- AMD’s Frank Azor was interviewed by a Spanish YouTuber about RDNA 4
- The executive told us that the RX 9070 will be a ‘very competitive product’
- Pricing was also vaguely mentioned, and some gamers are taking that as a bad sign – but that jumps the GPU gun
AMD has given us some clues as to what price points RDNA 4 graphics cards will land at, albeit some very vague hints, thanks to one of Team Red’s executives – and a whole lot more interesting information about next-gen GPUs.
This all comes from Frank Azor, AMD’s head of consumer and gaming marketing, who has been busy this week firing some heavy flak at Intel’s Arrow Lake in the CPU world and then sharing these fresh GPU details in another interview.
This chat was with Michael Quesada, a Spanish YouTuber who has a PC gaming channel. We should note that the conversation is in Spanish, so the quotes we have here (courtesy of VideoCardz) are a translation (made with the help of Spanish tech site El Chapuza’s Informatico).
Quesada started by questioning Azor about the flimsy RDNA 4 announcement at CES 2025, which provided very scant details beyond the names and existence of the RX 9070 and 9070 XT – why was this such light information?
Azor reiterated the claim already made by AMD that there simply wasn’t time in the 45-minute CES 2025 keynote to fit in RDNA 4 and do it justice.
The marketing manager told us, “What are we announcing here? With the announcement of RDNA 2 and RDNA 3, we had dedicated events to present the architecture and performance improvements. We can’t cover that in five minutes. If we had, everyone would be mad at us for not giving the new graphics cards the attention they deserve.
“That’s why we decided to reserve the announcement of the new graphics cards for a separate event where we can give them proper focus.”
Azor also poured cold water on any idea that next-gen Radeon graphics cards could be delayed (as some theorized about why AMD kept its 9070 reveals very bare).
Everything remains on track, we’re sure, and here Azor made a very interesting statement. The translation in this case is straight from YouTube (and what I could make of it), so take this with a great deal of caution, but the AMD executive seems to admit that the other reason Team Red didn’t reveal specs and pricing for the RX 9070 is that the company wanted to look at what Nvidia announced and respond to it.
In other words, AMD needed to ensure that RDNA 4 is competitive with what Nvidia did with the RTX 5000, a theory I put forward earlier this week. (Not just me of course – it’s an obvious enough thought, really, but Azor is, the translation falters to the side and says that’s really what AMD was up to).
The most interesting part of the interview, however, is the price clues I mentioned at the beginning that surfaced later.
Azor noted, “We are going to bring a very competitive product [with RDNA 4]. Everyone will benefit from this launch. It will be worth the wait.
“Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 GRE offered aggressive pricing for their performance. The market responded well, especially in a landscape where prices are constantly rising.”
“AMD remains focused on delivering value for money. When we announce RDNA 4, we’re introducing a powerful graphics card – not a $300 card, but not a $1,000 card either.”
Analysis: Careful with that pitchfork, Eugene
There’s some refreshingly clear talk here, then, from Azor, about why AMD’s reveal was tissue-thin on details about the RX 9070 models and the lack of any pricing. It was to better pitch RDNA 4 to be competitive with what Nvidia has done with the RTX 5000 series.
The part of the interview relating to RDNA 4 awards has predictably set all the forums and social media abuzz. Does that mean AMD is thinking about a $650 price tag for the RX 9070 XT, some people ask – since that’s the average of the two mentioned low and high prices (a total of $1,300, divided by two).
Of course, it will never be as simple as that. But whatever the RX 9070 XT and its vanilla siblings end up costing, AMD will make the price-performance ratio stand up and compete with Nvidia’s RTX 5070 in the mid-range.
Simply given AMD’s chosen name change – to RX 9070 versus RTX 5070 – the prices should make sense in relation to that matchup. The MSRPs will be “very competitive”, as Azor puts it, based on the relative performance delivered by the RDNA 4 – and since we don’t know how peppy the RX 9070 XT will be yet, trying to figure out price averages doesn’t do. any sense. Neither does running down basements, looking for pitchforks and torches, muttering that a $650 Radeon flagship is a rip-off based on previous Navi 48 performance rumors.
Let’s not deal with that kind of nonsense. The most important point to focus on here is not the dollar amounts Azor chose to mention – and of course management used such a huge spread to make them somewhat meaningless – but what he said about the RX 9070 GPUs being very competitive with Nvidia. And that these next-gen offerings will match the RX 7900 GRE for price/performance, this is the other key point to touch on. It’s an excellent value graphics card and one that actually remains at the top of our list of best GPUs, where it’s been for some time.
AMD could well wait to test the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti itself before the final prices for RDNA 4 here. If I had to name a most likely price point, the recently circulated rumor of $479, or around the $500 mark, seems more likely than anything higher than the RTX 5070’s MSRP ($549). But again, whatever it turns out to be, the price has to be seen through the lens of the card’s performance.
Stay tuned for the incoming full RX 9070 launch event so we can finally find out where price and performance will shake out. The rumor mill believes an announcement is likely in just a few weeks (RDNA 4 pre-orders could start on January 23 based on a retailer leak). If true, it means that the RX 9070 variants could go on sale in late January, ahead of the RTX 5070 models, which won’t be released until February.
