ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070

Sam Thwaytes

Mar 36 min read

Updated: Mar 5

ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 Ryzen 7 9800X 3D TUF Gaming GT302

Is it just me or are new graphics cards seemingly being released weekly at the moment? It’s how it feels anyway. Obviously the release of new tech is exciting, and this time it’s the turn of AMD. The Radeon division of AMD has been cooking up something special, their aim is to capture the interests of those looking for a more affordable graphics card. The MSRP look enticing enough, I'm keen to see pricing on partner cards. All of the prerelease info does look interesting, but as always we don’t deep dive into specs as there are more qualified outlets covering this. We will have a look at the surface level improvements, and do a little performance testing (once embargo lifts). What we’re more keen to do is give you guys a solid overview of the unit we have in the studio, the ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070. It's touted as a card priced around MSRP with enhanced cooling. As you may have guessed we’ll be building with it, running an airflow visualisation and doing some real-world performance testing and taking you along for the ride.

ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 Overview

Aesthetically the Prime RX 9070 feels very familiar, using the same minimalist design language as the recently released Prime RTX 5080. It’s black with thin white lines running along the top and bottom. On the side it’s emblazoned with the Radeon logo in white, with the Prime logo running around the curve in a subtle debossed gloss black. There is no RGB in sight, which given our fondness for black-out builds, is welcome.

For a 3 fan Radeon card it’s one of the smaller variants we’ve had in the studio, standing at 312 x 130 x 50mm, it should fit in some small form factor builds. The 2.5 slot design and plastic shell also make it fairly lightweight meaning it might be ok without an anti-sag support in some cases (though if you have space it’s always worth putting one in).

As for outputs the card has 1 x HDMI 2.1 and 3 x Display Port 2.1a. ASUS suggest using a minimum power supply of 650w with this card, but we’d suggest going a little higher to allow headroom.

Of course the Radeon RX 9070 comes with all of AMD’s freshly announced hardware and software magic. The headlines:

RDNA 4 which looks to give the RX 9070 a 20% uplift over the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, with the RX 9070 XT getting a bigger increase of 40%.
3rd generation raytracing accelerators designed to double the raytracing performance when compared to the previous generation.
AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution Technology 4 (FSR 4) to allow systems to render at a lower frame rate which is then upscaled allowing for better frame rates, which should be able to be used while using maximum ray tracing settings.
HYPR-RX allows gamers to increase performance with one click with the use of AMD Radeon Super Resolution, AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2.1, AMD Radeon Anti-Lag, and AMD Radeon Boost. It should result in significantly better performance and lower latency in 1000+ games (as claimed by AMD).

As it’s an AMD launch it seems fitting that we pair the Prime RX 9070 with AMD’s best gaming CPU, the Ryzen 7 9800X 3D and put it in an airflow focused build to make sure everything is running as well as possible.

Parts List

How Was The Build?

We’ve built the TUF Gaming GT 302 many times, we’ve even done a mod project in one so you could say we’re very well prepared for the project. It breaks down very easily, with each panel just pulled off.

Building the motherboard was also standard fare, everything clicked into place without issue or complaint. It’s the first time we’ve used the ASUS Prime LC 360 RGB LCD all in one but attaching it to the motherboard was simple enough - just remove the standard brackets and replace with the ones in the box.

The TUF Gaming GT302 ARGB comes with a 4 x 140mm fans preinstalled which, with the addition of a 360 radiator should deal with the cooling without a stutter. It’s always nice to see a case which comes properly loaded with capable fans. We’ve done air flow visualisations with similar configurations in this chassis in the past and they have been some of the easiest to film.

Cable management was also a breeze with 1 main cable channel in the back, backed up by an additional channel with hooks to keep everything in place and numerous anchor points. Regular readers will likely understand that I’m not a fan of using cable extensions because of the headache they can elicit when cable managing, but here there was plenty of space to make it all work.

Airflow

As I’ve already mentioned we’ve done a few airflow visualisations of the TUF Gaming GT302 in the past, each time the case performs well. What I said last time is still as true today: “The GT302 is made for airflow, with 3 x 140mm fans at the front we had no doubt that intake would be immense and with an additional 140mm on the rear and a 360mm radiator exhaust would be simply dealt with. We were right about this one, we feel the visualisation was one of the best to date!”

Performance

*Important information: While testing frame rate was measured using the FPS counter in AMD Adrenaline as they have suggested that other FPS counters may not have been updated in line with the new hardware and software capabilities of the RX 9070. As such this should give the most accurate representation when looking at generated frames. Also, it is worth mentioning our testing is real world, and as witnessed during each scenario. It is designed to be illustrative of the performance of the build as a whole.

We decided to run a bit of a Marvel theme this week, which meant going back to an old favourite, Spiderman Remastered. While doing so we decided to give the Prime RX 9070 a bit of a run without the FidelityFX Super Resolution enhancements to see what we could achieve natively. We were impressed with the results. When we added in AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2.1 the frame rate jumped up significantly and I didn't really notice any visual abnormalities.

Ambient Temp 23.0°C

Spider-Man Remastered

3840 x 2160

Preset: Very High

Ray Tracing: On

Reflection Resolution: High

Geometry Detail: High

Frame Generation: Off

95-148 FPS

47°C CPU

50°C GPU

Preset: Very High

Ray Tracing: On

Reflection Resolution: High

Geometry Detail: High

AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2.1: On

221-278 FPS

48°C CPU

50°C GPU

When testing Marvel rivals we went all out with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 enabled and graphics quality on Ultra. Again the frame rate was impressive with the GPU staying nice and cool:

Marvel Rivals

3840 x 2160

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 4: Enabled

Anti Aliasing and Super Resolution Type: AMD FSR

Super Resolution Mode: Quality

Super Resolution Sharpening: 80

V-Sync: Off

Graphics Quality: Ultra

187-220 FPS

44°C CPU

51°C GPU

Furmark 2

3840 x 2160

114 FPS average

50°C Temp

69°C Hotspot

CPU-Z

Max Temp 68.5°C

Fan Speed ~ 1550 rpm

Overall we were very happy with the build in testing, to hit such high frame rates in Spiderman Remastered at 4K without any frame generation for the price of the card was impressive. When it comes to temperatures they were nice and cool during gameplay and exactly where we would expect them to be during gameplay.

Roundup

It’s always a pleasure to get an early hands on with new hardware, playing around with the settings and seeing what can be achieved. We were very happy with the graphical performance, especially given the price. We hope AMD stick to the pricing, because if they do they could be on a to a winner here!

As for the build itself the TUF GT302 is an excellent chassis to build in, it’s got plenty of space and has been designed to be simple. It also feels difficult to put together a build that is anything other than stunning in this case! Everything went smoothly, which is not something that can often be said of tech product launches, but the drivers seem to be working well out of the gate which is good to see! Would I recommend this build? Of course I would!

Blog post written by Sam Thwaytes

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