Radeon RX 9070 XT surprises in Vulkan and DX12 tests. AMD outperforms GeForce RTX 5080 in rendering

Although the GeForce RTX 5080 remains the frontrunner in most modern games, the new Radeon RX 9070 XT has unexpectedly shown impressive results in rendering-related workloads. According to fresh benchmarks, the RDNA 4-based AMD graphics card beats its NVIDIA rival by more than double in certain DirectX 12 scenarios.

An X user under the handle @opinali published benchmarks where the RX 9070 XT outperforms the RTX 5080 in Vulkan and DX12 tests. The key factor was VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix — an analogue of Cooperative Vectors from Microsoft, which AMD has been implementing since the RDNA 3 era.

Even without DXR 1.2 support (such drivers have not yet been released), the RX 9070 XT in DP4A mode showed:

  • a 10% gain in Vulkan;
  • and +110% in DirectX 12.

It is important to consider that NVIDIA drivers with Cooperative Vectors support for the Blackwell architecture are not yet finalized, so RTX 5080 performance may be understated. AMD, however, has already established full software and hardware support for rendering workloads.

Also in focus is Neural Text Compression technology, which allows reducing VRAM usage by up to 90% in visualization tasks. NVIDIA offers it as part of RTXNTC, but it is not yet used in games. AMD, on the other hand, is banking on its own developments, and in the professional space, this is already yielding results.

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Cover author: Wccftech. Cover source: Wccftech