The competition between AMD and Nvidia is finally heating up

By Monica J. White Published February 14, 2025

Nvidia opened this year with two of the best graphics cards, but AMD largely stayed silent. Now, for the first time in 2025, the competition will start heating up. Yesterday, Nvidia announced the release date for its next GPU, the RTX 5070 Ti. AMD immediately struck back with an important announcement about the RX 9070 XT. Here’s what we know.

Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti is right around the corner, and it marks yet another win for leakers who predicted the release date correctly. Set to arrive on February 20, the GPU will start at $749, but realistically, finding one at MSRP (recommended list price) might be tough. Prices aside, the RTX 5070 Ti will feature 8,960 CUDA cores, a boost clock of up to 2.45GHz, and 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM across a 256-bit memory bus alongside a 300-watt TGP.

GeForce RTX 5070 Ti availability starts February 20th at 6AM PT from our add-in-card partners and system integrators. pic.twitter.com/T2LzKfEjHz

— NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) February 13, 2025

It’s a step down from the RTX 5080, but not too major, considering that both cards sport 16GB of video memory — a much-needed asset in today’s gaming scene. However, compared to the RTX 5080, the RTX 5070 Ti will use slower memory modules, bringing the memory speed down from 30Gbps to 28Gbps. The same is true for the rest of the RTX 50-series lineup as we know it; the RTX 5080 is the only card to get faster memory for now.

One interesting tidbit is that the RTX 5070 Ti will not appear in Nvidia’s own Founders Edition model. It’ll only be available from Nvidia’s add-in board (AIB) partners, so expect to see a wide range of prices depending on things like clock speeds and extra cooling.

AMD didn’t let Nvidia bask in the glory of its upcoming GPU for too long. David McAfee, AMD’s vice president and general manager of the Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics division, took to X (Twitter) to post an update about the RX 9000 series. The good news: We know when we’ll learn more. The bad news? We don’t know anything beyond that.

“The wait is almost over,” said McAfee in the post, inviting everyone to join AMD on YouTube on February 28 at 8 a.m. Eastern time. Although he didn’t clarify which RX 9000 series GPU would be announced, he specified that the cards would hit the shelves in early March, which falls in line with what we expected based on leaks.

In all likelihood, we’ll see the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9070. I don’t expect the RX 9060 XT to make an appearance just yet. So far, AMD seems to be taking cues from Nvidia, so it’s possible that the midrange cards will arrive in April, which is when the RTX 5060 is now said to be launching.

Announcing the GPU a week after Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti could be a strategic move on AMD’s part. It’ll give Team Red a little time for any final price adjustments based on the way the RTX 5070 Ti is received. If reviewers love it, AMD may need to price its own offering more competitively in order to stand out. We’ll find out more within the next couple of weeks.