energy efficient mid-range video card

In 2025, the graphics card market is going through a real turning point. AMD has introduced a new mid-range graphics card that is in direct competition with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070. In this editorial review, we take a closer look at the GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC’s specifications, performance in real-world games, energy efficiency, and other aspects to see if it’s worth the money compared to its competitors and AMD’s older model.

Specifications of GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC

Test bench

The GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC graphics card was tested on a test bench with the following components:

• Motherboard MSI MEG Z890 ACE;
• Processor Intel Core Ultra 9 285K;
• Cooling MSI MAG CORELIQUID I360;
• Drive Samsung SSD 980 1TB; 
• RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 CK 2x24Gb Royal;
• Power supply MSI MPG A1000G PCIE5 1000W;
• Body MSI MPG GUNGNIR 300R AIRFLOW.

Package, appearance and cooling of the GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC

GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC comes in a minimalist package: the card itself and the manual. AMD has abandoned the RX 9070 reference design this time, leaving the development to its partners. Although some people managed to buy single OEM versions.

The appearance of the card is quite commensurate with its class. It is complemented by RGB backlighting with the GIGABYTE logo on the side panel. The card is somewhat unusually decorated with an additional texture that resembles spray paint. As it turned out, this «is not a bug, but a feature».

The user has the choice of turning on the logo backlight or leaving the light diffused thanks to a movable plastic cover. The reinforced metal back plate features the GIGABYTE GAMING and AMD Radeon logos, as well as a ventilation cutout for better heat dissipation.

The cooling system is based on three Hawk Fans, whose design vaguely resembles the wings of an eagle. They provide good cooling with minimal noise even under load. Inside, a server thermal conductive gel is used instead of traditional thermal pads, which improves contact with memory chips and MOSFETs. A large copper plate is in direct contact with the GPU, and composite heat pipes transfer heat to the heatsink.

Additional details such as the DUAL BIOS switch have already become a mandatory attribute in most new models. The card is powered by two classic 8-pin power connectors with connection indicators, which gives hope for more adequate cable management compared to older XT models.

Performance and architecture

The Radeon RX 9070 is based on AMD’s new RDNA 4 architecture, which returns to a monolithic design after experimenting with chipsets in RDNA 3. This step may seem like a regression, but it has allowed AMD to optimize performance and reduce latency, which is especially noticeable compared to previous generations. The card is equipped with 56 Compute Units and 3584 shadersEach compute unit includes one third-generation Ray Accelerator and two second-generation AI Accelerators, for a total of 56 and 112 units, respectively. Improvements in Ray Accelerators allow the RX 9070 to compete in ray-tracing games for the first time for AMD, and AI accelerators support FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4 — artificial intelligence scaling technology, which was a real breakthrough for the company.The third generation ray tracing accelerators are the most impressive. Thanks to «Oriented Bounding Boxes» technology and a second intersection compute core, ray tracing performance is up over 30% compared to RDNA 3. In games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2, the RX 9070 delivers results that outperform even the previous generation flagship — Radeon RX 7900 XTX.The card features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit bus, which provides 640 GB/s of bandwidth. Although NVIDIA has already switched to GDDR7 in its new cards, AMD has decided to stay with GDDR6, which helps keep the price at an affordable level. The base Boost Clock frequency is 2520 MHz, but in the GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC model it is increased to 2700 MHz, which provides a performance boost of about 4-5%. The manufacturer recommends using a 750W power supply, although tests show peak system consumption of up to 360W, so you can get by with a 600W PSU, as long as you have enough 8-pin connections.The connection interface here is PCI Express Gen 5, and two DisplayPort 2.1a and two HDMI 2.1b ports are available for image output. It’s very pleasing that, unlike NVIDIA graphics cards, the golden mean in terms of the variety of ports has been maintained. The card’s dimensions are 288 x 132 x 50 mm, which makes it a three-slot solution.The second-generation AI accelerators support FP8, doubling the performance of FP16 and being four times faster in INT8 compared to RDNA 3. This enables FSR 4, which significantly improves image quality compared to FSR 3, although it is inferior to NVIDIA DLSS 4 in detail and adaptation. The updated media engine supports H.264, HEVC, and AV1 encoding and decoding, making the card attractive to streamers and content creators.

In version 4.4.0, Blender finally learned how to work with GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC. But the result is disappointing — 2641 points. For example, the NVIDIA RTX 4060 scores 3150 points at more than half the price.

In the Geekbench 6 test in OpenCL mode, the video card scored 96,576 points, and in Vulkan mode — 138,909 points. It is surprising that in the second indicator it demonstrated even better results compared to the RX 9070 XT, which was reviewed last time. Generating ten images in Amuse took 135 seconds. This is almost twice as long as the XT version.

Calling on the XE-SS in quality mode, the fps increases to 46 units. However, there is a slight delay, which does not add to the comfort of the game. So I turn off ray tracing. And in this mode we can enjoy smooth gameplay in a foggy city.

You can plunge into the gloomy Middle Ages of A Plague Tale: Requiem even at 4K. However, be prepared for the fact that the ultra settings will only have 43 frames per second. This is if you don’t enable ray tracing. But no one is stopping you from lowering the settings to more moderate ones and bringing the image up to 60 FPS.

If you really want to play with tracing, then go to QuadHD, select the preset — Medium, which protects against frame rate drops and annoying rodents. In this mode, you can enjoy the game at over 60 frames per second. It is on these settings that I recommend playing this game.

У Forza Horizon 5, feel free to choose 4K settings, an epic preset, and turn on Ray Tracing. At the same time, don’t forget about FSR 2.1. In this case, the screen displayed as much as 131 FPS. But without the help of supersampling, 74 frames per second will upset ardent racing fans.

There were no problems with CS2: neither at FullHD eSports settings nor at maximum quality in 4K. Here, everyone chooses as they wish — Ultra speed or beauty at 126 FPS.

The only thing that upset me was that in the new remastered mod — Half-Life 2: RTX video card shows a very bad picture. After all, the game does not support FSR technology and replaces it with native upscalers: TAAU and NIC. Without their help, the number of frames is disappointing. You can read more about testing this mod here HERE. Therefore, one of the most important requirements for new projects is to support native supersampling technology.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at 1440p with FSR 3 in Balanced mode, the RX 9070 delivers 163 frames per second (fps), while the RTX 5070 — only 131 fps, which gives a 26% advantage. In Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset, the AMD card outperforms NVIDIA by 3%, which is a significant achievement for a game that has traditionally favored the «green» camp

As a result, the performance at 4K remains decent, but not impressive. On average, the card delivers results similar to the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, but is about 12-14% less than the RX 9070 XT.

GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC power consumption, noise and heat

The RX 9070 is rated at 220 watts, but in GIGABYTE GAMING OC tests it peaked at 249 watts, almost the same as the RTX 5070 and significantly more efficient than the RX 9070 XT (300+ watts). This makes the card one of the most efficient in its class.

The Hawk Fans cooling system from GIGABYTE keeps the temperature below 60°C on the GPU, but you need to pay attention to the Hotspot and memory temperatures. They, in turn, reached 80 and 90 degrees Celsius, but the fan speed was only 1650 rpm. Therefore, even under maximum load, the noise level remains very comfortable — the fans are quiet, which is a big plus for long gaming sessions

Experience of use

From the very beginning, I didn’t expect any surprises from the GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC, because only recently its older XT version was tested. But surprisingly, I liked the younger version better for several reasons

First and foremost, moderate power consumption and better efficiency in terms of W/FPS. Electricity prices will not get lower, and kilowatt by kilowatt, future owners RX 9070 HT will cost much more in the long run.

I did not like the classic problems of AMD with professional software and neurons. Even younger NVIDIA models of previous generations can still give RDNA 4 a run for its money. Overall, Navi 48 was a big step forward, including for ray tracing technology.

Prices and competitors

At the time of the review, the price was GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC is UAH 34,999. In the middle segment, there are many competitors of several generations.

MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12G VENTUS 2X OC in a dual-fan version can be purchased for UAH 38,364. It offers a similar level of performance in 1440p, but has the advantage of wider DLSS 4 support, better Path Tracing implementation, and a more mature RTX ecosystem. On average, the RX 9070 GAMING OC outperforms the RTX 5070 by 5-12% in rasterized scenarios, but is inferior in ray-tracing-intensive games where NVIDIA maintains its image quality lead.

Asus Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Prime 16GB is about 8-10% more expensive and offers 14% higher performance in 1440p and significantly better results in 4K. This difference is especially noticeable in ray tracing scenarios where additional processing power is required. For those who are considering a purchase in the mid-range segment, this extra cost seems justified. But in terms of energy efficiency, the RX 9070 has the edge.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER EAGLE OC 12G is another competitor in this price range. It offers an interesting balance between performance and price. The card is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, has 12 GB of GDDR6X, and delivers stable performance at 1440p with DLSS 3 support. Compared to the RX 9070 GAMING OC, it is slightly inferior in raster scenarios, but superior in ray tracing and has better power efficiency (around 200-220 watts)