AMD barely touched on its new RDNA 4 graphics cards during its CES 2025 keynote, not even showing the new GPUs during its presentation. Instead, details about the new graphics cards have largely been shared by AMD’s board partners. It’s a strange move, and one that left some Team Red fans worried about the new cards.
But don’t worry. The RX 9070 XT is coming soon.
How soon? Well AMD’s Frank Azor says “we’re talking about weeks” before the graphics cards show up, saying, “When we say Q1, you know, we’re not talking about March 31st.”
Before I let speculation get out of hand, I need to point out that “weeks” is still pretty broad. We could be talking about late January, early February, or even some time in March. But Azor assured me that AMD has everything ready to properly launch its next generation of graphics cards, saying that they were largely left out of the presentation due to time constraints. And in fairness to AMD, it announced a lot, from the Ryzen 9 9950X3D to the new range of Ryzen Z2 chips for handhelds.
Confirming some online speculation, Azor also said that AMD was waiting to see what Nvidia would do. We now know about the $2,000 RTX 5090, as well as three other cards from Nvidia’s RTX 50-series range, and it seems AMD wanted to see where its new GPU would fall in comparison to the green giant. That makes sense, as AMD has confirmed it’s ditching the flagship battle with Nvidia this generation in order to focus on cards in the midrange.
Still, it’s not clear where AMD’s new GPU lands. Nvidia’s performance charts don’t share a lot of detail, and most of the performance is obfuscated by Nvidia’s new DLSS 4 multi-frame generation. While noting that he has “immense respect” for Nvidia, Azor said the performance charts are essentially “worthless.” And on that point, frankly, I agree. The charts are as vague as they come, and they certainly don’t tell the full story about what PC gamers can expect out of Nvidia’s new graphics cards.
AMD has already said that there’s nothing wrong with the RDNA 4 range. Words are paper thin, but I saw both the RX 9070 XT and AMD’s much-improved FSR 4 in the flesh. If there are serious troubles with AMD’s new graphics cards, I highly doubt they’d be subjected to the horrors of the CES show floor.
