I had pretty much decided on the Radeon RX 9070 XT, but then a Micro Center sale changed things. The Zotac Twin Edge RTX 5070 OC 12GB is available for $749, while the PowerColor Reaper RX 9070 XT 16GB costs $739. At nearly the same price, which card makes more sense for gaming and overall performance?
3 Answers
The only strong reason to choose the 5070 is if you specifically need Nvidia features or CUDA for work such as certain video-editing, AI, or machine-learning applications. Check benchmarks for the exact programs you use, since the advantage varies. For regular gaming, the 9070 XT is the obvious choice.
These cards are not really in the same performance tier. The 9070 XT is closer to the RTX 5070 Ti than to the base 5070, while also offering more memory. If you are not in a hurry, you could also watch for an open-box 9070 XT deal, but even at the current prices the AMD card has much better value.
Get the RX 9070 XT. It is considerably faster in standard gaming performance, has 16GB of VRAM instead of 12GB, and it is actually cheaper in this case. The RTX 5070 would be difficult to justify at $749 when the 9070 XT is $739.
That makes sense. I would mainly be gaming, so I probably don't have a reason to pay more for the 5070.