I'm putting together a gaming PC around a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and several videos and friends have recommended pairing it with an RX 9070 XT. However, the complete build comes to about $2,500 CAD, even after reducing the memory to 16GB and storage to 1TB.
I can afford the total, but I'm wondering whether the graphics card is excessive for the games I actually play, such as Dead by Daylight, Fortnite, Subnautica, Roblox, and Minecraft. I don't expect to play many extremely demanding AAA games, so I'm considering a less expensive GPU in the $600–$850 CAD range instead. Would an RX 9070 GRE be a sensible match for the 7800X3D, or are there other cards I should consider?
3 Answers
For your current games, the 9070 XT would be overkill. That said, buying it can still be reasonable if you want extra headroom for future games or plan to upgrade to a high-refresh 1440p monitor. If you don’t expect those changes, choosing a GPU in the $600–$850 CAD range and putting the savings toward 32GB of RAM or a larger SSD would probably give you a more balanced build.
It really depends on your game library. The RX 9070 XT is mainly aimed at people playing demanding modern games at 1440p or higher with strong settings and frame rates. For games like Fortnite, Dead by Daylight, Roblox, Minecraft, and Subnautica, a cheaper card would likely provide plenty of performance. The 7800X3D is powerful, but you don’t need a top-tier GPU just to pair with it.
An RX 9070 GRE should pair well with the 7800X3D, especially if you aren’t targeting extremely high frame rates in the newest AAA games. A used RTX 4070 Super could also fit that budget, although it’s generally slower than the 9070 GRE. The RTX 4070 Ti is only a little faster, while the Ti Super usually costs considerably more for a relatively modest performance increase. In general, it makes sense to buy hardware that matches the games and settings you’ll actually use rather than paying for performance that will sit unused.

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