I currently have an RTX 4060 Ti and am considering moving to an RTX 5070. My main concern is running out of VRAM, especially when playing newer games at 1440p with high settings. Some people have told me the 5070 would only be a modest upgrade rather than a major jump. How much faster is it realistically, and would another card be a better choice for the money?
5 Answers
I moved from a 4060 Ti 16GB to an RX 9070 XT and was very happy with the gaming performance. It handled monitor gaming well, stayed cool, and I did not run into driver or temperature problems. The main drawback was VR gaming through a Quest headset, where the image quality in dark or distant scenes was better on Nvidia due to its video encoding. If you mostly play on a normal monitor, the 9070 XT is worth considering.
For gaming value, I would also compare the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. They have 16GB of VRAM, and both offer strong 1440p raster performance. The 9070 XT is generally a higher-performance card than the 5070, while the regular 9070 can be especially attractive if it is significantly cheaper.
It is definitely a meaningful upgrade. Depending on the game and settings, the RTX 5070 can be roughly 50% faster than the 4060 Ti, with some titles showing a larger gap. Whether that feels worthwhile depends on the price you can find, but calling it a minor upgrade is underselling it.
The exact improvement varies a lot by game. Around 50% is a safer general estimate, while some 1440p titles can get closer to 70–80% faster.
If your main issue is VRAM, the RTX 5070 may not fully solve it because it still has 12GB. Some demanding games can exceed that at 1440p with ultra textures, ray tracing, and frame generation enabled. It would improve performance substantially, but it is not a huge VRAM upgrade.
There is no need to chase a specific brand if the 5070 is the card you actually want. Check current prices, compare benchmarks for the games you play, and consider used previous-generation cards too. If you want more VRAM and pure raster performance, AMD is probably the better value; if you care about Nvidia features, encoding, or ray tracing support, the 5070 can still make sense.
The non-XT RX 9070 is easy to overlook, but it is still a strong 1440p option and can outperform the 5070 in traditional rendering. Pricing should decide between them.