PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 Hellhound Review

Introduction

PowerColor’s Radeon RX 9070 Hellhound is the brand’s custom-design take on AMD’s latest performance-segment graphics card. Launching at $550, the RX 9070 is positioned as a value-focused alternative to the higher-tier RX 9070 XT. However, with only a narrow $50 price gap between the two, premium custom designs like the Hellhound must justify their place in the market. Designed for high-performance 1440p gaming, including ray tracing, the RX 9070 debuts alongside NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5070 at the same $550 MSRP.

The Radeon RX 9070 Series is built on AMD’s cutting-edge RDNA 4 graphics architecture, delivering significant improvements in performance per compute unit (CU), ray tracing, and AI acceleration. These advancements make the RX 9070 XT and non-XT more competitive in modern gaming. Enhanced ray tracing performance reduces the performance cost of enabling RT effects, while improved AI acceleration brings machine learning closer to gaming applications. A prime example is FSR 4, AMD’s latest ML-based upscaler, which offers superior image quality enhancements across all performance tiers compared to previous iterations.

At the heart of the RX 9070 is the 4 nm Navi 48 silicon, which features several process-level advancements over its predecessors. Unlike NVIDIA’s Blackwell generation, which retains the same process node as Ada, AMD has upgraded Navi 48 to the TSMC N4P node, boosting both clock speeds and efficiency. Additionally, Navi 48 is a monolithic chip, eliminating the chiplet-based approach seen in Navi 31. This means that the GPU, memory controllers, and Infinity Cache are all built on a single 4 nm die, complemented by RDNA 4’s power management and IPC optimizations.

The RX 9070 comes with 56 compute units (CUs), translating to 3,584 stream processors, 112 AI accelerators, 56 RT accelerators, and 224 TMUs. It also features 112 ROPs—an upgrade from Navi 32’s 96 ROPs. The card is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 20 Gbps across a 256-bit memory bus, providing 640 GB/s of bandwidth. What is disappointing, though, is that this is still older generation 20 Gbps GDDR6, which yields 640 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Our recent RTX 5070 testing has shown that memory size trumps bandwidth in ray tracing workloads, and AMD has given the RX 9070 a larger on-die cache than the 48 MB NVIDIA gave the RTX 5070, so things could get interesting.

The PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 Hellhound features a custom cooling solution designed to maintain optimal performance under heavy loads. Its triple-fan, dual-slot cooler utilizes a large aluminium fin-stack heatsink and precision-engineered heat pipes. Unlike some competing models which adopt the 12V-2×6 power connector, the Hellhound retains a more traditional dual 8-pin power input. PowerColor has tuned the RX 9070 Hellhound with a factory overclock, pushing its Game Clock beyond AMD’s reference 2400 MHz specification. You also get a small lighting element and a dual BIOS feature with optional “quiet” BIOS. The PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 Hellhound is priced at USD 630, which is a $80 increase over the AMD MSRP of $550.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RTX 3080	$420	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 4070	$490	5888	64	1920 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7800 XT	$440	3840	96	2124 MHz	2430 MHz	2425 MHz	Navi 32	28100M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6900 XT	$450	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6950 XT	$630	5120	128	2100 MHz	2310 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$900	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 4070 Super	$590	7168	80	1980 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7900 GRE	$530	5120	160	1880 MHz	2245 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 4070 Ti	$700	7680	80	2310 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RTX 5070	$550	6144	80	2325 MHz	2512 MHz	1750 MHz	GB205	31100M	12 GB, GDDR7, 192-bit
RTX 4070 Ti Super	$750	8448	112	2340 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 7900 XT	$620	5376	192	2000 MHz	2400 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	20 GB, GDDR6, 320-bit
RX 9070	$550	3584	128	2070 MHz	2520 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
PowerColor RX 9070 Hellhound	$620	3584	128	2120 MHz	2590 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 9070 XT	$600	4096	128	2400 MHz	2970 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090 Ti	$1000	10752	112	1560 MHz	1950 MHz	1313 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 5070 Ti	$750	8960	96	2295 MHz	2452 MHz	1750 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RX 7900 XTX	$820	6144	192	2300 MHz	2500 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	24 GB, GDDR6, 384-bit
RTX 4080	$940	9728	112	2205 MHz	2505 MHz	1400 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 4080 Super	$990	10240	112	2295 MHz	2550 MHz	1438 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 5080	$1000	10752	112	2295 MHz	2617 MHz	1875 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RTX 4090	$2400	16384	176	2235 MHz	2520 MHz	1313 MHz	AD102	76300M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 5090	$2000	21760	176	2017 MHz	2407 MHz	1750 MHz	GB202	92200M	32 GB, GDDR7, 512-bit