I'm choosing between an RTX 5070 and a Radeon 9070 XT. The 9070 XT costs only £30 more and is clearly faster, but I'm worried that using an AMD GPU might involve more driver issues or a less reliable experience. I'd like to use upscaling in games, such as DLSS or FSR, and I know DLSS generally has the edge in image quality, although I'm willing to use FSR if the overall experience is good. My system has a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32GB of DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, and I'm planning to play heavily modded or shader-heavy Minecraft, Cyberpunk 2077, Ghost of Tsushima, GTA 6 when it releases, and Ark: Survival Ascended at high or ultra settings. Is the 9070 XT's extra performance and VRAM worth the small price increase, or would the RTX 5070 be the safer and less troublesome choice?
5 Answers
If you’re comfortable installing drivers, troubleshooting occasionally, and adjusting settings yourself, I’d choose the 9070 XT. The 20–25% performance advantage and extra VRAM are significant for only £30, especially for Ark, modded Minecraft, and future games. Nvidia may have a slightly smoother software experience, but the difference usually isn’t large enough to outweigh that price gap.
For only £30 more, the 9070 XT is the much better value. It offers performance closer to an RTX 5070 Ti, along with more VRAM, which should help at 1440p and with demanding games over the next few years. Current AMD drivers are generally stable, and the extra performance means you can often use a higher-quality FSR mode—or skip upscaling entirely—while still getting better frame rates than the 5070.
I wouldn’t consider AMD GPUs inherently annoying. FSR is usually a little behind DLSS in image quality, but the 9070 XT is fast enough to use a higher internal resolution or a better FSR preset. For a £30 difference, the additional performance and VRAM are hard to ignore.
The 9070 XT is the stronger gaming card, but Nvidia still has advantages if you specifically care about DLSS, frame generation, or certain software features. AMD setup and driver software can occasionally be less polished, although plenty of people have completely trouble-free experiences. If you prefer the simplest plug-and-play experience over raw performance, the 5070 is still a reasonable choice.
My 9070 XT experience was frustrating: driver cleanup didn’t work properly, the card initially wouldn’t draw its expected power, and I eventually had to reinstall Windows to get things working correctly. I also disliked the AMD overlay and the way its software tried to change game settings. That may have been a bad card or an unusual installation problem rather than a universal AMD issue, but my older Nvidia card was much more consistent. The 9070 XT is the better deal on paper, while the 5070 may be less risky if you strongly value hassle-free setup.
That sounds more like a defective card or unusually broken software installation than normal 9070 XT behavior. The AMD overlay lets you customize which statistics appear, and many users run these cards without major problems.