NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs AMD Radeon RX 9070
Side-by-side benchmark comparison, specs, pricing, and value analysis.
Benchmark Comparison
Gaming figures are average frames per second, measured by Tom's Hardware GPU hierarchy. Geometric mean of 15 games, ultra settings, no upscaling. Ray tracing figures are DXR-enabled at 1440p. A dash means the card was not tested at that resolution. Productivity and Steel Nomad are synthetic scores on their own scales and are not comparable to the fps columns.
Specifications
| Spec | GeForce RTX 4090 | Radeon RX 9070 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 24GB GDDR6X | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 1008 GB/s | 640 GB/s |
| Shaders | 16384 | 3584 |
| Boost Clock | 2520 MHz | 2520 MHz |
| TDP | 450W | 220W |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | RDNA 4.0 |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | 9,236 | 6,282 |
| Best Price | $1,599 | $549 |
| Value Score | 27/100 | 74/100 |
Verdict
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is faster but costs more. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 offers better value for money. Your choice depends on budget vs. performance priority.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs AMD Radeon RX 9070: Which Should You Buy?
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is 20% faster at 1440p ultra (146.1 fps against 122 fps). That is roughly one settings notch — enough to matter if you are chasing a specific refresh rate, not enough to rescue a bad price.
You pay a 191% premium for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ($1,599 against $549) to get 20% more frames. The extra frames do not keep up with the extra cost — the AMD Radeon RX 9070 is the better value here.
Two things beyond raw speed: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 carries 24GB against 16GB — the deciding factor at 1440p and above with ray tracing or texture packs, and the reason 16GB cards age badly; and the AMD Radeon RX 9070 draws 230W less (220W versus 450W), which can mean a smaller PSU and a quieter case; and the AMD Radeon RX 9070 is 3 years newer (2025 versus 2022), so it gets longer driver support and newer upscaling and frame generation features.