Before the release of its RDNA 4 generation, AMD alluded that it wouldn’t really be competing with Nvidia on the high end of the spectrum and producing the best graphics cards. That came to fruition with the release of the RX 9070 XT, the flagship of the generation, achieving a notable feat with impressive performance at a great value, although not on the level of the RTX 5090.

As we found in our RX 9070 XT review, the last-minute drop in price made the card an instant success. With 4K performance at stable framerates, it could beat out the RTX 5070 and challenge the 80 series, especially as it’s $50 more than the 5070 but $400 less than the 5080.

But it could be that AMD has realized its own potential, with a lack of stock or high pricing for Nvidia, there is, in fact, a gap in the market it could fill. Now, there has been a rumor on what could be that top-end card, with the RX 9080 XT engineering sample leak, bringing 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM for some impressive speeds.

Why AMD could do with this flagship

A video from Moore’s Law is Dead details what the 9080 XT might bring about. Along with its higher VRAM capacity and speed, it also offers high clock rates capable of reaching 4 GHz. That does come with a rather impressive 450W total board power, rivaling the 4090, yet still not as high as the 5090.

With that higher spec, it could have a performance of 15-40% higher than the 9070 XT, jumping beyond the RTX 5080. Crucially, it wouldn’t reach the 5090, but that is unsurprising considering Nvidia’s prowess and the ability of its architecture to do what it does. Yet it could still compete and be a valid and great value choice for 4K gaming.

That is, if it can provide cards for a competitive price, in stock over Nvidia. The RTX 5090 already has an extremely high price point, but its stock is currently low, and the pricing is even higher than its MSRP in the U.S (some European retailers are dropping below at least). Anyway, the next one down, the RTX 5080, has a similar issue of being overpriced and still not as available or great value for money.

So AMD’s RX 9080 XT could fill that gap. Although the RX 9070 XT now follows a similar trajectory, the 9080 XT could be the gaming choice at the price, providing the 5090 VRAM count for less, making it the preferred choice for gaming over the GeForce lineup, like the RX 9000 series currently does.

It’s the sort of tactic AMD has to keep doing, undercutting the competition to make it a much more plausible choice for anyone’s builds. As it has also progressed in other workloads and ray tracing performances, the drawbacks of Radeon have slowly decreased as well. Even still, RX 9000 series cards are yet to make an impact on the Steam hardware survey.

Nvidia has also been experiencing issues with its GeForce products, apart from the pricing that has upset gamers, its drivers have been faltering with GPU releases. This gives AMD or even Intel the advantage of just getting their cards right on release; the RX 9080 XT could be that top choice.

RX 9080 XT Engineering Sample leak video

About the Author

Sebastian Kozlowski

With a fascination for technology and games, Seb is a tech writer with a focus on hardware and deals. He is also the primary tester and reviewer at BGFG and PCGuide.