There's a reason why AMD's one of the strongest RDNA 4 GPUs fails to attract the majority of gamers, despite having decent gaming performance at $549. Nearly six months after its launch, the Radeon RX 9070 is still gathering dust on store shelves, while gamers continue to reach past it for the GeForce RTX 5070 sitting right beside it.
It's surprising to see this happening, even when both share the same MSRP, but the Radeon RX 9070 is not only slightly faster but also offers more VRAM capacity. Despite no increase in VRAM capacity over the previous generation, the GeForce RTX 5070 is still selling like hotcakes, and the numbers don't lie. It's not just outselling the Radeon RX 9070 by a huge margin, but it is also the best seller in numerous regions around the globe.
So, what really went wrong with the Radeon RX 9070 that it ended up being the card no one's picking? Here are the top four reasons why most prefer settling with the RTX 5070 instead of the RX 9070.
Better Upscaling Features (DLSS 4 Adoption Rate is Higher)
Upscalers have become a part of modern gaming and both AMD and NVIDIA offer proprietary upscaling technologies on their GPUs. The rivalry between both has grown fiercely in the past few years, but this is the first time since AMD has come so close to NVIDIA in offering competitive upscaler called FSR 4. DLSS 4, still has a slight edge, offering better visuals, but one of the biggest advantages of DLSS 4 is its wider adoption in games.
Although, almost all the FSR 3.1 DX12 titles can now officially utilize FSR 4, the list of DLSS 4-supported games is almost twice as big. RTX 5070, hence, has a significant advantage in this regard, but Multi-Frame Generation is yet another feature, which helps in enabling smoother gaming performance. Surely, the RX 9070 also supports Frame Generation, but RTX 5070 supports both traditional Frame Generation and MFG, granting users with versatility for better fluidity.
Moreover, NVIDIA tends to offer upscaler support even on older GPUs. DLSS 4 is officially supported on all the RTX cards (except for features like MFG), but the FSR 4 doesn't even include the RX 7000 series. So, chances for newer DLSS versions being offered for RTX 5070 and even previous generation RTX GPUs are much higher than AMD's future FSR versions for its existing GPU lineups.
NVIDIA is Still the Superior Choice for Ray Tracing
The difference in Ray Tracing performance between the RX 9070 and RTX 5070 isn't huge, but that makes up for the loss against the RX 9070 in rasterization. This makes both GPUs technically equivalent in gaming performance, but now that more games are adopting Ray Tracing, it makes sense to opt for the better GPU. The GeForce RTX 5070 delivers around 10-15% better performance in Ray Tracing than the RX 9070, and this can be a dealbreaker in scenarios when the GPU is struggling to maintain smooth gameplay.
Plus, with more games now supporting DLSS 4 and the availability of options such as MFG, users can further enhance their performance for better fluidity. So, overall, the RTX 5070 has a strong set of capabilities that help it edge out the AMD GPU.
One Step Ahead in Content Creation
NVIDIA GPUs are a no-brainer for content creation and productivity workloads. Unfortunately, AMD GPUs like the RX 9000 have a hard time beating even previous-gen RTX GPUs in most productivity workloads, let alone outperforming the RTX 50 series in such tasks. NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem is simply the best for these tasks, and benchmarks have shown the superiority of NVIDIA GPUs in these workloads. Since many creative tools like Blender and Adobe have optimized support for the NVIDIA CUDA/OptiX, the RTX 5070 is going to be superior to the RX 9070 for such tasks.
RTX 5070 can be miles ahead when it comes to professional 3D rendering and AI workloads, which is highly advantageous for users who want to have the best for both gaming and productivity. Video editing apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and After Effects favor the RTX 5070 hugely over the RX 9070, and that can be a dealbreaker for content creators.
Strong Branding and Consumer Trust
Just by looking at the "GeForce" branding, many instinctively lean toward NVIDIA GPUs. That strong mindshare and recognition of NVIDIA GPUs make the RTX 5070 instantly more appealing to gamers than the RX 9070. Historically, we have seen that NVIDIA GPUs have been able to easily outsell AMD GPUs even with higher price tags for the same performance.
Since both GPUs are almost equivalent in gaming performance at the same price tag, it shouldn't be surprising to see RTX 5070 selling significantly more than the RX 9070. However, the RTX 5070 is slightly ahead in RT, which already makes it an appealing choice, and when we consider the productivity benchmarks, the RTX 5070 takes a bigger lead.
That said, even when the RX 9070 offers slightly better raster performance and 4 GB higher VRAM capacity at the same price tag, NVIDIA's branding power alone is enough to give the RTX 5070 the edge. Still, the 12 GB vs 16 GB memory configuration shouldn't be ignored, as games have become significantly more memory-intensive, making 16 GB a much more future-proof option for gaming. But at the end of the day, raw performance and superior features decide the winners, and gamers are more aware of this than ever before.
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