RX 9070 XT is 19% better value than RTX 5070 Ti but real pricing reportedly degrades cost-per-frame

Hopes were high that, with the launch of the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT, the price gouging and horrible supply issues affecting the GPU market would dissipate to some extent. While the RX 9070 GPUs did bring some much-needed heat to Nvidia, the unsatiated appetite of gamers who’d been sidelined has made the 6-figure launch stock of the RX 9070/XT seem little.

As such, you can’t practically find any RX 9070 cards at the official MSRPs at the time of writing. According to data compiled by Hardware Unboxed (HU), the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT are the best value GPUs on the market, offering the lowest cost-per-frame in the 18 tested games. However, this is only true when the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT are evaluated at their official MSRPs of $549 and $599, respectively.

As soon as we look at the real street pricing of the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT, the value proposition quickly diminishes and outgoing RX 7000 cards start to look much better.

Inflated GPU prices negatively affect value proposition

HU reports that, if we take the RX 9070 and 9070 XT at $549 and $599 MSRPs, the GPUs become the best value offerings on the market followed by the RTX 5070 and the RX 7800 XT. In this case, the cost-per-frame of the RX 9070 and 9070 XT comes out to be around $8.46 and $8.11, respectively, at 4K. The direct competition from Nvidia in the RTX 5070 and the RTX 5070 Ti have much higher cost-per-frame figures of $9.17 and $10, respectively. Seeing this, it is no wonder that AMD has sold a ton of GPUs and is gaining market share.

Unsurprisingly, the RTX 5090 with a cost-per-frame of $15.50, the RTX 4080 with $15.19, and the RTX 4090 with $14.68 make up the bottom three in this comparison.

But, as we all know, finding any next-generation GPUs at the listed MSRPs is next to impossible. So, any value comparison has to be made with the street pricing in mind. Hardware Unboxed has also compiled the data using the actual Newegg pricing of these cards.

Based on the inflated prices of $750 for the RX 9070 XT and $670 for the RX 9070, RDNA 4 boards are no longer the best value-for-money cards, having been replaced by the RX 7700 XT and the 7800 XT. The RDNA 4 boards, in this scenario, cost $10.14 (RX 9070 XT) and $10.31 (RX 9070) per frame. Here, the RX 9070 XT offers a 15% better value vs the RTX 5070 Ti while the RX 9070 offers a small 6% vs the RTX 5070.

Looking at the worse value GPUs, the RTX 5090 at a real price of $2,700 takes the cake with a whopping cost of $20.93 per frame. Although the RTX 5080 presents a much better value at $15.70, it is still a terrible option overall, since it gets handily beaten by the RTX 4080 Super, a GPU that the RTX 5080 is meant to replace.

In addition to the cost-per-frame analysis at 4K in the US, Hardware Unboxed also takes a look at 1440p data, value analysis of premium AIB options, and non-US markets like the EU and Australia. So, the whole video, linked below, is worth a watch if you are researching for a new graphics card.

In the end, it is quite sad to see the state of the PC gaming at the moment. With so many good games like the Doom: The Dark Ages on the way, gamers who were hoping for an upgrade have no choice but to wait. We don’t know how much longer it will take for the supply and prices to get back to normal.