I'm putting together a new high-end PC for both gaming and creative work, especially Blender and Photoshop. I'm planning to use a Ryzen 9 9950X3D with 32GB of DDR5 memory, but I'm unsure which graphics card offers the best value. Is the RTX 5090 worth its extremely high price, or is the Radeon RX 9070 close enough in performance? Should I instead consider an RTX 5080, RTX 5070, or RX 9070 XT? My current system has an RTX 3050 and an older Intel processor with DDR4, so any of these would be a major upgrade.
3 Answers
Coming from an RTX 3050, even the RTX 5070 would feel like a massive upgrade. You probably don’t need to jump all the way to a 5090 unless you specifically want the fastest possible gaming performance and have a very large budget.
The closest comparisons are generally the RTX 5070 versus RX 9070, and the RTX 5070 Ti versus RX 9070 XT. The RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are in a higher performance tier without direct equivalents here. For your use case, the RX 9070 XT is worth considering if its price is attractive, while the RTX 5080 is a stronger choice if Blender rendering and CUDA or OptiX support are important.
That’s honestly a great explanation, thanks.
If your budget allows, the RTX 5070 would already be a huge improvement over your current RTX 3050. If you’re trying to keep costs down, a used AMD card could be a temporary option until you can afford the upgrade you really want.
I currently have a 5070 and I’m planning to move up to an RX 9070 XT.
That’s true. I’m pretty excited to upgrade either way.