I'm choosing between an RX 9070 XT for about $770 and an RTX 5070 for roughly $675 with a dual-fan cooler or $700 with a triple-fan model. These prices are from South America. My PC is mainly used for gaming. I currently play at 1080p, although I may move to 1440p later. The RX 9070 XT appears substantially faster in rasterized games and can sometimes compete with the RTX 5070 Ti, while also offering 16 GB of VRAM instead of the RTX 5070's 12 GB. However, I've only owned NVIDIA graphics cards, and they've been reliable for me. I'm concerned about whether AMD still has more driver crashes, compatibility problems, or game-specific bugs, or whether that reputation is outdated. For people who have used recent Radeon cards, especially the RX 9070 XT, how reliable have they been for everyday gaming? Is the RTX 5070's DLSS, ray tracing, path tracing, or broader feature set worth giving up the 9070 XT's extra performance and VRAM? Also, how noticeable is the real-world difference between DLSS and FSR at 1080p and 1440p?
4 Answers
The RTX 5070 is still a reasonable choice if you place a high value on DLSS, path tracing, CUDA, or NVIDIA's software ecosystem. DLSS can look cleaner in fine details and some games support it more consistently. FSR is much better than it used to be and can look very good in motion, but quality varies by game. At native 1080p, I would usually avoid upscaling unless performance requires it; at 1440p, both technologies can be useful. For your stated priorities, though, the RX 9070 XT offers more performance and VRAM for a relatively small price increase, so it would be my pick.
The old idea that AMD drivers are consistently unreliable is mostly outdated. Recent Radeon cards have generally been as trouble-free for normal gaming as NVIDIA cards, although either vendor can have a bad driver release or a game-specific bug. I would compare performance in the games you actually play and make sure your power supply, BIOS, and drivers are set up properly rather than choosing based only on historical reputation.
There can still be occasional Windows driver timeout issues on Radeon, but they are not common enough to outweigh the 9070 XT's performance and VRAM advantage here. Keeping a known-stable driver version and avoiding aggressive tuning can help.
For gaming at those prices, the RX 9070 XT is the stronger choice. It is generally around 17–23% faster than the RTX 5070 in rasterized games and has 16 GB of VRAM compared with 12 GB. That extra memory should be useful as newer games become more demanding. NVIDIA still has an advantage in path tracing, some ray-tracing workloads, and features such as CUDA, but those probably aren't worth the premium if this system is only for gaming. Modern FSR has also improved considerably, so DLSS is no longer an automatic reason to choose NVIDIA.
I have a 9070 XT and have had a very good experience at 1440p. It handles ultra settings well, including ray tracing in most games. The main exception is path tracing in games such as Cyberpunk, where upscaling is useful to bring performance back into a smooth range. I have only run into one recurring crash, and it appears to be a game-specific issue rather than a general Radeon driver problem. The card also undervolts well.
It should also be a solid option for 3440x1440 ultrawide, although demanding ray-traced and path-traced games may still require upscaling or reduced settings.
The RTX 5070's 12 GB capacity is already less comfortable in some demanding games, while the 9070 XT's 16 GB gives it more breathing room for high-resolution textures and future titles.