- AMD has confirmed its full RDNA 4 launch event for February 28
- These initial RX 9070 models will go on sale in early March
- That sets up the RX 9070 for a showdown against Nvidia’s RTX 5070 which hits shelves on March 5
AMD has revealed that its RDNA 4 graphics cards will get a full launch event – as opposed to the fleeting announcements made at CES 2025 – in two weeks, ahead of the March release for these GPUs.
David McAfee, who is AMD’s VP and GM of Ryzen and Radeon, let us know the date and time to mark in our calendars is February 28 at 8am EST (5am PST, 1pm UK time) via a post on X.
The wait is almost over. Join us on February 28 at 8 AM EST for the reveal of the next-gen @AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series. Get ready to make it yours when it hits shelves in early March. RSVP by subscribing to the AMD YouTube channel: https://t.co/4rkVxeoDIaFebruary 13, 2025
The AMD exec also said that the long-awaited RX 9070 models will hit shelves in early March.
When the RX 9070 XT and plain RX 9070 were announced back at CES 2025 last month, the broad expectation was that they’d arrive earlier in the first quarter, rather than later.
That hope had cold water poured over it when AMD confirmed these RDNA 4 graphics cards were delayed to March, and McAfee took to X in order to explain why. Namely to ensure that AMD’s Adrenalin graphics drivers are fully tuned and ready to go to ensure the best performance for RX 9070 GPUs out of the gate, and also to bring in more support for FSR 4 in PC games (achieving the same end, effectively).
Analysis: One final worry…
Crucially, McAfee also mentioned that another reason for putting off the release of RDNA 4 GPUs to March was to build up stock levels of the graphics cards at retail.
Now, I’m reading the release date being set at “early March” to mean the first week of next month, and that makes sense if we turn our attention to Nvidia’s plans. We just heard from AMD’s main GPU rival that its GeForce RTX 5070 is going to be on sale come March 5.
So, it looks to me very much like there’s going to be a head-to-head clash of the mid-range GPUs, more-or-less, just after March rolls around, with AMD aiming to take Nvidia on directly here.
Team Red may well be buoyed by the general shakiness of stock levels for Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs so far, and (believable enough) rumors that the RTX 5070 may not be that much different from the RTX 5080 and 5090 in this respect. After all, Nvidia did announce that the RTX 5070 models would both launch in February – the Ti version, and vanilla spin – and has then pushed back the non-Ti graphics card to March. That broken promise doesn’t feel like a good sign, stock-wise, to me.
In contrast, AMD seems more confident about relatively robust levels of supply for RDNA 4, and indeed we know that these GPUs have been at retailers since January. That’s thanks to leaked photos from those shops, and moreover, Team Red’s own confirmation that board-making partners had “started building initial inventory at retailers” back in January.
On top of that, there are some compellingly positive rumors about the potential performance levels we’ll see from RX 9070 models to boot, and sources elsewhere indicate AMD really is taking its time over this next-gen GPU launch to get it right.
The only worry that remains is pricing, and whether AMD’s apparent confidence with this mid-range showdown against Nvidia’s RTX 5070 models might mean the company pushes a bit higher with asking prices for the RX 9070 variants.
If you scan through the replies to McAfee’s post on X, that’s the consistent thread of worry throughout from the respondents who have less positive thoughts on RDNA 4. In short, the fear is that Nvidia’s stumbling Blackwell launch might mean AMD decides to charge more for RX 9070 GPUs – although having set up its stall as these being mid-range graphics cards, there’s surely a limit to how far Team Red might be able to push here, if this was a temptation?
Time will tell, and I remain hopeful that AMD won’t drive to any excesses here – this is a great opportunity to take the fight to Nvidia, after all. At the same time, I’m not anticipating a surprise with lower pricing either, as given how the market stands right now, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Still, whatever happens, we need to see exactly how RX 9070 performance pans out before we can really get a perspective on pricing, anyway.
Via VideoCardz
