AMD’s Radeon RX 8900 XT engineering samples have been spotted outperforming the RTX 4090 in ray tracing benchmarks. The card utilizes the new RDNA4 architecture, featuring 96 compute units and 32GB of GDDR7 memory. Leaked slides from an internal presentation highlight a focus on real-time ray tracing and AI-accelerated workloads.
In 3DMark Port Royal, the RX 8900 XT achieves a score 12% higher than the RTX 4090. Power efficiency is also improved, with the card drawing 420W under full load. Game benchmarks in Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 show frame rates exceeding 120fps at 4K with ray tracing enabled.
This performance leap suggests AMD is closing the gap in ray tracing, traditionally NVIDIA’s stronghold. The RX 8900 XT’s efficiency gains may appeal to users concerned about power consumption. NVIDIA’s response with the RTX 5090 series will likely determine the next round of competition.