A friend is considering upgrading from an RX 6700 XT. She has experienced crashes in several games over the years and now prefers NVIDIA because she believes the problems were caused by AMD drivers. We're looking at the RTX 5070 and possibly the 5070 Ti, but the 5070 Ti costs considerably more here. The RX 9070 XT, especially an OC model, is available around the RTX 5070's price while offering performance closer to the 5070 Ti. For anyone using a 9070 XT or other recent Radeon cards, how has driver stability been? Are random crashes still common, and do you normally update through the Radeon software or perform a clean installation with DDU?
4 Answers
My RX 9070 XT has been rock solid since launch. I play everything from indie games to demanding AAA titles at 1440p and haven’t had meaningful driver problems. Other recent Radeon cards I’ve used, including the RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 XT, have also been stable. That said, if your friend is firmly set on NVIDIA, it may be better not to pressure her—expectations can affect how every future problem gets interpreted.
I’ve had good experiences with AMD for years, from an RX 580 and Vega 56 through the RX 6700 XT and now the RX 9070 XT. In my case, the only driver-like crashing turned out to be an inadequate power supply. A clean Windows installation after changing GPUs, checking the PSU, and making sure the RAM is stable can eliminate a lot of issues that get blamed on drivers. Windows can also replace graphics drivers unexpectedly, so a clean driver reinstall with DDU is worth trying if the old system is still available.
I’d first verify that the old crashes really were driver-related. A faulty or marginal PSU, unstable memory, corrupted Windows installation, overlays, or problematic game settings can all look like GPU driver failures. Many RX 6700 XT owners report years without trouble, and newer Radeon drivers are generally fine. Updating through the Radeon software is normally sufficient; DDU is mainly useful when changing GPU brands or cleaning up a persistent problem rather than something that needs to be done for every update.
There are still occasional reports of driver timeouts or instability with particular releases, so nobody can promise a completely problem-free experience. However, many owners run recent Radeon cards for years without crashes. The RX 9070 XT is generally much closer to an RTX 5070 Ti in performance than a standard RTX 5070, which makes it a strong value if she can accept returning to AMD. If reliability and peace of mind matter more to her than price-to-performance, the RTX 5070 is still a reasonable choice and would be a major upgrade without increasing power requirements as much.
That’s helpful. Her problems may be specific to her system rather than typical 6700 XT behavior, so I’ll suggest checking the PSU, RAM, and Windows installation before assuming the GPU drivers are entirely responsible.