ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition Review – Something More Understated

Unboxing

While the ASUS Prime brand has existed for quite a whole as a budget series for its motherboards, the nameplate only recently made its debut in the GPU market. As expected, the Prime lineup – in this case, the ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition – is slotted below the TUF Gaming variant with less gamer-y looks and a more compact size to boot.

There are no extra accessories included with the Prime GPU, aside from a few documentations and a Thank You card. I wouldn’t say this GPU is particularly heavy, but you must bring your own anti-sag bracket (which is fairly common in new PC cases these days) if that’s of a concern for you.

Walkaround

We’re inclined to believe the Prime RX 9070 XT’s cooler design is highly similar to the ProArt RTX 4080 SUPER, which we previously reviewed. Both share the same counter-rotating triple-fan layout with the same 11-blade fans and blade profiles, although the shroud is slightly taller than the ProArt card. It also features rounded edges on the far side and the top side, catering to the mainstream modern-day aesthetic choices as opposed to gaming-centric cards that largely still swear by sharp edges and aggressive lines.

Since AMD GPUs didn’t mandate 12V-2×6 connectors – which we all know is a bit more problematic than it should’ve been – you get a trio of PCIe 8-pin connectors to feed the GPU all the power it needs. This GPU reports 317W of total board power (TBP), not quite as high as the 340-watt GIGABYTE AORUS model we reviewed at launch, which is plenty for these cables to handle. There’s also a BIOS mode switch present, despite it being the ‘entry-level’ model of the lineup (ASUS DUAL series still exists as the lowest-end variant, but it doesn’t apply to the RX 9070 XT).

A very standard display I/O configuration here: you get a trio of DisplayPort 2.1a outputs, along with a single HDMI 2.1b output. Both are capable of delivering high-refresh 4K, or even 8K resolutions you have a monitor (or rather, TV) that supports it.

Specifications

ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition 16GB GDDR6
(PRIME-RX9070XT-O16G)

Full specifications available on product specification page.

GPU Core & VRAM: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
GPU Core Variant	Navi 48 XT
Microarchitecture	RDNA 4
Process Node	TSMC N4P
Transistors	53.9 billion
Die size	357mm²
Compute Units (CUs)	64
ROPs / TMUs	128 / 256
Stream Processors	4096
AI Accelerators	128
RT Accelerators	64
Cache	64MB L3 (Infinity Cache)
VRAM Configuration	16GB GDDR6 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	19.5Gbps, 644.6GB/s peak
Add-in board: ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition
Fan Layout	Triple front counter-rotating axial fans (single flow-through)
Game/Boost Clocks	Default: 2460 / 3010 MHz OC Mode: 2480 / 3030 MHz
Total Board Power (TBP)	317W
Factory Recommended PSU	750W
Dual BIOS Mode	Yes (P Mode / Q Mode)
Display Outputs	3x DisplayPort 2.1a 1x HDMI 2.1b *Max output resolution: 7680×4320 (8K)
Power Connector	3x PCIe 8-pin connector
Bus Interface	PCIe 5.0 x16
Dimensions	2.5-slot, 312 x 130 x 50 mm

Test System

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux 30th Anniversary Edition Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero
GPU	> ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition
Memory	ADATA XPG CASTER DDR5-6000 CL30 (2x16GB) *configured to DDR5-6400 CL32
Storage	ADATA LEGEND 960 MAX 1TB
Power Supply	Cooler Master MWE Gold 1250 V2 Full Modular (ATX12V 2.52) 1250W
Case	VECTOR Bench Case (Open-air chassis)
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 24H2

Performance

All benchmarks are done in out-of-the-box settings under Performance Mode – for gaming benchmarks, upscaling and frame generation features such as NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, or Intel XeSS are turned off unless otherwise specified in the chart.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Let’s start with synthetic benchmarks. Given that the ASUS Prime card has less power to work with, it’s no surprise that the performance trails slightly behind the GIGABYTE card; still, ray tracing continues the trend of being one generation behind NVIDIA’s counterparts when it comes to performance, although the performance at least roughly matches the RTX 4080 SUPER, on paper.

Gaming Benchmarks

While synthetic benchmark isn’t exactly AMD’s strong suit these days, what really counts is the gaming performance – and in this regard, the ASUS Prime card performs quite competitively against both of Team Green’s high-end GPUs; though the slightly lower TBP means it loses a couple of FPS from the more powerful RX 9070 XT variant. That said, some games, like Black Myth: Wukong, has been infamously unfriendly to AMD GPUs, so your mileage may vary here.

Thermals

The ASUS Prime RX 9070 XT card has two BIOS profiles, each with fairly distinct fan behavior compared to some other GPUs we’ve tested in the past. Under P Mode, the fans spin more aggressively, stabilizing at 2,000RPM with a somewhat noticeable noise, but in return you get a well-managed GPU thermals, with hotspot staying well below 90°C. If you choose Q Mode, the fans are more conservative and settles at around 1,670RPM, though temperatures are around 6-8°C hotter overall.

Moving on to Time Spy Extreme, and we being to observe the pattern of the fan behavior in P Mode: under this profile, you can see the temperatures briefly spiking before it settles down to a sustained value. This indicates that the fan is more responsive to the thermals than it is proactive to power draw (i.e. spins up as soon as a heavy utilization is detected), although it doesn’t exhibit such behavior under Q Mode.

Software

The only software associated with the ASUS Prime RX 9070 XT is the GPU Tweak III software for overclocking and fan tuning – since it lacks any RGB lighting, you won’t need to use the Armoury Crate software at all. The GPU Tweak III software also allows you to connect the telemetry to your smartphone via a local web address, which can be done by scanning the QR code on the desktop (you must use the same connection as the PC for this to work).

Verdict

The current market price of the ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition is RM3,699 – not the cheapest, but not the priciest either. For what it’s worth, the card offers a solid set of features without the extra bling, and if you’re the function-over-form kind of person, this card is a pretty decent choice if you’re willing to commit to AMD’s GPU ecosystem.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition for this review.