While the more powerful GeForce RTX 50 models face no direct competition, AMD has positioned two strong contenders against the RTX 5070—the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. Both offer slightly better value and more memory. Your choice depends on whether you need a graphics card purely for gaming or also for professional applications, and how reliant you are on Nvidia’s broader, more polished ecosystem with proprietary technologies.
Conclusion
The conclusion could once again revolve around prices and availability, but discussing the same issue over and over is getting exhausting. Availability is terrible and will remain so for at least a few more months, which in turn makes prices even worse. Talking about price-to-performance ratios or comparing them to the previous generation or MSRP feels more like a philosophical debate that does nothing to solve the current situation.
If we assume that the price of the GeForce RTX 5070 and the Radeon RX 9070 is the same, as it should be on paper, the Radeon has a slight edge in rasterization performance and less demanding ray tracing scenarios. Additionally, it offers the advantage of 16 GB of memory, making it better suited for memory-intensive games at high resolutions. Even though models in this price category are primarily aimed at fast 1440p monitors, especially when combined with DLSS and FSR, you shouldn’t shy away from 4K gaming. In such cases, opting for the 16 GB Radeon is definitely the better choice.
Unlike many others, I won’t try to scare you by claiming that the 12 GB RTX 5070 will run into memory issues in new games in two years—I simply don’t believe that. Of course, some games already require more today, and there will be even more in the future. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to play them on 12 GB cards. In most cases, simply lowering the most memory-intensive settings or using DLSS will be enough. Developers can’t afford to release games that would be unplayable on current gaming consoles and GPUs with 12 GB or less of VRAM, which the vast majority of PC gamers still use.
When it comes purely to gaming performance, the competing RX 9070 performs better in most scenarios. The exception is the most demanding ray tracing, where the RTX 5070 still has the upper hand over the RX 9070, but ray tracing is also more memory-intensive. This can lead to situations where the chip itself could handle higher frame rates, but due to the smaller memory capacity, performance drops significantly below that of 16 GB Radeons. Ironically, the smaller memory can therefore hold back the RTX 5070 in scenarios where it might otherwise excel.
There are far fewer situations in games where the RTX 5070 would be the better choice. It has the upper hand if you also need it for more than just gaming. Thanks to Nvidia’s dominant market share in recent years, it offers better support in professional applications and, unlike Radeons, also supports Nvidia’s widely used proprietary technologies. You’ll have an advantage in competitive gaming, where Nvidia has a clear edge thanks to Reflex support across a much larger number of titles. But even here, there are limits—if you are playing at 1080p on the lowest settings and hitting 400 fps, Reflex won’t make much of a difference.
GeForce cards are definitely better suited for video work thanks to encoding support for 4:2:2 subsampling. When it comes to AI or rendering, the RTX 5070 generally offers higher performance, but only as long as you can make do with 12 GB of memory. Ultimately, it will depend more on what you plan to do.
And of course, much will depend on where prices go. It’s reasonable to expect that manufacturers and retailers will charge more for GeForce cards.
Setting aside the features common to all RTX 5070 models and focusing on the tested Asus TUF GeForce RTX 5070, the main drawback is the price—it’s supposed to cost 739 USD, which, with tax included, comes out to 21,600 CZK or 822 EUR.
Currently the price of the TUF RTX 5070 is even higher now, ranging between 22,000–30,000 CZK (900–1200 EUR), and it’s unlikely to drop anytime soon—if anything, it might increase. Otherwise, it offers above-average features and top-tier operating characteristics.
This naturally means that, in terms of price-to-performance, it’s less advantageous than competing budget RTX 5070 models, and you’ll pay a significant premium for low noise levels. However, if quiet operation is your main priority, there’s little reason to spend more on pricier models—compared to the TUF RTX 5070 in Q mode, there’s not much room for improvement.
Pros and cons
+ Top-tier operating characteristics of the Asus TUF RTX 5070
+ The cooler has plenty of headroom and is exceptionally quiet under load in Q mode.
+ Factory overclocking
+ Includes a GPU support bracket in the accessories
+ Ray tracing performance
+ DLSS is better in terms of supported titles and technology compared to FSR
+ Multi-frame generation for fast monitors
– The Pulse RX 9070 is generally a better choice for gaming
– Only 12 GB of memory compared to 16 GB on Radeons
– Although the cooler is silent in Q mode, occasional coil whine can be heard
– A price premium over the base RTX 5070 models
GeForce RTX 5070 graphics cards can be purchased in the Datacomp e-store.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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