I'm building my first PC and am deciding between a GeForce RTX 5070 and a Radeon RX 9070 XT, which are currently priced similarly. Some gamers have warned me about AMD driver reliability and suggested NVIDIA, while others say the RX 9070 XT offers much better performance and more VRAM for the money. I may want to upgrade when the next generation arrives, so value and longevity matter. An RTX 5070 Ti would be ideal, but it's beyond my budget. The rest of the build includes a Gigabyte B650 AX motherboard, a Ryzen 7 9700X, 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory, and a Samsung Odyssey OLED G5 monitor. I'll mainly game but also plan to use applications such as After Effects. I was also advised to buy a 1TB Samsung SSD—would that be worthwhile, or should I choose a less expensive drive with more capacity?
4 Answers
You don’t need to pay a premium for a Samsung SSD. A reputable PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive from brands such as Solidigm, WD, Crucial, Lexar, or Silicon Power should be perfectly adequate for gaming and general creative work. I’d lean toward a reasonably priced 2TB drive instead of an expensive 1TB model, since After Effects caches and project files can use space quickly. Check real-world reviews and warranty terms rather than choosing purely by brand.
I’ve used AMD GPUs without any driver problems, so these experiences can vary a lot by system and software. At equal pricing, though, I’d still choose the RX 9070 XT for gaming because the RTX 5070 is the weaker card overall. The 5070 makes more sense if it’s noticeably cheaper or if NVIDIA’s ray tracing, upscaling, or creator-app support is especially important to you.
If the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 XT really cost the same, the 9070 XT is generally the stronger buy. It delivers substantially higher traditional gaming performance and has more VRAM, while still being competitive in standard ray tracing. The 5070’s advantages are NVIDIA’s ray-tracing features, AI upscaling, and broader software support. Unless you specifically need those features for your games or creative programs, the 9070 XT gives you more hardware for the money.
My experience with AMD graphics cards has been frustrating: driver crashes, freezes, loud fan behavior, and settings not always surviving a restart. AMD can offer excellent performance per dollar, but reliability and software support are worth considering, especially for a first build. NVIDIA is the safer choice if you rely heavily on CUDA or particular After Effects features.
That makes sense. I’m mostly concerned about getting dependable performance in both games and After Effects rather than sticking to one brand.