I bought an RX 7900 XTX for $500, and so far it is performing well while staying cool and quiet. I mostly play at 1440p. The RTX 5070 was available to me for around $620 at the time, but its price has since increased. Given the performance, features, power use, and longevity of both cards, did I make the better choice with the 7900 XTX?
4 Answers
That price is far below what a 7900 XTX often costs, so you got a great bargain. It is closer to a higher-tier modern card in performance than to a standard 5070. Since yours is already running cool and quiet, the usual power and noise drawbacks do not seem to be a problem in your system.
For $500, the 7900 XTX is an exceptional deal. It is generally much faster than the RTX 5070 in traditional rasterized games and should provide excellent 1440p performance for years. At that price, there is really no reason to regret the purchase.
The main trade-offs are that the XTX uses more power and is weaker in ray tracing. Nvidia also has advantages with features such as DLSS, so the 5070 could make more sense if you mainly play ray-traced games or specifically want those features. For ordinary 1440p gaming, though, the XTX offers considerably more raw performance for less money.
Even in games where ray tracing is important, upscaling support can make the XTX perfectly usable, depending on the title. Unless you need Nvidia-specific software, AI, or rendering features, the 7900 XTX is the stronger value here.
The 5070 still has the advantage if your priority is heavy ray tracing and DLSS image quality, but that is a preference rather than a reason to call the XTX a bad purchase.