I'm buying a new gaming PC and was originally considering an RTX 5070 for around $1,000 AUD. My concern is that it only has 12GB of VRAM, while the RTX 5070 Ti offers 16GB but costs roughly $600 more, which is difficult to justify. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is also available for about $1,000 AUD and includes 16GB of VRAM. I mainly play games, with only occasional basic work, so I'm not concerned about professional rendering or heavy productivity workloads. I would like good ray-tracing performance, although I'm not very familiar with how path tracing differs or how these cards compare. Which GPU would make the most sense for my use case?
4 Answers
For mostly gaming, the RX 9070 XT looks like the stronger value at this price. It generally performs much closer to an RTX 5070 Ti than an RTX 5070, offers 16GB of VRAM, and is usually substantially faster in standard rasterized games. Its ray tracing performance has improved a lot compared with older Radeon generations and is often competitive with the 5070 Ti, although Nvidia still has a clearer advantage in the heaviest ray-tracing and path-tracing games.
The decision mostly depends on what you do besides gaming. Nvidia remains preferable for CUDA-based applications, certain video and rendering workloads, and the best path-tracing support. Since your extra work is basic and gaming is the priority, those advantages probably don’t justify paying $600 more for the 5070 Ti. I’d only pick the Nvidia option if you know you’ll regularly use those specific features.
The RX 9070 XT is a good match for 1440p, including ultrawide resolutions, and it can handle many demanding ray-traced games well. Just don’t buy it expecting Nvidia-level performance in every path-traced title. If you want maximum feature support rather than the most gaming performance per dollar, the RTX 5070 Ti is the safer choice—but at the prices listed, the Radeon is much easier to recommend.
At the same price, I would choose the 9070 XT over the RTX 5070. Reviews commonly show a sizeable performance advantage at both 1440p and 4K, including in some ray-traced titles, while the extra VRAM gives it more breathing room for future games. The RTX 5070 is still a capable card, but its price and 12GB memory make it less attractive next to the 9070 XT.
The main caveat is that path tracing is a different category. If you specifically want the best experience in games built around path tracing, Nvidia’s hardware, upscaling, and frame-generation features are still ahead. For ordinary gaming and occasional ray tracing, though, the 9070 XT should be the better buy.