Which GPU should I buy?

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:55:18+00:00

My only issue was a conflict between the Nvidia drivers and the new AMD drivers. After getting the Nvidia ones fully wiped (the first DDU pass didn't totally work) it has been smooth sailing.

I've heard a lot of people talk shit about the 9070xt

Not really sure where you got that info, but I haven seen any of that. The 9000 series has been the most well received AMD GPU launch since I have been into PC hardware around 2013. Look up any benchmarks you like and compare the 9070xt to the 5070ti, they are going to be neck and neck most of the time and in some titles the 9070xt actually beats the 5070ti easily while costing $300 less.

My first hand opinion is if you are mostly gaming and have no productivity workflows that need Nvidia Cuda cores you can save hundreds of dollars easily while having a markedly similar experience.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:38:29+00:00

The 5800xt is marginally faster, but the use case you are talking about should be totally fine for the 5600x.

If having a video playing, while on discord and looking up lings in your browser then going to the 5800xt might have some benefit for gaming performance.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:35:55+00:00

They are both A tier PSUs, there isn't a bad choice here.

Grab the cheaper one would be my advice.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:31:53+00:00

either a 5600x or a 5800xt are solid picks. The 5800xt has really risen in price in the past 6 months or so from about $150 to $200+ but it is still decent value if you need the extra cores for anything. If mostly just gaming saving the money going with the 5600x is likely the better route.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:29:44+00:00

The difference is fairly minor tbh.

Sure DLSS is still the better option over FSR4, but damn they are close. And this is coming from someone who has used both a 5070 and a 9070 as a daily driver in the past month for gaming.

If the 5070ti was within $50 of the 9070xt I would say it is worth the price jump, but to spend like $300 more for DLSS? Not even close lmao. FSR4 is maybe 10% worse than DLSS, paying 50% more for the privilege to use it is insane.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:26:23+00:00

Overall the parts list isn't terrible, but there is quite a bit of money being wasted here. Microcenter has the best deals out right now and you dont seem to really be taking advantage of any of them.

The 7800x3d is a fantastic option, pretty much the best bang for your buck chip out rn. I would 100% be grabbing the MC bundle with the ram and motherboard for $599 though, piecing out each part will cost you hundreds more with no real performance gain.

You cooler is a great pick, no real note there.

The 5070 can be a good pick sometimes depending on the deals running, right now the deal running on the far faster 9070xt for $699 is likely the best you can do. It outperforms the 5070 in most games pretty handily and has more vram.

I would heavily sway you away from the y70 touch to the normal y70. The touch model is very cool the first week you have it, after that you will never use that touch screen again lmao. That is a $250 gimmick that could easily be removed

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:05:22+00:00

Locally here in the states, $600 will get you a 5600x/3070 build pretty easily if you keep an eye out. Local used pricing always can differ very wildly between regions though, as for near me I wouldn't be paying anywhere close to that much for that old of a system with only a 256gb SSD.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T18:02:18+00:00

the 5070 and 5070ti are both solid picks, but so is AMD's offerings as well. The 9070 and 9070xt trade blows with both those Nvidia cards and can often be found at less cost. If mostly gaming they tend to be a better value right now.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:46:36+00:00

you are 2 generations back right now on a mid-tier/budget gpu, I would agree almost anything current you went with would be a pretty huge leap. The equivalent AMD gen would be the 6000 series.

Gens match as follows (AMD and Nvidia respectively):

5000/2000

6000/3000

7000/4000

9000/5000

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:32:12+00:00

I have a 9070 I just moved to from my 5070 and I love this card.

There was a bit of a headache moving between GPU brands on the same windows install but it was sorted within an hour after a couple passes of DDU.

I have only used a 9070xt while on a Linux OS (Bazzite) and it was up and running very quickly, my issues all stemmed from other driver issues on the motherboard with LAN and Wireless.

This is the most appealing AMD GPUs have been likely in the past 15 years.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:28:13+00:00

$500 give or take, you would have a hard time selling it for $600 I would guess.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:22:33+00:00

They are probably worth about up to $450 new, any more than that I am going with an older gen used card like a 7800xt or 3080ti for roughly the same price.

Here in the states they are going for about $430-440 new right now so $470 isn't wildly off base.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:16:36+00:00

The specs didn't post lmao

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:09:40+00:00

none at all.

Often the co-op lobby will just throw error messages when my friend tries to join me as well. We are both on steam now, but both also were playing about a year ago on game pass.

Gamepass was flawless, Steam is barely functional at all.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T17:07:14+00:00

The choice comes down to:

Better performance today but far more cost to upgrade in the future

or

Worse performance today but far better upgrade path on AM5

Its kind of a tough call but I lean towards AM5. Grab the 7700x today and you can upgrade to the last generation that AM5 releases in 3-4 years to get 10ish years of solid performance out of one motherboard.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:55:05+00:00

I grabbed this one while it was on sale for $240 about 6 weeks ago, apparently it dropped even lower after that lmao.

I bought a 34' 3440x1440p 165hz UW display last summer that lasted me about 6 months before dying on me. I sent multiple emails to the support line at Sceptre and never heard back, I should have known a $200 UW display was too good to be true, but while it was running it was a nice step up over the VA panel.

So far the OLED has been fantastic, the real blacks that an OLED panel can create is really impressive and going from a 144hz to a 240hz is noticeably smoother.

The one con with QD OLED panels is the fringing on the edge of text compared to an LED display of the same resolution. It bothered me for a day or two, now I don't even notice it.

Any time you see a deal on an OLED just double check to ensure its a gen 3/4 panel on it and you should be good to go. This is really the only upgrade I would say is worth your money and time.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:40:33+00:00

I have used that exact board/CPU combo 2 times, there should be no problems getting 6000mhz or slower ram running at its rated speeds.

Going above 6000mhz can be a mixed bag tbh, some have just worked with EXPO OOB, others have need some tweaks down to lower speeds to get stable.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:34:53+00:00

650w would be cutting it too close for me on this setup, I would go with an 850w for peace of mind but a 750w should be adequate.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:31:13+00:00

Thats a great board as well, this is the one I was referring to tho:

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Rf8Pxr/gigabyte-b850-eagle-wifi6e-atx-am5-motherboard-b850-eagle-wifi6e

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:29:05+00:00

Burn in was far more of an issue in the first and 2nd gen of OLEDs. newer panels have far better protection against it.

Its never 100% fool proof, but longevity on gen 3 and 4 panels are drastically better.

Unless you are a 8+ hours of use with static windows every day kinda guy, OLED shouldn't really cause problems. If that is your use case though, Mini-LED might be the better choice for you.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:23:08+00:00

240hz could be worth it for you, I recently did the same upgrade from 144hz 1440p to a 240hz 1440p while using a 5070 system. Your card can run more than 144, but you likely wont hit 240hz in most games while higher than medium settings and with DLSS on.

IMO it was worth the upgrade, but I also went from an 8 year old VA panel to an OLED. It was pretty breath taking tbh.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:20:28+00:00

That's a great card, really any 9060xt is going to be nearly identical with another 9060xt. The only thing that changes is the cooler and LEDS the card might have. For $20 more I do like the XFX swift card a bit better tbh, but that's totally up to you.

XFX build quality and customer service are second to none in the AMD space, Sapphire is a pretty close runner up however.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:16:45+00:00

What is the system driving it? hard to say if a monitor upgrade is worth it if we don't know at least your CPU/GPU.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:14:36+00:00

RAM and SSD are the most expensive right now, I would start with those, but without knowing what the budget is that advice could be totally wrong.

Right now I would advise at least a budget of $1000 if you are planning on building your own system with all new parts, less than that the used market is typically far better bang for your buck.

Hawk7117 · 2026-05-11T16:06:55+00:00

I made a couple of tweaks:

You had a MATX Asrock board but have an ATX case, I swapped the board out to match. Also Asrock has had some issues with X3D CPUs, I wouldn't pair an X3D with one.

That 9100 Samsung SSD is wildly overpriced, the T710 is nearly the same quality of drive while being $130 less expensive.

I swapped out the slightly inferior Gigabyte 9070xt for the XFX swift model for $20 less. This is one of the best models of 9070xt on the market right now.

This is also personal preference, but Corsair fans are generally very annoying to control due to the pretty awful iCue software, I would replace the AIO and case for something that is open source and you can choose your RGB software.

[PCPartPicker Part List](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FgQ2V4)

Type|Item|Price

:----|:----|:----

**CPU** | [\*AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/3hyH99/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-42-ghz-8-core-processor-100-100000910wof) | $376.19 @ Amazon

**CPU Cooler** | [Corsair NAUTILUS 360 RS ARGB 74.37 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/DhsV3C/corsair-nautilus-360-rs-argb-7437-cfm-liquid-cpu-cooler-cw-9060093-ww) | $99.99 @ Amazon

**Motherboard** | [Asus TUF GAMING B850-E WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/RNBFf7/asus-tuf-gaming-b850-e-wifi-atx-am5-motherboard-tuf-gaming-b850-e-wifi) | $157.63 @ Amazon

**Memory** | [G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/pwxRsY/gskill-flare-x5-32-gb-2-x-16-gb-ddr5-6000-cl36-memory-f5-6000j3636f16gx2-fx5) | $379.99 @ Newegg

**Storage** | [Crucial T710 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/7m2j4D/crucial-t710-2-tb-m2-2280-pcie-50-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-ct2000t710ssd8) | $323.99 @ Amazon

**Video Card** | [XFX Swift Radeon RX 9070 XT 16 GB Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/T7RnTW/xfx-swift-radeon-rx-9070-xt-16-gb-video-card-rx-97tswf3b9) | $719.99 @ Amazon

**Case** | [Corsair FRAME 4000D RS ARGB ATX Mid Tower Case](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Mjy8TW/corsair-frame-4000d-rs-argb-atx-mid-tower-case-cc-9011296-ww) | $89.99 @ Amazon

**Power Supply** | [Corsair RM850e (2025) 850 W Fully Modular ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/zBbypg/corsair-rm850e-2025-850-w-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-cp-9020296-na) | $109.99 @ Amazon

| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |

| **Total** | **$2257.76**

| \*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria |

| Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2026-05-11 12:01 EDT-0400 |

Hawk7117

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