AMD RX 9070 XT vs Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti: Which one should you buy?

Team Red's RX 9070 XT is built on their shiny new RDNA 4 architecture, crafted using TSMC's N4P process node. Team Green's RTX 5070 Ti counters with the mighty Blackwell architecture on TSMC's N4process node.

The 9070 XT packs 64 Compute Units, 64 3rd Gen Ray Accelerators, and 128 2nd Gen AI Accelerators. The 5070 Ti boasts a hefty 8960 CUDA Cores, powered by Blackwell shader cores, 5th Generation Tensor Cores delivering 1406 AI TOPS, and 4th Generation Ray Tracing Cores crunching 133 TFLOPS.

AMD's contender has a Base Clock of 2.4GHz and can boost up to a zippy 2970 MHz. Nvidia's card has a Base Clock of 2.30 GHz and boosts up to 2.45 GHz. Both cards are packing 16GB of VRAM, but the 9070 XT uses GDDR6 running at 20 Gbps on a 256-bit bus, giving it an effective memory bandwidth of around 640GB/s. It also features 64MB of 3rd-Gen AMD Infinity Cache. The 5070 Ti uses newer GDDR7 memory, also on a 256-bit bus, with bandwidth speeds of up to 896GB/s.

The RX 9070 XT supports HDMI 2.1b and the future-proof DisplayPort 2.1a (UHBR13.5), along with PCIe 5.0 x16. The RTX 5070 Ti supports HDMI 2.1b and DisplayPort 2.1b as well. There is not much of a difference between the two, Nvidia’s DP might support longer cables.

Okay, enough teasing. Both cards are technically the same, except Nvidia has a higher bandwidth. But how do all of these specs translate to in-game actual performance? Well, it’s evenly matched!

Note: All games were tested on a 1440p monitor with all graphical settings set to their absolute limits. You can get better numbers than these results by dialling down the graphic presets but here’s how the GPUs perform when gaming at the best possible settings.

Starting with the latest Ubisoft title that sells like hotcakes in India - Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game requires Ray Tracing as mandatory to play and Nvidia takes the cake here with an average FPS of 49 and a maximum of 59 with Nvidia DLSS set to Native and Ray Tracing set to max. The AMD card does better with an average FPS of 51 but the frame time is all over the place. The minimum frame rate while playing on AMD dips to 14FPS and the maximum goes to 182. The frame times pendulum here is like a Bitcoin price graph. The game is definitely more stable on Nvidia even though AMD has slightly better performance.

The AMD card fixes this issue when you turn off Ray Tracing in the game. When you turn off Global illumination to Hideout only, the FPS ticker goes to an average of 63 and there’s less stuttering. The same settings on Nvidia bring 53 FPS on average, with less volatility in frame times than AMD here.

Every benchmark’s favourite Cyberpunk 2077 runs at 34 average FPS and 38 max on the Nvidia card. This is with ray tracing set to max and frame generation and upscaling turned off. AMD barely manages to run properly with 22FPS on average and 26FPS max. AMD might not be the brightest when it comes to Ray Tracing (pun intended).

However, Team Red flips the script when you kick ray tracing out of the picture by pushing 78FPS average and 114FPS max. Nvidia card got us the same result of 78FPS average but 103 max FPS. It’s a close call between both the GPUs.

Black Myth Wukong does 62FPS on average and 75FPS max on Nvidia and AMD is a close second with 55FPS on average and 75FPS max. Frame rates for both cards drop off a cliff when you turn on ray tracing, with Nvidia getting a 31FPS average and AMD struggling with a 14FPS average. Performance is definitely better on Nvidia with ray tracing but it’s not a playable FPS on either card so it’s ray tracing with pure raster performance is best ignored on both cards for gaming.

Moving to something that doesn’t require ray tracing but looks absolutely stunning is The Last of Us 2 Remastered on PC. Again both cards dish out a similar performance with Nvidia taking that 5 to 8% lead against AMD. Nvidia manages a 115 FPS average while AMD scores a 110 FPS average.

Now you’re wondering what about the fancy upscaling and frame generation tech that everyone keeps marketing to you? Well, the short answer is that Nvidia’s upscaling model is reaps slightly higher frames while frame generation is still in a questionable state.

Here’s the lowdown on what’s happening in upscaling and AI frame generation. AMD brings AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) to the party, an ML-powered upscaler promising better temporal stability and detail preservation. Nvidia counters with the evolution of its own tech, DLSS 4. This includes Multi Frame Generation on the 50-series (generating up to three extra frames for every real one!) and a new 'transformer' AI model powering Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution, and DLAA for potentially better image quality and stability for all RTX users. AMD also supports frame generation in some titles and it’s called Fluid Motion Frames.

Let’s start with Frame Generation in Cyberpunk 2077. Nvidia card has an average of 117 FPS with 132 max FPS. AMD punches back with 148 average FPS but again, with a lot of frame stuttering.

But AMD hits back with a stable and cleaner image in Black Myth Wukong with 99 FPS on average compared to 58 FPS average on Nvidia, however, the frame latency is higher on AMD cards than on Nvidia. Weird.

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered again puts AMD in the lead with a 165 FPS average and 140 FPS average on Nvidia. Both with frame generation on.

Upscaling seems to be better on Nvidia in terms of frame rate, with a 155 FPS average in Last of Us Part 2 Remasted and 126 FPS on the AMD card. Both upscaling settings were set to Quality.

It’s pretty clear that if you want to game on any of these cards, both are plenty capable of dishing out consistent frame rates. Nvidia has an edge over AMD in terms of Ray Tracing but AMD pulls through with better upscaling. Frame Generation is best avoided for now in our opinion because it comes with its own drawbacks.

Forget the MSRP pricing because you’re not going to get that in the market right now. At the time of writing this review, the price for our AMD RX 9070 XT (Sapphire Pure) is ₹78,700, meanwhile, the Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti (MSI Ventus) is ₹108,500. So it’s pretty clear that the winner of this versus is AMD simply by price-to-performance ratio. Even though Nvidia has a 5 to 10% better performance on raster and ray tracing, the price difference between the two cards is not enough to justify the 5070 Ti’s performance.