Can a Radeon RX 9070 XT really beat Nvidia's flagship RTX 5090? We tested 11 games at 1440p and 4K to see when driver overhead matters, and when an ordinary CPU bottleneck is actually to blame.
Is the Radeon RX 9070 XT Really Faster Than the RTX 5090?
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 9,219 +18,823
Short answer: no, it isn't faster, unless you throw qualifiers at it which still don't make it faster, you just introduce bottlenecks. A bit like saying if you choke out a V8 mustang it makes a Chevy Trax just as fast.
Why this idea was even approved for a review boggles the mind.
Why this idea was even approved for a review boggles the mind.
Well at least the conclusions make sense...
The only crazy thing here is that the 5090 is now a whopping 10x the price of the 9070XT. So the cost per frame would be a bit laughable right now.
The only crazy thing here is that the 5090 is now a whopping 10x the price of the 9070XT. So the cost per frame would be a bit laughable right now.
Taroo
Posts: 142 +183
What would be intersting is comparing the cost-per-frames between those 2 GPUs.
Sure the 5090 is faster, I think nobody has doubt about this, no matter if you like nvidia or not.
But look at the cost of this graphics card...
Sure the 5090 is faster, I think nobody has doubt about this, no matter if you like nvidia or not.
But look at the cost of this graphics card...
harm9963
Posts: 145 +74
Wow if you still have your 4090 as I do, and got it when it came out $1700 retail at Microcenter, that is ,even used $2500 , good luck with scammers , I had a chance to get a 5090 at Microcenter at $2200 , happy and not at same time ,I was going to keep my 4090 no matter what , I still have my GTX470 SLI and 290x CFX ,and Goat 1080Ti , Home insurance is not cheap ,they are aware of the fire hazard in my PC, but back to the 5090, should do a compare with 4090 , as now with mods ,FGX4 and DLSS5 , with FG need a good base FPS , with 60 plus most games , game like Control Resonant at 4K ULTRA ,DLSSQ with FGX2 with Nvidia app type c FG , never thought I would never say this about my 4090 ,Its still a luxury , but bang for the buck wow it is !!!
Burty117
Posts: 6,040 +5,140
Honestly? I think the 4090 is better than the 5090 in some ways, older games (Borderlands 2, Mirrors Edge, Batman Series) that use PhyX drop to like, 30fps on the 5090, I play those older games from time to time, why they regressed on that, I don't know, or at least had some kind of alternative way.
maxxcool7421
Posts: 1,012 +1,434
Since the 5090 is CANCELED.. YES A REAL WORKING CARD IS FASTER THEN ONE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS
The author of the article, Steve Walton, approved the review. As he is the co-owner (partnership with Tim) and editor in chief etc. of Hardware Unboxed Youtube channel, Steve decides whether or not to do his own reviews, to do whatever the f*** he wants, even if its just for sh*ts and giggles or to answer some weird questions because he can. Same with the co-owner, Tim (who usually does monitor reviews). As they are independent of Techspot, they do whatever interests them to do, off their own bat. they are basically freelancers.
Then they package up their scripts they used for the already-released youtube video, embedding the appropriate graphs/screen shots, and send that to Techspot. Then techspot editors decide whether to publish the already-created and youtube released content or not as a written article here. It's already been done, published on youtube, and earned the revenue on youtube. So Techspot can decide to send a few $ their way for publishing work that has already been done. It's a win-win for HUB and Techspot. HUB make most of their money/payback on youtube, and get a small fee from Techspot to widen the publishing of their arleady-produced article, and Techspot get an article for a much smaller fee than if they'd have paid a staffer to do that work for an article/review.
So not really sure what your problem is.
maxxcool7421
Posts: 1,012 +1,434
um you need to work on your prompt. that output is terrible.
Megalomaniac
Posts: 1,359 +1,449
The idea was approved for review because without the 5090 and all the news and lore behind it, the content strategy is hitting a wall.
Your comment got trashed by downvotes. I didn't even know that could happen.
We both know the truth... the 5090 is God tier.
Squid Surprise
Posts: 8,239 +8,540
We have a bunch of “yes men” downvoting you … or I guess they’re “no men”… but I guess there just isn’t much content to post on this site nowadays.
How about we post an article about Trump or Musk instead to get the left-wing trolls out in force? Or we could post about climate change or gun control to get the right-wing trolls out
...I literally thought something was wrong, but...did that many people downvote you on such an uncontroversial statement?
Fascinating.
NumberNine
Posts: 2,504 +4,924
Well the 5090 is discontinued while the competiton is not, so I'll assume the AMD card wins by virtue of actual availability.
The comparison to the 5090 is nice and all (and technically fair, as the 9070 XT or 7900 XTX, respectively the 5090, ARE the top consumer graphics cards offered by AMD and Nvidia), but I would have been much more interested in a comparison with a 5080, because a 5080 is at least within the realm of financial possibility for many people, unlike the 5090
What if you don't have one of the best gaming CPUs that money can buy? What if you had something like a 9700x or a 7700x? Still fairly high end, but not the best?
Athlonite69
Posts: 117 +90
Why pit a 9070XT against a RTX 5090 would it not have made more sense to use a card that is atleast equal or close to it like an RTX5080 or 5070Ti otherwise you're just comparing apples with oranges at this point
ZedRM
Posts: 3,411 +2,345
Did you, in fact, read the article and pay attention to the numbers shown? Doesn't look like you did.
The short answer is: Yes, the 5090 is faster.
Credit where it's due, Steve seems to have done objective testing and that testing clearly shows the 5090 ahead, greatly so in many cases especially at 4k.
Squid Surprise
Posts: 8,239 +8,540
I don’t think you read his post… maybe READ someone’s post before claiming they didn’t READ the article?
fadingfool
Posts: 487 +657
Going to be awhile before we get any new GPUs drop so frivolous comparisons make a good read every now and then. Might need to start looking at getting the best out of what we have for as long as we can type articles (so enhanced performance guides). I wonder what the best build guides for $500, $1000, $2000 would look like these days? Even a $2000 rig would be starved of memory, nvme drive space and a decent GPU compared with the rigs of two years ago.
Eldrach
Posts: 639 +821
On the other hand, cost per frame doesn't matter if one GPU runs a game at 65 fps, and the other one at 18
Jimster480
Posts: 169 +145
Uh, the conclusions don't really make that much sense, because the original claim had nothing to do with the nonsense that they reviewed here. They proved that exactly what Moore's Law is dead claimed exists 100% in the first graph. After that, instead of exploring this more, they went on a mission to disprove it. Realistically, using the best gaming CPU on the market, and the best GPU most times in the selection of games that they chose, you will not have a problem exceeding 200 FPS, and that's to be expected.
However, any game that uses heavy CPU like the first one will run into the exact problem seen in the first one, even when using the fastest gaming CPU on the planet Barnon. If you have an Intel CPU of any kind, even their fastest one, this problem would be much worse. If you have a 7800X 3D, that's also worse. So they are just saying that if you're buying a 5090, automatically you are purchasing all the rest of the best parts every single time, because that's what they would do.
Jimster480
Posts: 169 +145
Of course, the 5090 is going to be ahead at 4K with ray tracing and path tracing. That's definitely true. But that does not mean that there are not games where it is behind on something like performance upscaling, as shown in the first game. And that was the entire claim made. And th because it's too long and now this tech spot article., because it's too long, and now this tech-spot article.
Jimster480
Posts: 169 +145
The crazy thing is that Steve should actually make where you are definitely going to be CPU limited because of wattage and in systems with older CPUs, especially in a time when memory is insanely expensive. It's insanely expensive and people would not be upgrading their whole system if they save money for an upgrade on a GPU., and people would not be upgrading their whole system if they save money for an upgrade on a GPU.
The other thing is these problems exist on every level of GPU. It's just that the bigger the GPU, the faster the problem shows up. In laptops, the issue is massive, and it's crazy that there is no mobile AMD GPUs. So NVIDIA has managed to muscle themselves in the laptop market to the point that there's no AMD offering even. And this is where the CPU overhead problem is unquestionably the largest.
Similar threads
