced upscaling and AMD still doesn't
00:10:17
have a competitor for multiframe Gen yet
00:10:19
however FSR 4 does have frame gen but it
00:10:21
makes use of FSR 31's frame gen
00:10:24
implementation but you can bring frame
00:10:25
gen to any game using amd's driver level
00:10:28
fluid motion frames now on version 2.1
00:10:31
but even with the additional decimal
00:10:32
point ammf still sucks without game
00:10:35
integration you get all these weird UI
00:10:36
issues and overlays get mangled with
00:10:38
motion heavy heck and even motion light
00:10:40
scenes let's be real it's just frame
00:10:42
interpolation and no number of fancy
00:10:44
names can change that and if the use
00:10:45
case for nvidia's frame gen was already
00:10:47
weak ammf feels like it exists only so
00:10:49
AMD can say actually we support frame
00:10:52
genen in way more games but no it's g no
00:10:56
one wants it it's I don't know who cares
00:10:59
despite the swath of shareholder
00:11:02
approved AI junk in their latest driver
00:11:04
software AMD Falls pretty well short of
00:11:07
the Mark here there are some great gen
00:11:10
over gen improvements in computer vision
00:11:12
but even the 4070 super manages a
00:11:15
sizable lead over the 9070 XT the
00:11:19
generational gains are even more
00:11:20
apparent in stable diffusion but the
00:11:22
story Remains the Same finally there's
00:11:25
AI text generation and I bet AMD wishes
00:11:29
an AI could rewrite these Benchmark
00:11:31
results or the new cards fail to improve
00:11:34
substantially over last gen and get
00:11:36
absolutely Dunked On by Nvidia
00:11:38
regardless of which model you're using
00:11:40
the one silver lining is that either of
00:11:43
these cards can run all the same models
00:11:46
that the 5080 can and can run some that
00:11:49
the 5070 cannot thanks to amd's generous
00:11:53
16 gigs of vram I mean it's only
00:11:56
generous compared to Nvidia but thanks
00:11:59
thank you guys don't be too thankful
00:12:00
though AMD still needs to impress in
00:12:02
content creation where they do okay for
00:12:06
video editing the 9070 and 70xt provide
00:12:09
good but not exceptional performance in
00:12:11
Premiere Pro and D Vinci resolve and in
00:12:14
blender the 970 and 70xt perform about
00:12:17
on par with the flagships from amd's
00:12:19
last generation but they still just
00:12:22
don't really get anywhere close to
00:12:23
Nvidia thanks to Optics rendering yeah
00:12:26
there was a transition that I was
00:12:27
written that made more sense before we
00:12:28
had to record this speaking of updates
00:12:32
we have some encoder testing for you
00:12:33
while AMD has made strides to improve
00:12:35
their encoder they still fall behind in
00:12:37
quality compared to Nvidia and Intel
00:12:39
especially at lower bit rates in h264
00:12:42
for this encoding test we only set the
00:12:44
bit rate in no other parameters
00:12:46
depending on what encoder tweaks are
00:12:47
used any of these cards could have
00:12:49
improved quality compared to our tests
00:12:52
but the simplest way to improve quality
00:12:53
is use av1 but sadly we've excluded the
00:12:56
7,000 series from our results due to a
00:12:58
hard for a bug the good news is everyone
00:13:01
out puts better quality in av1 and AMD
00:13:03
is sadly still in last
00:13:05
place we are almost there let's talk
00:13:08
power and thermals over the past several
00:13:10
Generations AMD has made some
00:13:12
substantial improvements to efficiency
00:13:14
and in their announcement they didn't
00:13:15
really talk much about it I guess they
00:13:17
were being modest in f124 the 970 pulls
00:13:20
lower power on average than the 5070 but
00:13:22
with less stable power delivery having
00:13:24
transient spikes as high as 321 Watts
00:13:28
speaking of which the 970 XD has a
00:13:30
massive Spike to 426 watts and its
00:13:32
average is 309 Watts which is already
00:13:35
higher than its rated tbp of 305 watts
00:13:38
and that propensity for pulling profuse
00:13:40
power can be found in combuster where
00:13:42
both AMD cards also use more than their
00:13:44
rated total board power on average but
00:13:46
AMD is allowing some partner cards to
00:13:49
use a higher power budget so I guess
00:13:51
this isn't fully out of spec but I would
00:13:53
definitely recommend you stick with the
00:13:55
manufacturer recommended power supply
00:13:57
capacity and I recommend you check out
00:13:59
PSU circuit if you need to make an
00:14:00
upgrade decision lots of good info there
00:14:02
thankfully despite the power draw
00:14:03
thermals seem to be under control on our
00:14:05
provided Sapphire pulse samples I'm sure
00:14:07
in part to their use of PTM 7950 which
00:14:09
you can buy for yourself over at LTT
00:14:11
store.com that's a uh double plug double
00:14:13
whammy self-promo baby AMD doesn't feel
00:14:15
the need to hide GPU hotspot metrics
00:14:17
like Nvidia does and in combuster we see
00:14:19
that sapphires coolers provide ample
00:14:22
thermal Headroom which is good and
00:14:23
they're a little big they're not
00:14:24
obnoxious but you know come on it does
00:14:27
allow the cards to say much cooler than
00:14:28
say the 5070 or the 6700 XT in f124 so
00:14:32
if you're coming from an older card you
00:14:33
can confidently upgrade to either the
00:14:35
9070 or the 970 XT and know you'll get a
00:14:38
solid Improvement in raster performance
00:14:40
and R tracing which is a big plus for
00:14:42
folks who are on older R tracing cards
00:14:44
like the 2000 series or if you're coming
00:14:45
from the 6000 series on AMD it's just
00:14:48
it's good it's good it's cool it's nice
00:14:50
we like it we're happy I they could be
00:14:52
cheaper they could be they could be
00:14:54
cheaper there's kind of two conclusions
00:14:56
here a short one and a long one the
00:14:58
short one one is that the 970 XT is a
00:15:01
winner if AMD can keep this thing in
00:15:03
stock and you have $600 to spend on a
00:15:06
gaming GPU you are going to love this
00:15:08
thing and Nvidia needs to respond now or
00:15:11
AMD might actually take some real market
00:15:13
share for a change the long conclusion
00:15:16
is that it seems like AMD is trying to
00:15:17
eat their cake and have it too here see
00:15:20
the xt's 599 price point is giving real
00:15:23
good guy AMD Vibes but the 97d non xt's
00:15:27
price is giving maximize margins while
00:15:30
gpus are in short supply Vibes by
00:15:33
matching the 5070 in both price and
00:15:36
performance unfortunately you've also
00:15:38
matched it in value and let's be real
00:15:41
the 5070 is not a great value once
00:15:45
nobody buys the non XT because the XT is
00:15:48
so much better for just $50 more you're
00:15:51
going to end up dropping the price on
00:15:53
this thing after the reputational damage
00:15:56
has already been done to it did you guys
00:15:58
learn nothing from the terrible initial
00:16:00
reception to the 7900 XT and it's not
00:16:04
like you have just reputation for days
00:16:06
to give up you have nothing to compete
00:16:08
in the highend and sure 85% of Gamers do
00:16:13
buy cards under $700 I'm sure that's
00:16:15
true but without a high-end card at all
00:16:18
you're giving up precious mind share I
00:16:20
mean we didn't even bother to compare
00:16:23
the 9000 Series against nvidia's last
00:16:25
gen Flagship the 490 let alone their new
00:16:28
flagship
00:16:29
and yes 16 gigs of vram at 550 bucks is
00:16:32
nice but it's a bummer that the cheapest
00:16:35
way to get more vram in your lineup is
00:16:37
still a last generation 7900 XT if you
00:16:41
have no plans to compete in the high-end
00:16:44
we need you guys dominating the
00:16:46
mid-range and Enthusiast segments
00:16:48
especially because your non-gaming
00:16:50
performance still kind of lacking
00:16:53
another thing that we need to
00:16:54
acknowledge in our longer conclusion is
00:16:56
the PlayStation shaped elephant in the
00:16:58
room as impressive as these cars are
00:17:00
there is still a strong argument to be
00:17:02
made that PC gaming has just plain
00:17:05
gotten too expensive when you can pick
00:17:07
up an all-in-one gaming box that will
00:17:09
already run at 4K for less than the MSRP
00:17:12
of a 9070 and even lesser if you buy it
00:17:16
secondhand sure you'll pay more for
00:17:18
games and online services in the long
00:17:20
run but boy is it ever a reasonable
00:17:22
upfront cost but hey maybe The Best Is
00:17:25
Yet To Come on the discret GPU side AMD
00:17:28
has announced that 9060 cards will be
00:17:30
coming in Q2 and those could provide
00:17:32
even better value assuming of course
00:17:34
that AMD doesn't launch them at a high
00:17:36
price in order to maximize margin for
00:17:38
those ones which grosses me out just
00:17:40
thinking about it what I'm not grossed
00:17:42
out by is ending this video saying that
00:17:44
this is truly probably the best GPU
00:17:47
launch of the Year and safe for Intel's
00:17:49
b580 perhaps the best launch of the past
00:17:52
several years if they can keep it in
00:17:55
stock but as per usual for you the
00:17:57
consumer there is no no single right
00:17:59
answer just what's right for you so
00:18:02
whether you want to go with these new
00:18:03
cards or pay extra for team green or go
00:18:05
for a console all the power to you and
00:18:08
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00:18:48
for free on PC consoles and mobile over
00:18:50
70 million players are on the
00:18:52
battlefield waiting for you that's way
00:18:54
more friends than you will meet at a
00:18:55
coffee shop thanks for watching guys we
00:18:57
are pretty tired doing back to back to
00:18:59
back to back GPU launches uh massive
00:19:02
shout out to you for watching and of
00:19:04
course to our Labs team our editors our
00:19:06
camera team our writers everyone for
00:19:08
being part of it I think there's a
00:19:10
little time to breathe wait 9060 in Q2
00:19:12
okay okay no I oh 5060 I guess it's
00:19:15
coming well whatever if you like this
00:19:16
video check
00:19:18
out I don't know 5080 review
