RX 5700 XT to RX 9070 XT: Is the Upgrade Worth It? (2026)

Yes, and for a reason that goes beyond frame rate. The RX 5700 XT has no hardware ray tracing, so a growing list of new releases will not launch on it at all, and it can never run FSR 4. The RX 9070 XT fixes both, doubles your VRAM to 16 GB, and lands at close to triple the frame rate at 1440p.

The real decision is which RDNA 4 card. Buy the XT if your power supply has headroom. Buy the non-XT RX 9070 if it does not, because that card draws less than the 5700 XT you are pulling out.

At a glance

Where the upgrade pays off

Benchmarks

What changes when you swap the card

Start with the lockout, because it is new. The 5700 XT launched before AMD put ray tracing hardware on Radeon, and games have started to require it. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Doom: The Dark Ages both need a ray tracing capable GPU to start, so on a 5700 XT the question is not which settings to drop. The game simply does not run. Every RDNA 4 card in this article clears that bar.

Then upscaling. FSR 4 is RDNA 4 only, and a 5700 XT is capped at FSR 3.1 for good. Community workarounds that bring FSR 4 to older Radeon cards target the RX 6000 and RX 7000 series, and reports suggest RDNA 1 is not a practical candidate. Our DLSS and FSR comparison covers what the newer upscaler changes in practice.

Then memory. The 5700 XT carries 8 GB, and 8 GB is the trap of this generation: new releases at 1440p already trim texture quality to fit it. Going to 16 GB is a durability argument as much as a frame-rate one, and our 16GB VRAM breakdown shows where that headroom gets spent.

Power is where the XT and non-XT split. The 5700 XT is a 225 W board. The 9070 XT is a 304 W board, and AMD's minimum power supply recommendation for it is 750 W. The 9070 is a 220 W board with a 650 W recommendation, which means it fits almost any system that ran a 5700 XT without a second purchase.

Last, the platform. A lot of 5700 XT systems are B450 or X470 boards with a Ryzen 3000 chip, which run the graphics slot at PCIe 3.0. An x16 RDNA 4 card loses little there. The older CPU is the bigger limit, especially at 1080p, so check it against our CPU pairings for the 9070 XT before you assume the card is the only part to change.

The upgrade to buy: Sapphire Pulse RX 9070 XT

This is the card to buy if your power supply can take it.

Sapphire 11348-03-20G Pulse AMD Radeon™ RX 9070 XT Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6, AMD RDNA 4

Buy the Sapphire Pulse RX 9070 XT on Amazon

Specs

What it does well

The 9070 XT is the clearest AMD value win of this generation, and it is the full version of the step this article is about. TechSpot measured the non-XT 9070 at 156% to 186% ahead of a 5700 XT across its per-game results, and the XT runs about 8% ahead of the 9070 on top of that. At 1440p that is the difference between negotiating settings and leaving them on high.

Sapphire's Pulse line is the one we keep coming back to at the mid tier. The cooler stays quiet under load, build quality holds from one generation to the next, and the SKU on the box is the SKU you ordered, which matters on a chip where the XT and non-XT listings sit side by side.

You also get every RDNA 4 feature gate at once: hardware ray tracing that makes the lockout titles playable, FSR 4, 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, and PCIe 5.0, which a PCIe 3.0 board simply runs at its own speed.

What you give up

Power, and it is the whole counterpoint. You are going from a 225 W card to a 304 W card, and AMD wants 750 W behind it. A quality modern 650 W unit can carry it, as our 650 W breakdown explains, but a budget unit bought for the 5700 XT years ago is the wrong place to test that. If you need a new unit, our power supply picks for the RX 9070 family cover it.

The extra 79 W also lands inside a case that was only ever handling the old card. A case with one intake fan and a solid front panel will feel the difference.

Who it's for

A 5700 XT owner on a 1440p high-refresh or 4K 60 Hz panel, with a power supply that has real headroom, who wants to buy once and skip the next upgrade cycle.

The lower-power pick: ASRock RX 9070 Challenger OC

The same generational jump, without touching the power supply.

ASRock Radeon RX 9070 Challenger 16GB OC Graphics Card, RDNA 4, 2520MHz Boost, 16GB GDDR6 256-bit, PCIe 5.0, Triple Fans, 0dB Silent, LED Indicator

$699.99

Buy the ASRock RX 9070 Challenger OC on Amazon

Specs

What it does well

The non-XT 9070 is the card TechSpot used to measure the gap: close to triple the 5700 XT in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty at 1440p, and more than two and a half times in Black Ops 6 and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. You give up roughly 8% against the XT and keep every feature.

The power story is the rare good news in a GPU upgrade. At 220 W it draws slightly less than the 225 W card it replaces, so the power supply and cables that ran your 5700 XT already cover it. For anyone on an older unit, that removes a second purchase and a rebuild from the plan.

ASRock ships the Challenger with a triple-fan cooler and a zero-RPM idle mode, so it stays silent on the desktop. At 220 W the cooler has an easy job, which is why the idle mode is usable rather than decoration.

What you give up

Challenger is ASRock's entry cooler tier, below Steel Legend and Taichi. It handles 220 W without drama, but under a long session it is audibly working where a heavier cooler would not be.

The bigger giveaway is positional. The 9070 sits close enough to the XT that buyers who could have stretched tend to notice later, and our RX 9070 vs RX 9070 XT comparison puts numbers on that gap. If your power supply has headroom and the price gap is small, the XT is the better buy.

Who it's for

A 5700 XT owner on an older or 650 W-class power supply, or in a quiet or compact case, who wants the full feature jump and nearly all of the performance without changing anything else in the build.

The budget step: XFX Swift RX 9060 XT 16GB

Every feature gate fixed, for the buyer whose budget is the hard limit.

XFX Swift AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT OC Triple Fan Gaming Edition with 16GB GDDR6 HDMI 2xDP, RDNA 4 RX-96TS316BA, Graphics Card, Compatible with Desktop PCs

$659.99

Buy the XFX Swift RX 9060 XT 16GB on Amazon

Specs

What it does well

The 9060 XT 16GB clears the same two gates the 5700 XT cannot: hardware ray tracing and FSR 4. It also doubles the VRAM, and the 16 GB version is the only one to consider, because the 8 GB 9060 XT walks straight back into the trap you are trying to leave.

It is the easiest card of the three to live with. A 160 W reference board power is lower than the 5700 XT's, so heat and noise drop as well, and XFX's triple-fan Swift cooler is oversized for that load. Our RX 9060 XT vs RX 9070 verdict covers exactly where its 1440p headroom runs out.

What you give up

Raw speed is the trade. This is a smaller raster step than either 9070, and on paper the memory bus goes backwards: 128-bit against the 5700 XT's 256-bit. AMD's Infinity Cache covers most of that in practice, but it is the reason this card is a 1080p and light 1440p answer rather than a high-refresh 1440p one.

It is also the pick most exposed to street pricing. When the 9060 XT 16GB sits close to a 9070, the 9070 is the better use of the money every time.

Who it's for

A 5700 XT owner gaming at 1080p who needs the ray tracing and FSR 4 gates fixed and 16 GB of VRAM on a tight budget, and who can wait for the next cycle for a bigger raster jump.

Bottom line

If your power supply has headroom and you game at 1440p or 4K, buy the Sapphire Pulse RX 9070 XT. If your power supply is older or sized for the 5700 XT, buy the ASRock RX 9070 Challenger OC and change nothing else. If you game at 1080p on a tight budget, buy the XFX Swift RX 9060 XT 16GB, never the 8 GB version. If you are still unsure the card is the bottleneck, our upgrade-timing framework walks through the signs.

Next step

Settled on an RDNA 4 card? These are the parts the swap tends to pull in next.

• Need more power supply for the XT? Our power supply picks for the RX 9070 family start at the 750 W tier.
• Still on a Ryzen 3000 chip? Check the best CPUs for the RX 9070 XT before the CPU caps the new card.
• Upgrading the display too? Our gaming monitors for the RX 9070 XT match the card's 1440p headroom.

FAQ