2016's $400 GPU vs. 2019's $400 GPUs: GTX 1070 vs. RTX 2060 Super vs. Radeon 5700 XT

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,092   +2,043
Staff member
I was looking at PC hardware over the last few says and I have to say prices have dropped on so many things, building a PC would be amazing right now. I paid around £2300 for my rig last year and right now 95% of my PC performance can be had for £1300, not bad :)
 
This seems a little biased in favor of AMD. The 2060 super is repeatedly looked down on because it is "only" 35% faster then the 1070, while the 5700xt is 48% faster and gets the authors praises.

The 5700xt is shows as a better example of 3 years of progress. This ignores that the 2060 super is built on a 1.5 year old arch, not a 6 month arch like the 5700xt. The 2060 super is evidence of how far the arch came in 2 years, not 3 and a half years. If the author had doen this comparison in june, AMD would have been in a far worse place, as all they had were Poor Vega cards (which I use in my system).

Just seems a little slanted to me.
 
Last edited:
Maybe I'm a bit confused, but to my knowledge the GTX 1070 was never just "50 to 60% faster than the GTX 770 4GB". That title would have gone to the GTX 970. As far as my memory serves me, the GTX 770 was roughly equivalent to a GTX 960 or GTX 1050 ti. Whereas the GTX 1070 was around the performance of a stock GTX 980 ti - easily double the performance of a GTX 770. I'm not sure where the numbers on this one came from, but I have to respectfully disagree with you guys here. Value went from a near doubling of performance per dollar from Maxwell to Pascal, to almost regression and certainly stagnation in the value of a new Nvidia GPU.
 
This seems a little biased in favor of AMD. The 2060 super is repeatedly looked down on because it is "only" 35% faster then the 1070, while the 5700xt is 48% faster and gets the authors praises.

The 5700xt is shows as a better example of 3 years of progress. This ignores that the 2060 super is built on a 1.5 year old arch, not a 6 month arch like the 5700xt. The 2060 super is evidence of how far the arch came in 2 years, not 3 and a half years. If the author had doen this comparison in june, AMD would have been in a far worse place, as all they had were Poor Vega cards (which I use in my system).

Just seems a little slanted to me.

Idt it's slanted. The Super is their refined version to compete with the 5700xt. If it was the 2060 it would be considered slanted imo

Look at the he 78xx/79xx lineup and the R9 refresh. They improved over time drastically since launch from driver refinements to show great architecture.

So I guess this article exposed nvidias launch performance is "what you see is what you get" for lifetime of the card where AMD cards have a lot more untapped power that is gained through the life of the card.

I can agree that Vega wasn't the greatest success. But the performance was there just at the cost of higher power draw which I think is drastically blown out of proportion in terms of being an issue.
 
I wasn't aware the GTX 770 was all that significant either, it was after all just a refreshed Kepler card which originally came out in 2012.
 
I bought a GTX 1050 Ti just before the mining madness struck. MRSP was $139.95 and bless its little round heart, NewEgg sold it with a bit of a discount - so it cost me about $125. I'm hoping to see this again - mining madness is over, RX 5500 is coming next week, GTX 1650 Super is a fine solution for a 1080p gamer - and all this nice competition may give us some real fine deals even for those on a budget.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and a Joyous New Year to all TechSpotters.
 
I bought GTX 1070 couple years ago and pared with my i7 5820 have been happy. Water cooled my cpu and have lots of vented cooling . Problems exist now that am looking to upgrade my video card. I bought a RTX 2070 and it was fast but even with all my case cooling my case temp was 73 degrees. And case itself was so hot you could not put hand on it. Put back old 1070 and all was fine. These new cards are way too hot compared to last generation of cards. So now I wait till a cooler generation of cards come out.
 
This seems a little biased in favor of AMD.
Just seems a little slanted to me.
It is a little slanted, you can get RTX 2060's for $300 and the cheapest 5700XT is around $400, these cards are in completely different price brackets. The regular RTX 2070 is now $400.
The 5700XT according to Techspot is 6% slower then a RTX 2070 Super @ 1440p on average, so against the regular 2070 is would be almost identical performance, only your getting Nvidia's more polished product, so the RTX 2070 would be the better buy, even if the 5700XT has slighty better performance.
 
Last edited:
Shows us all that 4 years of Nvidia doesn't give us much, for the same price.

And that AMD give you more. Much more, if you consider Developer's are now working with RDNA and almost all games are getting optimized for it...

We all know that Nvidia doesn't make gaming chips, so Developer's are shunning away from Jensen's proprietary marketing crap. Seems some people here are still fooled by it.
 
As a 1080ti owner I couldn’t disagree more with the folks above saying Nvidia provides a more polished product. I’ve had more driver issues with my 1080ti than I ever did with my R9 290. I’ve also watched Nvidia be lazy on optimizing the 10xx cards in modern games and my performance dwindle. With the 290 I saw substantial performance improvements for years and driver optimization affect the entire AMD product stack. The 5700xt is a a hell of a good deal and so is the 3600. If I was building a midrange pc there is no way I’d buy Intel or Nvidia right now. The value just isnt there and I say that as an Nvidia/Intel owner.

edit: Forgot to say, Nvidia graphics card pricing is straight up predatory! We used to buy a top end card for $500 or less, now its $1000 plus.
 
As a 1080ti owner I couldn’t disagree more with the folks above saying Nvidia provides a more polished product. I’ve had more driver issues with my 1080ti than I ever did with my R9 290.
Unfortunately, your the example that's 1 out of 10.
It's clear though AMD are working hard to change the narrative of the reputation they have earned in the past 10 years with GPU's.
 
You talk about comparing the 7970 to the 770 which was released a year later but the 770 was a refresh of the previous years 680. The 780 was released to counter the 7970 and it was a superior card by more than 10%. AMD would then go on to refresh the 7970 as the R9 280X in September 2013. Why would you expect renamed products to have a big performance difference? The 970 came out along and that gave AMDs top model, the 290x, and nvidia previous top card, 780 ti, a run for their money at a lower price point.
 
Unfortunately, your the example that's 1 out of 10.
It's clear though AMD are working hard to change the narrative of the reputation they have earned in the past 10 years with GPU's.

I am sorry, but I passed from my CF 290x setup to a 1080 FTW setup to a 1080 TI and I concur totally with Pastuch. My 1080 FTW died on me twice in 8 months before I had enough and went 1080 TI. The drivers are not better than AMD drivers and Geforce Experience is literally a piece of garbage in comparison to Catalyst. I run both graphic drivers on two different PC at this moment.
 
It is a little slanted, you can get RTX 2060's for $300 and the cheapest 5700XT is around $400, these cards are in completely different price brackets. The regular RTX 2070 is now $400.
The 5700XT according to Techspot is 6% slower then a RTX 2070 Super @ 1440p on average, so against the regular 2070 is would be almost identical performance, only your getting Nvidia's more polished product, so the RTX 2070 would be the better buy, even if the 5700XT has slighty better performance.
Maybe you should learn how to read. They are not comparing the 2060, they're comparing the 2060 Super which is a rebranded 2070. And yeah those are $400 cards.
 
This seems a little biased in favor of AMD. The 2060 super is repeatedly looked down on because it is "only" 35% faster then the 1070, while the 5700xt is 48% faster and gets the authors praises.

The 5700xt is shows as a better example of 3 years of progress. This ignores that the 2060 super is built on a 1.5 year old arch, not a 6 month arch like the 5700xt. The 2060 super is evidence of how far the arch came in 2 years, not 3 and a half years. If the author had doen this comparison in june, AMD would have been in a far worse place, as all they had were Poor Vega cards (which I use in my system).

Just seems a little slanted to me.

Its performance numbers for current $400 GPUs ... it looks biased to you because the 5700xt is a far better performer at $400 ...

Let me ask you this ... If NVidia lowered the price of the 2070 super to $400 then what ? ... the review is slanted in NVidia's favour by your (lack of) logic??

No, if that happens (which it won't ever), then NVidia would win the price to performance, and overall performance, just as the 5700XT does at current real-life prices today.

Holiday season is upon us ... I think its relevant to compare whats in the market today for consumers to make informed choices about the actual performance of their products as opposed to just buying a brand name and hoping you didn't get ripped off too badly. (a sentiment that goes both ways)
 
Last edited:
Unfortunately, your the example that's 1 out of 10.
...
Sources for your claim? At least he gave a real life anecdote ...


It is a little slanted, you can get RTX 2060's for $300 and the cheapest 5700XT is around $400, these cards are in completely different price brackets. The regular RTX 2070 is now $400.
The 5700XT according to Techspot is 6% slower then a RTX 2070 Super @ 1440p on average, so against the regular 2070 is would be almost identical performance, only your getting Nvidia's more polished product, so the RTX 2070 would be the better buy, even if the 5700XT has slighty better performance.

I got all excited when you said I could get a RTX 2070 for $400 ... then I checked the real life prices and realized I had erred by taking something you said, seriously.

I can't find any for $400 -- closer to $500+ it looks like on average. Besides, 2070 SUPER is barely any faster than 5700xt and slower in a few titles.
 
Last edited:
I got all excited when you said I could get a RTX 2070 for $400 ... then I checked the real life prices and realized I had erred by taking something you said, seriously.
Comes with a copy of Modern Warfare too.

If their both $400 the RTX is the better buy, even if the 5700 is a smidgen faster.
Playing some of the older redone titles with RT looks pretty cool.
If you can get the 5700XT for about $350, then that might be cheap enough to take on their inferior ecosystem.

I do agree that Nvidia priced their GPU's too high across the board, but its supply and demand. There hasn't been much competition besides raw performance, which isn't the big deciding point now as lots of GPU's give you good - great performance.
If you want the bargain product, get AMD. And when I say bargain I am not knocking AMD, they make a damn good GPU and software package, but its common knowledge among the gaming community which hardware/software plays the best across a very wide range of systems, old & new titles, with various equipment/monitors, and these results show up in discrete GPU market shares and Steam GPU results.
This is unfortunately not something that any reviewer can replicate but through online forums and folks starting to have a better experience, hopefully more folks will give AMD a try again.
 
Last edited:
Maybe you should learn how to read. They are not comparing the 2060, they're comparing the 2060 Super which is a rebranded 2070. And yeah those are $400 cards.
Ooh, you got me!
Calling the overpriced super cards a worse buy then AMD's stuff isn't saying much.
You can get a RTX 2070 for $400 and its faster then a RTX 2060 Super.
The RTX 'Super' videocards are a complete waste of time, the only reason Nvidia released them is because everything AMD has STINKS and the market is 75/25, so they can get away with it.
Comparing an overpriced $400 Nvidia GPU to an underpriced $400 AMD at this very point in time does absolutely nothing to make Nvidia look bad or AMD look good, it only shows that Nvidia's pricing is based off their reputation and they've rebranded a few popular GPU's.
I don't like Nvidia's pricing anymore then the next person, its been absolutely ridiculous.
 
Last edited:
This seems a little biased in favor of AMD. The 2060 super is repeatedly looked down on because it is "only" 35% faster then the 1070, while the 5700xt is 48% faster and gets the authors praises.

The 5700xt is shows as a better example of 3 years of progress. This ignores that the 2060 super is built on a 1.5 year old arch, not a 6 month arch like the 5700xt. The 2060 super is evidence of how far the arch came in 2 years, not 3 and a half years. If the author had doen this comparison in june, AMD would have been in a far worse place, as all they had were Poor Vega cards (which I use in my system).

Just seems a little slanted to me.

The 2060 super launched after the 5700 XT though. If the author had done this comparison in june, Nvidia would have only had the 2060 non-super and the performance gains would have looked even worse. FYI AMD still had Vega VII, which performs about on par with the 5700 XT anyways. In the end it's about the same in june performance wise as it is now. The only difference is which AMD card is being tested here.

It is a little slanted, you can get RTX 2060's for $300 and the cheapest 5700XT is around $400, these cards are in completely different price brackets. The regular RTX 2070 is now $400.
The 5700XT according to Techspot is 6% slower then a RTX 2070 Super @ 1440p on average, so against the regular 2070 is would be almost identical performance, only your getting Nvidia's more polished product, so the RTX 2070 would be the better buy, even if the 5700XT has slighty better performance.

This article compares the 5700 XT to the 2060 Super model, which both retail for around the same price.

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709 601341616


As a 1080ti owner I couldn’t disagree more with the folks above saying Nvidia provides a more polished product. I’ve had more driver issues with my 1080ti than I ever did with my R9 290. I’ve also watched Nvidia be lazy on optimizing the 10xx cards in modern games and my performance dwindle. With the 290 I saw substantial performance improvements for years and driver optimization affect the entire AMD product stack. The 5700xt is a a hell of a good deal and so is the 3600. If I was building a midrange pc there is no way I’d buy Intel or Nvidia right now. The value just isnt there and I say that as an Nvidia/Intel owner.

edit: Forgot to say, Nvidia graphics card pricing is straight up predatory! We used to buy a top end card for $500 or less, now its $1000 plus.

I have a 1080 Ti as well but deal with both brands on the regular. I'd say stability wise they are about equal. That said I vastly prefer AMD's driver software over Nvidia's. I also don't like the fact that my 1080 Ti is not well optimized in some newer games.



 
Comes with a copy of Modern Warfare too.

If their both $400 the RTX is the better buy, even if the 5700 is a smidgen faster.
Playing some of the older redone titles with RT looks pretty cool.
If you can get the 5700XT for about $350, then that might be cheap enough to take on their inferior ecosystem.

I do agree that Nvidia priced their GPU's too high across the board, but its supply and demand. There hasn't been much competition besides raw performance, which isn't the big deciding point now as lots of GPU's give you good - great performance.
If you want the bargain product, get AMD. And when I say bargain I am not knocking AMD, they make a damn good GPU and software package, but its common knowledge among the gaming community which hardware/software plays the best across a very wide range of systems, old & new titles, with various equipment/monitors, and these results show up in discrete GPU market shares and Steam GPU results.
This is unfortunately not something that any reviewer can replicate but through online forums and folks starting to have a better experience, hopefully more folks will give AMD a try again.

"Better buy even if the alternative is faster" -- huh? what?
I use both Nvidia (work) and AMD (home) "ecosystems" and I prefer the AMD one - I have had less quirks and the interface is way better for my tastes. Besides, AMD cards actually do get better with age and Nvidia's get worse. I recall when the Radeon vII was slightly slower than RTX 2080 ... six months later I checked a new review and it was a fair bit faster. Same thing happened with Rx 580 (or was it 480?) vs 1060. AMD continues to improve driver support for titles in older cards ... something Nvidia doesn't do so you will upgrade more often, and spend more money over the long haul. I don't like that tactic.


"Raw performance isn't the deciding point now ..." - don't be silly - that sounds like the Intel fanboi who tried to argue that Intel HEDT was still relevant because "CPUs don't matter that much anyway", :)

"not something that any reviewer can replicate" -- ok then.


Well I'm from Canada and the same 2070 card is $580 CAD on Canadian Newegg site and it looks like one of the slowest and loudest RTX 2070s from what reviews I can find. The current Best Buy and Amazon reviews aren't great ... looks like lots of people have problems with theirs. That's the problem with NVidia and their million skus -- you get such performance and price variation within a single GPU type, that 2070A might be a greatly worse value than 2070B -- I guess their strategy is to confuse the consumer ... aww how nice of them.

5700XT Powercolor Red Devil (probably the best 5700xt you can get) is $539 CAD from Newegg.ca and you get three games and it performs a bit better.

Paying $40 more for less performance and less free games doesn't appeal to me much (even though I don't game much). Thanks for trying though! I'm always willing to consider alternatives where bang for buck is dictated, for a moment there I thouht maybe NVidia had pulled an impossible :). I used to game on NVidia back in the olden days but I have strong considerations for how companies treat their customers so they will have to pull some serious bang for buck out of their arse before I switch back ... which will probably be never.

Edit: corrected pricing.
 
Last edited:
I have a 1080 Ti as well but deal with both brands on the regular. I'd say stability wise they are about equal. That said I vastly prefer AMD's driver software over Nvidia's. I also don't like the fact that my 1080 Ti is not well optimized in some newer games.
I would agree. The drivers have been really great in the last few years and I find the software overall way better.

I recall my friend a few years back getting excited that he discovered MSI afterburner that could "let you tweak voltages and fan speeds!". I was a bit confused and responded "Yeah but you can change all that in the drivers anyway, can't you?" -- he looked at me dumbfounded.

Does NVidia not, or perhaps not ~five years prior, let you change all those in the drivers?

Or is the Nvidia "tools" a separate package from the drivers that maybe my friend didn't bother to install or something? Sorry its been a while since I used NVidia for gaming / tuning, I just use them for my work PCs and I can't find any HW tweaking controls, even basic OCing in those drivers at all ...
 
Last edited:
Back