Let’s be real. As much as we might get excited about the RTX 5080’s gaming chops and the sheer ridiculousness of the RTX 5090, but almost nobody is going to actually buy these cards. The most popular GPUs by far are the more mid-range alternatives, with the XX70 series being a great cross-section between affordability and aspiration. Most people buy an XX60 card, but if you can buy an XX70, you will. That’s why the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 are two of the most enticing cards of 2025.
How will they perform? How much will the cost? Which is the better buy? We can’t know for sure until we’ve had enough hands on time with them, but until then, here’s how they shake out with what we know so far.
Pricing and availability
Neither of these cards are available at the time of writing. However, we have a launch date and suggested retail price for the RTX 5070. It’s set to launch on March 5, with Nvidia pushing for a price tag of $550. That seems unlikely to last long after launch, though, as to date all 50-series cards have sold out almost immediately at launch and prices have risen astronomically in turn as scalpers run wild.
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AMD’s RX 9070 hasn’t been officially unveiled just yet, but AMD is set to give us more details in early March. Its expected to go on sale that same month, but pricing remains completely unknown for now. There have been rumors, but they’ve been so wildly broad that there’s clearly little consensus in what the GPU will cost as of yet.
Specifications
| Nvidia RTX 5070 | AMD RX 9070 | |
| Graphics Cores | 6,144 | 4,096 (rumored) |
| RT Cores | 48, 4th generation | 64 (rumored) |
| Tensor Cores | 192, 5th generation | N/A |
| Boost clock | 2.51GHz | 2.7GHz (rumored) |
| Memory size | 12GB GDDR7 | 16GB GDDR6 (rumored) |
| Memory bus | 192-bit | 256-bit (rumored) |
| Memory speed | 28Gbps | 19.5Gbps (rumored) |
| Memory bandwidth | 672GBps | 624GBps (rumored) |
| TBP | 250W | 260W (rumored) |
The RTX 5070 is only a very modest uptick in its on-paper capabilities compared to the last-generation 4070. It has only four percent more CUDA cores, and literally two more RT cores — although they, like the Tensor cores, are part of a new-generation design. Clock speeds are similar, too, and there’s the same quantity of memory, albeit GDDR7 this time around, so it’s faster.
All of that sets up fairly standard competition for AMD’s RX 9070, which unfortunately we don’t have officially specifications for yet. However, rumors do give us some numbers to play with, notably the larger 16GB of GDDR6 memory, which could give this card some more headroom in modern gaming at 1440p. We’re already seeing some top titles demand over 15GB at 4K, so the 12GB on the 5070 might hit a wall in the not-too-distant future and struggle with higher-end visual features.
Here’s hoping neural texture rendering can help there.
Performance
This one is very much an unknown, even if we do have some rumors, leaks, and some heavily-skewed graphs from Nvidia to help guide our thoughts.
Nvidia claimed at CES 2025, that the 5070 was going to offer 4090 performance. Well, the 5080 doesn’t even do that, so that claim is out the window. If we look to the far left of Nvidia’s graph, it looks like the 5070 will be maybe 20-30% faster than the 4070 — that’s the non-Super variant, mind you.
AMD’s RX 9070 has been rumored to perform around the same level as a 7900 GRE, or a little faster than the 4070 Super… so potentially very close to the 5070. If that proved to be the case, AMD would need to undercut the potentially much-higher Nvidia price tag, once scalpers get their hands on it.
The elephant in the room though, is upscaling and frame generation. Nvidia’s DLSS 4 is excellent and the multi frame gen can be great in the right circumstances. AMD will introduce FSR4 and its own frame generation technology with theh RX 9000 series, so it does have the potential to pull level with Nvidia.
It hasn’t managed to do it yet, though, so we’ll have to see how that shakes out.
AMD’s time is now, but can it meet the moment?
AMD looks set to launch a card that is roughly comparable in performance to the 5070, with more memory, a frame generation technology of its own, and improved dynamic FSR upscaling. If that all proves true, it really needs to meet the moment on price. If AMD can do this card for $450, or even $500 and actually have the card in stock, it could be exceedingly popular.
Recent GPU pricing madness means you’ll need to spend over $400 to even buy an RTX 4060, so something that’s close to twice that performance for just $100 more? AMD would be on to a winner. It just comes down to what kind of stock it has. If there’s a lot, AMD could be on to a real win, but if not, it’s a toss up as far as we can see for now.
