RX 9070 XT gaming PCs were already good value, but they're even better now that well-priced RTX 5070 Ti machines are rare

Save $400

iBuyPower Slate 9 | RX 9070 XT: was $2,199.99 now $1,799.99 at Newegg

$400 off a full AMD build, sporting an RX 9070 XT and a proper 3D V-Cache CPU? Yes, that'll work for me. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D might be a little older now, but it's still one of the best gaming CPUs around, and the RX 9070 XT is the finest graphics card AMD has created in a very long time. You're also getting 32 GB of the expensive stuff, and an it'll-do 1 TB SSD.

Key specs: Ryzen 7 7800X3D | Radeon RX 9070 XT 16 GB | 32 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD

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Gaming PCs with AMD GPUs already tended to offer great value compared to many Nvidia ones, even before the recent RAMpocalypse and general high market prices. But now I'm only seeing that gap widen, at least around the $1,500–$2,200 range, which is where a lot of the value choices usually are for midrange and high-end gaming PCs.

Take this iBuyPower PC, for instance. It's $1,800 at Newegg, which is about as cheap as I can find a decent RX 9070 XT rig going for right now. In fact it's more than just decent, as it not only packs a full 32 GB of DDR5 RAM during a memory crisis, but combines that with an (admittedly previous-gen) X3D chip. Previous-gen or not, that's a great processor for gaming, and a great choice for any midrange or high-end gaming PC.

Compare this to the cheapest decent RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC I can find today, this Yeyian Phoenix Mesh for $2,000 at Newegg. That's about as cheap as I can find even a half-decent RTX 5070 Ti rig, and this one comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F. That's not a bad chip, but it's nowhere near the 7800X3D for gaming, though you are getting an extra terabyte of storage.

The two graphics cards are pretty evenly matched, though you're getting a slightly better overall feature set with the Nvidia card. But with FSR now having AI-based frame gen and with its upscaling not being massively worse than Nvidia's option anymore, this feature set isn't as big a deal as it used to be.

For around the $1,800 mark, or if I'm just looking for the best value entry-high-end or upper-midrange gaming PC, I'd be looking to Team Red. The iBuyPower PC here should be able to handle any game at 1440p and almost any at 4K, although you might have to drop some settings (or boost the upscaling) to get smooth frame rates out of the most demanding games.

Plus, there's the benefit that AMD GPUs tend to gel better with Linux than Nvidia ones, so if you ever consider switching over from Windows, you might have a better time of it. Although judging by my time spent looking at online Linux and AMD/Nvidia discussions over the last year, there doesn't seem to be a massive difference between the two in terms of Linux reliability anymore; it's not as big of a deal as it used to be.

Which might bring it all back to price to raw performance once again, and from that perspective, the RX 9070 XT rig with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is miles ahead.

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