AMD RX 9070 Performance Leads in Adobe Photoshop
The contest between the AMD RX 9070 and the NVIDIA RTX 5090 shows that the Budget King performs better than the flagship model. You should reconsider your belief that achieving maximum professional app performance requires spending thousands of dollars on an NVIDIA flagship product. The new AMD Radeon RX 9070 outperformed the more expensive GeForce RTX 5090 in professional testing according to Tech Notice which usually reveals NVIDIA as the market leader.
The Performance of Photoshop Shows an Unexpected Champion. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 achieved first place in the Adobe Photoshop standard benchmark test by outperforming the RTX 5090 by about 8 percent. The most powerful NVIDIA consumer card did not attain a top five rank but instead finished eighth among all evaluated GPUs.
The 8 percent difference between two measurements appears small but the actual price difference between two products creates a significant impact. NVIDIA's premium price tag results in a slower experience for most standard creative tasks according to this evidence. The total performance spread between all modern cards tested was only about 15 percent which proved that optimization frequently outperforms raw power.
The performance behavior of Adobe Lightroom Classic requires different operational methods. The software performance depends on the specific usage conditions among users. The standard RAW processing results show that AMD maintains its lead through the RX 9070 which provides an 11 percent performance boost against NVIDIA.
NVIDIA counters through its advanced AI optimized hardware and dedicated drivers which enable superior performance for their all products that use Generative Fill and advanced AI masking tools. AMD continues to outperform NVIDIA in VRAM availability which allows the company to maintain its market lead across different product categories. The following requirements define what you must have to achieve professional workflow efficiency
- 8GB The bare minimum for basic photo editing.
- 16GB or More Necessary if you are working on 4K monitors, high resolution 100 megapixel images, or massive 8K panoramas. AMD provides customers with lower priced options which include higher VRAM amounts so they acquire an invisible benefit because creators must pay NVIDIA Tax to obtain high memory capacity.
The Reality Check It’s Not All About the GPU The photo editing process requires you to understand one critical fact which states that GPU performance does not limit your speed. The RX 9070 delivers impressive results but you will experience greater performance decreases from your processor and RAM than from your graphics card.
Photographers who want maximum value in 2025 should choose the AMD Radeon RX 9070 which delivers professional flagship performance at a lower cost than flagship products.
