I'm nearly finished with a new build centered around a Ryzen 5 9600X and was planning to buy an RX 9060 XT for about $499. While looking for a better deal, I found an RX 9070 GRE priced around $499 after discounts. The GRE is considerably faster, but it only has 12GB of VRAM compared with the 9060 XT's larger memory capacity. My main target is heavily ray-traced Minecraft, preferably at 4K. How important is VRAM for that kind of gaming, and would the 9070 GRE be the better choice despite having less memory?
5 Answers
The RX 9070 GRE is the much faster card. Its raw performance advantage is over 20% in many comparisons, and that difference matters more than the extra VRAM on the 9060 XT. At the same price, I’d choose the GRE.
Don’t let the VRAM number alone make the decision. A slower card with more memory doesn’t automatically become faster once that memory is available. The 9070 GRE should outperform the 9060 XT now and remain the better performer for several years, assuming you aren’t using extreme texture or shader settings.
AMD still trails Nvidia in some ray-tracing situations, as well as features like frame generation and certain creative workloads, so that’s worth considering if those features are important to you. Even so, between these two AMD cards, the 9070 GRE remains the stronger option for gaming performance.
If you can stretch the budget or find a sale, it may also be worth watching for an RX 9070 XT. But at roughly $500, the 9070 GRE is already a very strong deal and is the one I’d buy over the 9060 XT.
For high-resolution gaming with ray tracing, the 9070 GRE makes more sense. Twelve gigabytes should be adequate for current games if you’re willing to use sensible settings, and the extra performance will be more noticeable than the 9060 XT’s larger memory capacity.
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