The competition between AMD and Nvidia is finally heating up

By Monica J. White Published February 14, 2025

Two RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics cards sitting next to each other. — Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

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 almost here

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.

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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 strikes back

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.

Monica J. White

Computing Writer

Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…

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Computing

Nvidia may finally let gamers buy some GPUs at a reasonable price

Nvidia's getting ready to expand its list of the best graphics cards soon, and thanks to leakers, we now have a rumored date for when these new GPUs might hit the shelves. The date is not the part that excites me the most, though. According to the leak, Nvidia will require that its add-in channel (AIC) partners will have to offer at least one model at the recommended list price (MSRP) -- something we desperately need right now. But how long will it last?

The scoop comes from HKEPC, a Hong Kong-based publication. According to HKEPC, Nvidia revealed the release dates for the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, and the RTX 5060 (which will likely come with 8GB VRAM, although some sources say 12GB). Keep in mind that the following is still a rumor until Nvidia itself confirms otherwise, which, by the sound of it, won't happen for a while.

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The RTX 50-series is the worst GPU launch in recent memory

The RTX 5090 sitting on a pink background.

Nvidia has had some less-than-stellar graphics card launches over the years. Its RTX 2000-series was poorly received, with little interest in the flagship features of the time, and the RTX 40-series hardly blew us away. But the RTX 50-series has been something else entirely. It's the worst GPU launch I can remember in a long time.

If you've been following along, the latest is that the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti are delayed again. But that's just one more straw on the camel's funeral pyre for this catastrophic GPU generation.
In the beginning, there was overhype
It all started off strong for the RTX 50 series. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at CES 2025 and made some truly grandiose claims which had everyone excited. The RTX 5090 was going to double performance of the RTX 4090. The RTX 5070 was going to offer 4090-level performance at $549. Multi frame generation was going to give Nvidia such a lead, that AMD's cards would look ridiculous in comparison.

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AMD GPUs are supposed to be plentiful, but good luck finding one

Various AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

It's clear that AMD hit the jackpot with its recent RX 9070 XT and non-XT GPUs. The pair quickly climbed up every list of the best graphics cards, and perhaps more importantly, received a warm welcome from the GPU market at large (and thus sold out immediately). A new leak tells us that AMD is shipping lots of GPUs to try to keep up with the demand -- and yet they're still not in stock.

The information comes from Moore's Law Is Dead on YouTube, who claims to have spoken to a major online retailer about RDNA 4 stock levels. Both Nvidia and AMD have been in a pretty dire place since the release of their latest graphics cards, with many people referring to the RTX 50-series as a "paper launch." The cards just sell out too quickly and too many people are left trying to find one.