Upgrading from my RTX 3070?

[ibex333]

Need some advice on an upgrade. Mainly concerned with 1440p. Don't care for 4k yet, don't need it.

My main thing is the insane prices. I looked up some info and it looks like the 5070 is only 60% faster. But the issue is it's not just 60% more expensive. Its far, far more than that.

I can sell my 3070 for only around $200 or so. But the 5070 would cost me something around $540 at best. Thats neither wise, nor cost efficient. I am ok with AMD but that's even more expensive.

Would you even bother if you were me?

My main goal is maxed or very high graphics @ 1440p in games like STALKER 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk.

 

[jobert]

The the RTX 5070 is only 10% more than what the 3070 msrp was 5 years ago. To complain about that seems insane. 60% is a pretty huge upgrade and in ray tracing and path tracing it's closer to 100% increase. At this point I would just wait on the Super version of the card which may end up coming in at the same price and will have 50% more vram. That would make way more sense for you considering how long it looks like you want to keep a card because 12 gigs is right at the limit in a couple games right now.

 

[arthur_tuxedo]

Need some advice on an upgrade. Mainly concerned with 1440p. Don't care for 4k yet, don't need it.

My main thing is the insane prices. I looked up some info and it looks like the 5070 is only 60% faster. But the issue is it's not just 60% more expensive. Its far, far more than that.

I can sell my 3070 for only around $200 or so. But the 5070 would cost me something around $540 at best. Thats neither wise, nor cost efficient. I am ok with AMD but that's even more expensive.

Would you even bother if you were me?

My main goal is maxed or very high graphics @ 1440p in games like STALKER 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk.

Have you tried DLSS 4 Transformer model? That should give your 3070 some additional legs, and most people have been very happy with the image quality and performance. The 5070 Super with 18 GB VRAM should be a better value than the current 5070, assuming pricing stays reasonable. Value on the AMD side is not-so-great right now, as the Blackwell cards have largely come back to MSRP but RDNA 4 pricing is still elevated. I thought my 9070 non-XT was a great deal for $550 at launch, and it’s still OK at $600, but I wouldn’t pay more than that. I’d rather pay $600 for the 9070 than $540 for a 5070, for what it’s worth, mostly because it has 16 GB VRAM. The 9070 XT is pretty pointless right now, since a 5070 Ti is only about $50 more and has DLSS. The rest of the gaming GPU stack is so poorly priced that it might as well not even exist, as far as I’m concerned, especially if you’re looking for a “wow” upgrade from your 3070. I was in a similar boat with my 6800 XT for years: Not really happy with the performance and itching to step up, but every meaningful upgrade felt like highway robbery until the 9070 came along.

 

[jobert]

Also check your local Walmarts. Behind the registers in electronics that have a little caged area and there might be some returned 5070 or 5070 TI cards there. They don't restock defective products and a lot of these cards were never even opened until they were returned and checked by an employee to make sure they were not getting scammed. They are typically marked down by at least $125 or more. And you have a 30-day return period so if you do happen to have an issue.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

Also check your local Walmarts. Behind the registers in electronics that have a little caged area and there might be some returned 5070 or 5070 TI cards there. They don't restock defective products and a lot of these cards were never even opened until they were returned and checked by an employee to make sure they were not getting scammed. They are typically marked down by at least $125 or more. And you have a 30-day return period so if you do happen to have an issue.

I second this. I picked up a PNY 5070ti easily from a local walmart for MSRP. Card has been great. PNY is built well.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Stay with Nvidia, whatever card you choose. Dlss transformer is so much better than fsr3 it's a joke, and while amd has caught up to the old dlss CNN model with fsr4 it's barely available in many games leaving you stuck with an outdated fsr2/3 option only.

With upscaling Nvidia's both better quality and faster. Even if you can run native DLAA at high for example, you're still better off overall using dlss and then going up to ultra with raytracing, which is about what it gives you the option for .

Also, amd is behind in perf on ray-tracing still and has no ray reconstruction which improves noise issues that are present without it.

EDIT: Frame generation has come a long way too at 60-70+ base fps. In many titles, 2-3x adds very little, unnoticeable latency thanks to Reflex in exchange for a much smoother, higher motion clarity experience by filling out your monitor's refresh rate. It isn't perfect in every game but it is in most, and like dlss, it is available in many titles while AMD's equivalent is not and lacks reflex latency reduction, making it much laggier.

 

[Dunring]

I just got the 5070 at Walmart for MSRP, and had a 3070 a while back. It's an improvement, but it's not earth shattering. If you sell your card on eBay, it's 15% since they charge their fee on shipping and taxes too. You'll like it, but it's not a mind blowing difference. Dialing back some details on the 3070 will give a good idea how much faster it'll be as an experiment. The time I notice is in huge fights in games. When there's a lot going on it doesn't bottom out as much like the 3070 did, into the 50-60fps range at times on a 1440 monitor. Now this keeps in the low 80fps or so when there's lots of players and explosions going off. 120fps typically just roaming around Destiny 2 with settings close to max.

 

[Sir Beregond]

A $540 5070 is less than what I payed for a 3070 in 2021 which was a bit over $600, so it's not the worst thing.

That said, I agree with others. If you can, wait a few months for the Super refresh and get the 18GB version. I wouldn't bother with the 12GB card, I kind of consider that a minimum these days. Like usual, Nvidia has to fix their lineup with what should have been there at launch.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

4080 super find a good deal 2nd hand. That's what I did and I love it.

 

[yinzerniner]

Need some advice on an upgrade. Mainly concerned with 1440p. Don't care for 4k yet, don't need it.

My main thing is the insane prices. I looked up some info and it looks like the 5070 is only 60% faster. But the issue is it's not just 60% more expensive. Its far, far more than that.

I can sell my 3070 for only around $200 or so. But the 5070 would cost me something around $540 at best. Thats neither wise, nor cost efficient. I am ok with AMD but that's even more expensive.

Would you even bother if you were me?

My main goal is maxed or very high graphics @ 1440p in games like STALKER 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk.

As others stated would wait for 5070 super.

5070 according to techpowerup is about 42% more powerful than 3070. Really only tech you’re missing is the frame generation on the 3070 vs the 5070, but even then to get even 2x frame gen to work well you’d need 60fps base otherwise the latency is crap. So if utilizing lots of ray tracing then the 5070 wouldn’t be able to get enough base do’s to make frame gen work well anyways.

Upscaling will still work on the 3070 quite well as it’s compatible with dlss4 transformer but you’d still be fps limited at 1440p on the heavier games.

Another thought for a temp fix would be to sell the 3070 for $200 and get a 3080ti for around $400-425. That’s roughly 5% less 1440p performance of the 5070 but at $100-150 less, and they’ve had a pretty consistent price for the last year so if/when you sell it there won’t be a huge loss, vs buying a new 5070 and then selling it for a big loss when the supers roll around.

 

[jobert]

As others stated would wait for 5070 super.

5070 according to techpowerup is about 42% more powerful than 3070. Really only tech you’re missing is the frame generation on the 3070 vs the 5070, but even then to get even 2x frame gen to work well you’d need 60fps base otherwise the latency is crap. So if utilizing lots of ray tracing then the 5070 wouldn’t be able to get enough base do’s to make frame gen work well anyways.

Upscaling will still work on the 3070 quite well as it’s compatible with dlss4 transformer but you’d still be fps limited at 1440p on the heavier games.

Another thought for a temp fix would be to sell the 3070 for $200 and get a 3080ti for around $400-425. That’s roughly 5% less 1440p performance of the 5070 but at $100-150 less, and they’ve had a pretty consistent price for the last year so if/when you sell it there won’t be a huge loss, vs buying a new 5070 and then selling it for a big loss when the supers roll around.

You are misreading the techpowerup chart. The 3070 gives 63% of the 5070 performance at 1440p so that means the 5070 is 59% faster because you divide 100 by 63. And in ray tracing at 1440p, the 5070 is 92% faster than the 3070.

 

[yinzerniner]

You are misreading the techpowerup chart. The 3070 gives 63% of the 5070 performance at 1440p so that means the 5070 is 59% faster because you divide 100 by 63. And in ray tracing at 1440p, the 5070 is 92% faster than the 3070.

I’m going by the relative performance chart for the 3070. It shows the 5070 being 144% (typo on 42 earlier ) vs the 3070 at 100%
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-3070.c3674

And the relative performance going the other way shows the 5070 at 100% with the 3070 at 69% (nice)
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-5070.c4218

But yes on ray tracing, 5070 a big step up from 3070, and though a much smaller step up from the 3080 ti, 3090 and 3090 ti

 

[MaZa]

I went to 9070XT from 3070. 3070 was a bad GPU purchase, as a 4K gamer mind you, to the point that I felt bit scammed. Nvidia pulled a fast one by claiming it was equivalent to 2080Ti. Which it was until you started to approach its VRAM limits. The lack of VRAM was really holding otherwise good card back...

Event though I miss features like RTX HDR, I am personally glad I got out of Nvidias stranglehold. 9070XT is blazingly fast and FSR4, which you can get to almost any single player game (that has upscaling) via Optiscaler, is shockingly good. Way better than DLSS3 was and not too far from DLSS4 although I did not have much time with that version because of Nvidias driver issues that seemed to never end.

Ray tracing isn't as good as Nvidia, that is granted, but it is finally playable now, 4k with performance upscaling (1080p render resolution in this case) and the games that I have played so far have been playable in at least 60fps. This is fine by me, as I said FSR4 does a very good job at fooling my eyes thinking it is a higher resolution image than it really is.

 

[Sir Beregond]

I went to 9070XT from 3070. 3070 was a bad GPU purchase, as a 4K gamer mind you, to the point that I felt bit scammed. Nvidia pulled a fast one by claiming it was equivalent to 2080Ti. Which it was until you started to approach its VRAM limits. The lack of VRAM was really holding otherwise good card back...

Yeah I bet the 3070 and 3070 Ti would be killer cards with 16GB. Granted, the limit at that point is the GPU itself, but in situations where the 8GB buffer causes stutters and massive drops or texture pop-in? Yeah...

Wife has a 3070 Ti right now. Upgraded her to a 4K LG OLED and luckily she doesn't usually play the kind of games she runs out of VRAM on...mostly. I'll probably look at getting her a 5070 Ti Super for the 24GB and then she'll really be set for a long time.

 

[chameleoneel]

Newegg has a Sapphire Pulse 9070 non-XT for $550.