Should I Keep My $700 RTX 5070 or Switch to an RX 9070 Series Card?
Asked by
MellowCedar42
I'm upgrading from an RTX 3070 and recently bought an open-box Gigabyte RTX 5070 Windforce from Best Buy for $700. After reading reviews suggesting the 5070 may not be worth the price, I'm wondering whether I should return it and consider an AMD RX 9070 or 9070 XT instead. I like using DLSS, although I don't use ray tracing very often. My current CPU is a Ryzen 9 3900X, and I'm considering upgrading to a Ryzen 9 5900XT for future video editing, streaming, and coding. I play at 1440p on a 144 Hz monitor. Is the RTX 5070 a worthwhile upgrade from the 3070, or would an RX 9070-series card be a better choice?
Answers
At around the same price, the RX 9070 or especially the 9070 XT generally offers stronger traditional rendering performance and can also compete well in ray tracing. FSR has improved significantly, though DLSS is still usually the preferred upscaling option. AMD may also have an advantage in CPU overhead, which could help with your Ryzen 9 3900X. I’d return the 5070 if you can get a 9070-series card for similar money.
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The RTX 5070 is still a substantial upgrade over your 3070 and should perform well at 1440p. It gives you newer DLSS support and Nvidia’s advantages for many video-editing and streaming applications. If you already have it at a good price and your games run smoothly, keeping it is perfectly reasonable. The 9070-series cards are mainly worth considering if you want the best gaming performance per dollar.
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I’d lean toward returning the particular 5070 and comparing prices on the RX 9070 XT. It should provide more performance for similar money, but check the exact model, cooler, warranty, and current pricing rather than assuming every 9070 or 5070 is equivalent. The decision is less clear if Nvidia’s DLSS, CUDA, or video-editing features are important to your workflow.
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Your 1440p resolution makes either card a sensible match. At lower resolutions you’d be more likely to run into a CPU limit, while at 1440p the GPU matters more. Before deciding based only on reviews, test the 5070 in the games and applications you actually use. If you keep it, update the motherboard BIOS and chipset drivers, and set the PCIe link speed manually to the generation your motherboard supports instead of leaving it on Auto.
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