I'm getting back into PC gaming and have enough budget for either an RTX 5070 or an RX 9070 XT. Both cards cost about the same where I live. I know the RX 9070 XT is faster in traditional rasterized games, but I'm concerned about giving up Nvidia features such as DLSS, ray reconstruction, frame generation, and path tracing. Since I don't plan to upgrade the GPU again until 2028, which card would be the better long-term purchase?
3 Answers
The Nvidia card mainly makes sense if you specifically want to use path tracing, DLSS, frame generation, or other RTX features in the games you play. Just remember that those features can be demanding enough that a regular RTX 5070 may need reduced settings and aggressive upscaling to maintain smooth frame rates. A feature is not much help if the underlying performance is too low.
At identical prices, I’d choose the RX 9070 XT unless your game library heavily depends on Nvidia-exclusive features or you use software that benefits from Nvidia hardware. Ray tracing is not something most people leave enabled in every game, and AMD’s ray-tracing and upscaling support is improving. The main caveat is that Radeon drivers have caused problems for some users, so check reviews for the specific games and applications you care about before buying.
The RX 9070 XT is generally the stronger buy at the same price. It offers roughly 20% or more extra raster performance and is closer to an RTX 5070 Ti than a regular RTX 5070. Its ray-tracing performance is also much better than older Radeon generations, while upscaling support has improved considerably. Unless Nvidia-specific features are your top priority, the extra performance and 16GB of VRAM should age better.
That’s my concern too. I like the idea of those features, but I don’t want to sacrifice overall performance just to enable them occasionally.