The launch of AMD’s new Radeon GPUs won’t be until March when we expect to see the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. The original announcement was made by David McAfee, VP & GM of Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics at AMD, and was met with immediate backlash from fans. However, since then, he has gone on to explain the reasoning behind the decision, and some people are starting to understand AMD’s side of the story.

Even still, we think it’s fair to say that some people might not be able to shake the idea that AMD is leaving the door wide open for Nvidia – as the RX 9070 series won’t be arriving until a month after the RTX 5070, the card’s expected direct rival. We’ve already seen people saying they’ll simply opt for the Nvidia GeForce card instead of waiting for RDNA 4.

AMD is optimizing the software stack “for maximum performance”

In response to a post by popular tech content creator Hardware Unboxed, McAfee praised them for its excitement for RDNA 4 (AMD’s latest GPU architecture) and explained that they are taking more time to optimize the software side of the launch. Retailers reportedly have the RX 9070 series in stock and ready to go, but this delay allows Team Red to ensure that more FSR 4 titles will be available at launch.

McAfee also admits that partners have “started building initial inventory at retailers” but we should expect “many more partner cards” available at launch. One thing we do know is that MSI won’t be a partner this time around, but the news that Nvidia may end up struggling with “extremely limited supply” at launch seems like great news for AMD when it comes to securing more sales, despite the later release time.

All in all, we remain excited about the launch of the RX 9070 series graphics cards. Now that we near the end of January, we’ll see the release of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 from Nvidia. We don’t expect AMD to have a direct competitor to these cards yet, so ensuring it has a successful launch with solid day-one support for FSR 4 (as well as plenty of stock) seems like a sensible reason to delay if it wants to take on Nvidia’s RTX 5070. One thing we definitely want to see is benchmarks – these should be what really makes or breaks the new Radeon 9000 series cards.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.