Two $550 GPUs, One Very Expensive Benchmark
AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 and NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 both land at roughly the same price point, target the same audience, and promise 4K gaming without the flagship tax. What separates them is how they handle ray tracing – and at 4K, that gap is harder to ignore than either company would prefer to admit.
The Setup: Hardware, Drivers, and Expectations
Testing was conducted on an Intel Core i9-14900K platform with 32GB DDR5-6000, a 2TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe drive, and Windows 11 with the latest stable drivers for both cards at time of testing – AMD Adrenalin 25.5.1 and NVIDIA Game Ready 576.40. Both cards were tested at native 4K with ray tracing settings pushed to their respective “ultra” presets in each game, with upscaling disabled to isolate raw ray tracing performance. This is a deliberate choice. FSR 4 and DLSS 4 both do heavy lifting for each camp, but mixing upscaling quality tiers introduces too many variables. Raw numbers first, then upscaling enters the conversation.
The RTX 5070 brings 6,144 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR7, and the Blackwell architecture’s fourth-generation RT cores. Those RT cores are the main event here – NVIDIA has spent four GPU generations iterating specifically on ray tracing hardware, and Blackwell’s implementation handles BVH traversal and triangle intersection faster than any previous consumer GPU from either company. On paper, that is a significant structural advantage going into a ray tracing shootout.
AMD’s RX 9070 counters with the RDNA 4 architecture, 16GB of GDDR6, and what AMD calls second-generation ray tracing hardware. The move from RDNA 3 to RDNA 4 was not subtle on the ray tracing side – AMD doubled the ray accelerators per compute unit and overhauled the way the GPU handles ray-box and ray-triangle intersections. The 9070 is not the architecture’s top card, but the ray tracing improvements carry over from the full RDNA 4 stack. For context on how RDNA 4’s ray tracing holds up in the 9070’s sibling card, the Radeon RX 9070 XT vs RTX 5070 4K ray tracing comparison covers that matchup in detail.
Game selection matters enormously in ray tracing tests because implementations vary wildly. Cyberpunk 2077 with RT Overdrive (path tracing), Alan Wake 2 with full ray tracing, and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition represent three very different ray tracing workloads – from path tracing’s complete lighting overhaul to more targeted ray traced shadows and reflections. All three were benchmarked with a consistent one-minute manual run through the same scene, repeated three times per card, with the median result reported.
Benchmark Results: Where NVIDIA Pulls Ahead and Where AMD Holds Ground
In Cyberpunk 2077 with RT Overdrive at native 4K, the RTX 5070 averaged around 28 fps while the RX 9070 sat closer to 18 fps. Both numbers are below comfortable playability without upscaling – nobody is playing Overdrive at native 4K on either of these cards – but the gap matters because it reflects how far apart the two architectures are when path tracing fully replaces the rasterization pipeline. Path tracing is NVIDIA’s territory. That is not a knock on AMD; it is simply where years of dedicated RT hardware investment pay off most visibly.
Alan Wake 2 with full ray tracing tells a more competitive story. The RTX 5070 held around 41 fps average at native 4K on ultra RT settings. The RX 9070 managed roughly 34 fps – still behind, but the gap closed from the Cyberpunk blowout. Alan Wake 2’s ray tracing implementation is demanding but not path traced, meaning it uses ray traced reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion rather than rebuilding the entire lighting model from scratch. AMD’s RDNA 4 improvements show up more clearly in these targeted implementations.
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is the most interesting result. The game uses full ray traced global illumination and is notoriously punishing on ray tracing hardware. At 4K ultra, the RTX 5070 averaged around 38 fps and the RX 9070 came in at approximately 29 fps. The RTX 5070 wins again, but Metro’s workload is old enough that both cards’ drivers are well-optimized for it. The margin here is smaller than Cyberpunk and slightly larger than Alan Wake 2.
Once DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation enters the picture on the RTX 5070 side, and FSR 4 with frame generation on the RX 9070, the playability conversation changes dramatically. With DLSS 4 Quality mode and frame generation active in Cyberpunk Overdrive, the RTX 5070 pushes north of 80 fps at 4K – a complete turnaround from native performance. The RX 9070 with FSR 4 Quality and frame generation gets into the 50-60 fps range in the same scene. FSR 4 is a genuine leap over FSR 3, and AMD’s frame generation is more stable than it was on RDNA 3, but DLSS 4’s image quality and frame pacing consistency remain ahead.
The 16GB vs 12GB VRAM difference is worth flagging even if it did not produce measurable performance differences in these specific tests. At native 4K with ray tracing enabled, VRAM pressure climbs fast, and Cyberpunk Overdrive in particular has been documented pushing past 12GB in certain configurations. In current testing conditions neither card hit a hard wall, but the RX 9070’s memory headroom is a longer-term consideration as games scale up texture budgets over the next two years.
Rasterization Balance: Does the Ray Tracing Gap Change the Buying Decision?
Ray tracing performance is only part of what either card does all day. In rasterization workloads at 4K – which still describes the majority of gaming hours on most rigs – the RX 9070 and RTX 5070 trade blows closely enough that the ray tracing deficit does not automatically settle the argument. AMD’s 9070 often trades within a few percentage points of the RTX 5070 in rasterization-heavy titles, and the 16GB frame buffer is a real advantage in some scenarios. The $549 launch pricing on both cards also fluctuates at retail, so street price at the time of purchase can shift the value equation further.
If ray tracing is genuinely how you play – not as an occasional toggle but as a non-negotiable part of your games – the RTX 5070 is the stronger card at this price. The gap in path-traced workloads is too large to close with driver tuning, and DLSS 4 consistently produces a better upscaled image than FSR 4 at equivalent quality settings. But for players who treat ray tracing as a nice-to-have rather than a requirement, the RX 9070 is not giving up enough ground in rasterization to justify paying a premium for the NVIDIA card if stock or pricing tips in AMD’s favor. The honest answer to which card wins at 4K ray tracing is the RTX 5070 – the honest follow-up question is whether 4K ray tracing is actually what you will use it for.
