I'm putting together a new gaming PC and was considering an RTX 5070 for about 1,000 AUD. My concern is that it only has 12 GB of VRAM, while upgrading to an RTX 5070 Ti with 16 GB would cost roughly 600 AUD more, which feels difficult to justify. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is also available for around 1,000 AUD and includes 16 GB of VRAM. I mainly play games, with occasional light work, and I'm not doing rendering, modeling, or other GPU-intensive productivity tasks. I'd like good ray-tracing performance, but I'm not very familiar with path tracing and would appreciate advice on how these cards compare and which offers the better value.
5 Answers
The main question is whether you need Nvidia-specific features or GPU compute support. Nvidia is usually the safer choice for CUDA-based applications, certain video-editing and rendering workloads, streaming features, and the best upscaling or frame-generation support. For gaming and basic work, though, those advantages may not justify paying 600 AUD more for the 5070 Ti.
I would avoid choosing based only on the brand. Check benchmarks for the games you actually play, then compare prices, cooler noise, power use, and the features you care about. At roughly 1,000 AUD, though, the RX 9070 XT is generally a better buy than the RTX 5070 because it offers 16 GB of VRAM and considerably higher gaming performance. The 5070 Ti is worth considering only if its Nvidia features or path-tracing performance are important to you.
The 9070 XT handles ordinary ray tracing reasonably well, but it is not the ideal choice if path tracing is a major priority. Heavy path tracing, multi-frame generation, and some upscaling features remain areas where the 5070 Ti is stronger. If you mostly play conventional rasterized games at 1440p, the Radeon is likely the better value; if you specifically want the highest-quality ray or path tracing, choose Nvidia.
For mostly gaming, the RX 9070 XT looks like the strongest value at this price. It has 16 GB of VRAM and generally performs much closer to an RTX 5070 Ti than to an RTX 5070, especially in standard rasterized games. Its ray tracing is also substantially better than previous Radeon generations and can be competitive with the 5070 Ti in many titles. Nvidia still has a clear advantage in the most demanding path-traced games, but only a relatively small number of games use path tracing heavily right now.
I’d compare the 9070 XT against the 5070 Ti rather than the regular 5070. Reviews commonly show the Radeon ahead in regular 1440p and 4K gaming, while the 5070 Ti tends to pull ahead more in ray tracing and especially path tracing. At the same price as a 5070, the 9070 XT is the more compelling gaming purchase.
That comparison makes sense. I was initially focused on the 5070 because of the price, but the 9070 XT seems to offer much more performance and VRAM for the same money.
That’s a fair distinction. The 9070 XT is not bad at regular ray tracing anymore, but the gap becomes much more noticeable in the heaviest path-traced settings.