Should I buy a 5700XT, or am I in for a bad time?

[dizmo]

I'm looking to downgrade for a year or so, and the 5700XT can be had quite cheap. A lot of the games I play don't require a ton of graphical might; No Man's Sky, a few indie sims, and I just got the first Kingdom Come Deliverance. 

 

I've always had issues with AMD drivers, but every few years like to give them another go. 

 

Anyone else running a 5700/XT?

[strange13930]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

I'm looking to downgrade for a year or so, and the 5700XT can be had quite cheap. A lot of the games I play don't require a ton of graphical might; No Man's Sky, a few indie sims, and I just got the first Kingdom Come Deliverance. 

 

I've always had issues with AMD drivers, but every few years like to give them another go. 

 

Anyone else running a 5700/XT?

Just two weeks ago I was running a 6500xt 4gb a worst card it wasn't that bad, I prefer the look and feel of Amds drivers over Nvidia.

[Hinjima]

3 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I'm looking to downgrade for a year or so, and the 5700XT can be had quite cheap. A lot of the games I play don't require a ton of graphical might; No Man's Sky, a few indie sims, and I just got the first Kingdom Come Deliverance. 

 

I've always had issues with AMD drivers, but every few years like to give them another go. 

 

Anyone else running a 5700/XT?

What are you trying to achieve but downgrading?

Have a few friends who are perfectly happy with the 5700/XT  

[191x7]

12 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I'm looking to downgrade for a year or so, and the 5700XT can be had quite cheap. A lot of the games I play don't require a ton of graphical might; No Man's Sky, a few indie sims, and I just got the first Kingdom Come Deliverance. 

 

I've always had issues with AMD drivers, but every few years like to give them another go. 

 

Anyone else running a 5700/XT?

Since a few games have raytracing mandatory and/or require Mesh Shading (like Alan Wake 2), I would recommend going with a card that supports those features. If you want the performance level of a 5700XT, the cards to look for would be the RX 6600, 6600M, 6600XT, 6650XT, and 6700, and eventually the 7600 to 7600XT. On Nvidia's side, those would be the RTX 2060, 2070, 3060, 4060—or Intel Arc B570, Arc B580, and eventually the previous generation Arc A750 and A770. RFTX 3050 or Arc 380 could also do, but they are weaker and more comparable to the RX 5600XT.

[YoungBlade]

For someone on a tight budget, the 5700XT or GTX 1080 are reasonable used choices that offer enough power to handle most games. But they are a compromised experience due to a lack of support for modern features. They are what you go with when you can't afford better. There's no shame in that - you can have a lot of fun gaming on either card in 2025, but if you're only spending $100 on a graphics card, you're going to have to compromise on something.

 

I would not recommend these cards if you can get something better, and you already have something better, so I certainly wouldn't recommend downgrading to a card without RT/DX12 Ultimate support unless you have to sell your current setup and need to spend as little cash as possible on a replacement.

[mortoise]

I have a 5060 XT at the moment, and it's surprisingly alright. With FSR in particular it can do things like Helldivers & Talos Principle 2 looking good, not as sharp as a newer card, but still very playable. I'm planning to upgrade soon, but frankly there are no games I'm interested in which I feel need the extra power, I'm just looking forward to the better visuals. I think you'll be fine with the 5070 XT for the next year, as long as your expectations are things looking "pretty good" rather than "awesome"

[dizmo]

8 hours ago, strange13930 said:

Just two weeks ago I was running a 6500xt 4gb a worst card it wasn't that bad, I prefer the look and feel of Amds drivers over Nvidia.

Haha, yeah I always liked AMDs control panels and such but the constant crashing wasn't acceptable.

8 hours ago, Hinjima said:

What are you trying to achieve but downgrading?

Have a few friends who are perfectly happy with the 5700/XT  

I can get a decent amount of money for my current card right now, and I'd rather have the cash than the card. I don't really have enough time to make full use of it.

8 hours ago, 191x7 said:

Since a few games have raytracing mandatory and/or require Mesh Shading (like Alan Wake 2), I would recommend going with a card that supports those features. If you want the performance level of a 5700XT, the cards to look for would be the RX 6600, 6600M, 6600XT, 6650XT, and 6700, and eventually the 7600 to 7600XT. On Nvidia's side, those would be the RTX 2060, 2070, 3060, 4060—or Intel Arc B570, Arc B580, and eventually the previous generation Arc A750 and A770. RFTX 3050 or Arc 380 could also do, but they are weaker and more comparable to the RX 5600XT.

I just wouldn't play those games. I really hardly play any game at all right now, mostly Hearthstone and No Man's Sky. Plus a couple of indie games that could probably run on integrated graphics. The only game I'm really looking forward to is GTA6, which comes out on console long before PC, so I'll probably just buy an Xbox to play it.

 

Most of the graphs I've seen show the 5700XT about the same as a 6600/XT, but it's far cheaper. The 2070 Super would be my second choice, but they're hard to come by and also expensive.

8 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

For someone on a tight budget, the 5700XT or GTX 1080 are reasonable used choices that offer enough power to handle most games. But they are a compromised experience due to a lack of support for modern features. They are what you go with when you can't afford better. There's no shame in that - you can have a lot of fun gaming on either card in 2025, but if you're only spending $100 on a graphics card, you're going to have to compromise on something.

 

I would not recommend these cards if you can get something better, and you already have something better, so I certainly wouldn't recommend downgrading to a card without RT/DX12 Ultimate support unless you have to sell your current setup and need to spend as little cash as possible on a replacement.

It's not so much that I can't afford it, as I could buy any GPU, but it's simply not worth it currently for me as I won't have a ton of time to play games. I can get a decent amount of money for the 3070Ti (a lot more than I paid) currently, so I'd rather do that and buy something else when I upgrade the entire system next year.

 

I don't need RT, how necessary is DX12 Ultimate over DX12?

On 3/20/2025 at 3:08 AM, mortoise said:

I have a 5060 XT at the moment, and it's surprisingly alright. With FSR in particular it can do things like Helldivers & Talos Principle 2 looking good, not as sharp as a newer card, but still very playable. I'm planning to upgrade soon, but frankly there are no games I'm interested in which I feel need the extra power, I'm just looking forward to the better visuals. I think you'll be fine with the 5070 XT for the next year, as long as your expectations are things looking "pretty good" rather than "awesome"

Haha yeah it sounds like you're in the same boat as me. The only game I'm really looking forward to is GTA6, and that's likely going to be console first, so I'll play on that.

[strange13930]

9 minutes ago, dizmo said:

constant crashing wasn't acceptable.

mine never crashed

[YoungBlade]

24 minutes ago, dizmo said:

It's not so much that I can't afford it, as I could buy any GPU, but it's simply not worth it currently for me as I won't have a ton of time to play games. I can get a decent amount of money for the 3070Ti (a lot more than I paid) currently, so I'd rather do that and buy something else when I upgrade the entire system next year.

 

I don't need RT, how necessary is DX12 Ultimate over DX12?

The need for RT and DX12 Ultimate is not exactly unrelated. The two usually go hand-in-hand as far as system requirements are concerned.

 

The non-RT feature that's starting to be an issue with GPUs that don't support DX12 Ultimate is mesh shaders. Alan Wake 2 was the first game to use them exclusively, although it didn't lock out older cards. It's just that any card lacking native support suffered heavily. Like, sub-30 FPS with a 1080 Ti or Radeon VII levels of performance.

 

The first game that doesn't require RT but that does require mesh shader support is FFVII Rebirth. However, I expect it to be an anomaly. Almost certainly, future games that require DX12 Ultimate will also require RT.

 

For games the RX 5700 XT can't even attempt to play, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was first. Then FFVII Rebirth. Next will be Doom: The Dark Ages, which requires RT. This should be concerning because they are all recent titles, and likely represent a growing trend.

 

If you want the ability to play new games, DX12 Ultimate and RT both will be required by a growing number of games going forward.

 

If you have no interest in playing newer games, then you're fine, but the days of the RX 5700 XT, and all non-RT capable cards, are definitely numbered.

[Ha-Satan]

On 3/21/2025 at 12:56 PM, YoungBlade said:

If you have no interest in playing newer games, then you're fine, but the days of the RX 5700 XT, and all non-RT capable cards, are definitely numbered.

Yeah, I'm seeing some 6600s and even a few 6600 XTs selling on ebay for around the same price as the 5700 XT. The 6600 is slower than the 5700 XT in traditional rasterization but is still clearly the better buy given that it will actually run every current game providing you use the right settings.