Video Cards

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 Video Cards

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AMD announced the Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 video cards featuring their new RDNA 4 architecture.  These cards are aimed at the market of the 4070 Ti Super and the 4070 Ti/4070.  These could be the best value gaming cards depending on how AMD prices them. Anything that puts price pressure on Nvidia’s cards is a good thing so we’re hoping that AMD does the right thing here.

But even if AMD doesn’t offer a very competitive price, early indications suggests that their 9070 XT beats NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 SUPER In TimeSpy Extreme.  That is impressive if true.

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Nvidia RTX 5000 Series

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The Nvidia RTX 5000 series has been announced.  We are disappointed by the lack of VRAM upgrades in several of the models.  However, we are not surprised as Nvidia has a good hold on the market and can get away with a lot.  We really want to see some more affordable models with 24gb of RAM.  Instead, we get only 16gb of RAM unless you go up to the $1,999 32GB of RAM flagship RTX 5090 video card.

The following table summarizes our current knowledge:

Model Cuda Ram Memory Speed Bus Power
RTX 5090 21,760 32GB 28Gbps 512-bit 600W
RTX 5070 Ti 8,960 16GB 28Gbps 256-bit 285W
RTX 5070 6,400 12GB 28Gbps 192-bit 250W
RTX 5060 Ti TBC 16GB 28Gbps ? 200W
RTX 5060 TBC 8GB 28Gbps ? ?
RTX 5080 10,752 16GB 30Gbps 256-bit 400W

 

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Nvidia RTX 5000 Blackwell Series

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Rumors seem to be indicating that we might see the Nvidia RTX 5000 Blackwell cards in 2024.  We certainly hope this is true.  Not much is known about these cards yet although we are seeing several sources say there could be a 40% generational improvement which would be quite significant.

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AMD Navi 44 and 48 Video Card Information Leaks (RDNA 4)

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Finally some reliable information has come out about AMD’s next generation of video cards.

What we’ve learned:

  • Monolithic dies via TSMC 4NP (all this really means is that they got slightly better dies than NVIDIA has right now)
  • We’re seeing boosting of between 3.0-3.3 GHz
  • FP8 and matrix hardware now present
  • RDNA 4 will be ready for Q4 of 2024, however the marketing team will decide when these will ultimately launch (possibly 2025)
  • Navi 41 and 42 to have GDDR7 memory

We’re always happy to see anyone compete against NVIDIA as they’re the kind of company that needs competition to keep them from bad behavior.

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The New Nvidia RTX 3050 Sub-$200 Graphics Card

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It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a video card from Nvidia for lower than $200.  But this is not an exciting card considering its specifications:

  • 2,048 or 2,304 Cuda cores (the previous 3050 had 2,560 Cuda cores)
  • 6GB of GDDR6 ram (the previous 3050 had 8gb)
  • 96-bit memory busy width (the previous 3050 has 128-bit)
  • Boost clock of 1,470 MHz (the previous 3050 has 1,777 MHz)
  • TGP of 70W (versus 130W of the previous 3050)
  • Approximate price of $179

However, it’s good to have options at this market segment.  This is probably okay as a budget 1080p card that will let you play games at medium settings.  It will definitely be an improvement over any integrated graphics.  But would would recommend you save up a bit more and get something that will last you for a longer period of time.  This is, after all, based on 3.5 year old architecture.

One interesting situation to consider is, do you buy a Ryzen 8700G or a cheap processor and a new Nvidia RTX 3050?  Trick question.  Wait for the 8700G to drop in price.

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