Radeon RX 9070 XT in FurMark stress test: Cooler than expected, but what’s really behind it?

It’s no secret that synthetic benchmarks should always be viewed with a pinch of skepticism. Nevertheless, they provide an initial indication of where the journey is heading. In this case, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT shows an astonishing cooling performance, which in combination with an RTX-4080-like performance makes you sit up and take notice.

FurMark: Not a real game benchmark, but thermally revealing

The user gaav87 has published his measurement results on the AnandTech forums. The RX 9070 XT achieved a full 20,732 points (345 FPS) in FurMark at 1080p with MSAA disabled. For comparison: A GeForce RTX 4080 with a similar test environment achieves 20,702 points (344 FPS). The difference is therefore minimal, but the real sticking point lies elsewhere – namely in the temperatures. While Nvidia cards can easily crack the 80-degree mark under FurMark, the RX 9070 XT bobs along at just 55 °C – and that’s after ten minutes of maximum load. A surprising difference that cannot simply be explained by better cooling.

Efficient architecture or just a test lab fridge?

Now you might ask yourself: Is RDNA 4 really that efficient or was the card simply tested in a freezing cold environment? Gaav87 used a GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC 16G, i.e. a factory-overclocked custom version with a presumably generous cooling design. However, even with high-quality cooling, such a low temperature is unusual. One possible reason for this could be the use of Linux Mesa 25.0 drivers. The new Mesa version brings official RDNA-4 support for the first time, which apparently has a positive effect on efficiency. The question remains: What about DirectX or ray tracing workloads under Windows?

Superposition: More performance, but without direct comparison

Another indication is provided by the Superposition benchmark at 1080p Extreme preset. Here, the RX 9070 XT achieves 14,534 points, while the older RX 6900 XT only achieves 9,408 points. A considerable leap, but without direct RTX 4080 values under the same Linux drivers, the whole thing remains a snapshot without clear comparability.

Conclusion: Good sign, but still unanswered questions

The RX 9070 XT proves to be a serious competitor to the RTX 4080 in synthetic tests – at least on paper. The efficiency values are promising, the low temperatures almost too good to be true. Whether AMD has really created an optimized architecture here or whether certain measurement conditions distort the picture remains to be seen. The decisive test will come in real gaming scenarios under Windows – and above all with active ray tracing. Until then, the RX 9070 XT remains a potentially cool beast with a small question mark.

Source: AnandTech