RTX 5070 — €525–610. Blackwell architecture, 12GB GDDR7, 250W power draw. Its strong suit is DLSS 4.5 with Multi Frame Generation, ray tracing well ahead of AMD, and better power efficiency. It loses ground when VRAM runs out at 4K or with ultra textures.

RX 9070 XT — €563–700. RDNA 4 architecture, 16GB GDDR6, 304W power draw. It wins on pure rasterization at 1440p by a 7–17% margin depending on the game. That 16GB of VRAM gives it more headroom for the next couple of years. FSR 4 has closed much of the visual gap with DLSS.

The context that changes everything: real-world prices. MSRPs look great on paper. In practice, AIB models of the RTX 5070 go for €600–635 in Spanish retail, and the RX 9070 XT for €600–700. The real-world price gap is smaller than the official announcement makes it look.

What this guide settles. There's no universal winner here. There's a winning GPU for your resolution, your kind of games, and what you're planning to do with this rig over the next two years. That's exactly what you'll find below.

1080p gaming

Both cards are overkill for 1080p. If you're gaming in Full HD, either one will push past 144fps in most AAA titles on Ultra. In this scenario, the GPU isn't the differentiator — upscaling is: NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 delivers smoother image quality than AMD's FSR 4. But for esports titles (CS2, Valorant), both blow way past your monitor's refresh ceiling anyway.

1440p rasterization — RX 9070 XT wins

This is where AMD flexes. At 1440p with ray tracing off, in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth Wukong, or Forza Horizon 6, the RX 9070 XT beats the RTX 5070 by a margin that ranges from 7% to 17%. That's not a marginal gap. You'll feel it in real fps at the same graphics settings.

Ray tracing and DLSS — RTX 5070 wins

Flip on ray tracing in any game and the whole dynamic flips with it. NVIDIA's RT architecture is clearly ahead: in Cyberpunk 2077 with RT Ultra at 1440p, the RTX 5070 paired with DLSS 4.5 pushes past 90fps. The RX 9070 XT with FSR 4 sits at 60–70fps. If ray tracing is part of your gaming experience, NVIDIA has no real competition in this price range.

4K — VRAM starts to matter

At 4K on Ultra, the RTX 5070's 12GB starts becoming a visible ceiling in the most demanding titles. The RX 9070 XT's 16GB handles max-resolution textures better, without the VRAM throttling that can creep in on the NVIDIA card. That said, neither one is a true compromise-free native 4K GPU — for that, you'd want the RTX 5080 or above.

Why cooling matters more than you'd think

A CPU that thermal-throttles because the cooler can't keep up becomes the bottleneck for the entire build, no matter how much you spent on a €600 GPU. Chips like the Ryzen 7 9700X or the Core Ultra 7 265K need a cooler with real headroom, not the stock box cooler. With a Hiditec DC20 PRO (265W of cooling capacity, 6 heatpipes, dual tower, AM5 and Intel LGA1851 support) you get plenty of margin for any upper-midrange CPU, at a very competitive price.

The case: airflow, or a choked GPU

New-generation GPUs dump a lot of heat inside the case. If the chassis doesn't have good airflow, internal ambient temperature climbs and the GPU starts thermal-throttling even if its own cooler is solid. The Hiditec H3 PRO is built for high-performance setups, with optimized airflow, full ATX compatibility, and clean cable management. A tidy build isn't just about looks — it means lower temperatures and more stable performance during long sessions.

The PSU: the most underrated component in the build

Neither the RTX 5070 nor the RX 9070 XT plays well with a mediocre power supply. Blackwell and RDNA 4 GPUs throw out sharp current spikes that demand a PSU with solid transient response. The Hiditec BZ PRO 750W ATX 3.1, with native PCIe 5.1, covers both cards with room to spare and is built for this GPU generation. 750W is exactly what you need here — not too little, not overkill.