RX 9070-XT

If you are considering an AMD 9000 series GPU because you have been influenced by Reddit, Twitter or a wealthy tech YouTuber, it’s worth understanding AMD’s track record. While their GPUs are often great at beating cherry-picked benchmarks, they normally fall short in real-world gaming performance. Every year, an army of influencers target first-time buyers declaring AMD a godsend for PC gamers. Every year a small percentage of users get duped. Since almost all PC gamers use Steam, the February 2025 Steam statistics are relevant: AMD’s combined market share for discrete 5000/6000/7000 series GPUs is 3%. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s 4060 alone has 9% market share. This reality starkly contrasts with influencer hype. The reason is simple: influencers rarely play games and gamers rarely buy AMD GPUs. Experienced gamers know all too well that high average fps are worthless when they are accompanied with stutters, random crashes, black screens, excessive noise and a limited feature set. It’s notable that AMD’s GPUs have not historically had these problems in consoles because, unlike PCs, consoles operate in a closed environment which is less dependent on robust drivers. Using influencers for hardware performance data is less effective than using foxes to babysit chickens. ^{[Mar '25 GPUPro]}