AMD Radeon RX 5700 vs Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 – Pricing and performance

Both AMD and Nvidia recently launched new graphics cards for high-end gamers, with Nvidia refreshing its RTX 20 Series lineup with “Super” variants and AMD launching new Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT GPUs.
Nvidia’s Super graphics cards are built on the same architecture as their predecessors, but boast enhanced performance at a similar price point.
AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 lineup boasts GDDR6 memory and PCIe 4.0 support, and delivers up to 1.5-times the performance-per-watt compared to previous-generation GPUs.
South African pricing is available for all of these new graphics cards, with the devices expected to launch later this month.
Nvidia’s Radeon RTX 2070 Super is the direct competitor to these graphics cards in terms of performance, and we subsequently chose to compare this GPU with AMD’s new offerings.
While the GeForce RTX 2070 Super is listed at local online retailers, the standard GeForce RTX 2070 is still available as well, and its price may decrease after the RTX 2070 Super becomes widely available.
For this reason, we also included the standard Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 in our comparison.
Specifications and Pricing
When comparing these devices, it is important to note that Nvidia’s GeForce RTX graphics cards include ray-tracing support, which can deliver more realistic visuals in comparison to standard GPU rendering.
AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 lineup does not support ray-tracing; however, these graphics cards do offer improved clock speeds over their competitors at the cost of only slightly more power draw.
South African pricing for these graphics cards was sourced from the cheapest models available on Wootware.
Below are the specifications and local prices of the AMD Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2070 Super.
Specifications | Radeon RX 5700 | GeForce RTX 2070 | Radeon RX 5700 XT | GeForce RTX 2070 Super |
---|---|---|---|---|
Stream processors | 2,304 | 2,304 | 2,560 | 2,560 |
Boost Clock | 1,725MHz | 1,620MHz | 1,905MHz | 1,770MHz |
Base Clock | 1,625MHz | 1,410MHz | 1,755MHz | 1,605MHz |
VRAM | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
Interface Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
Memory Bandwidth | 448GB/s | 448GB/s | 448GB/s | 448GB/s |
TDP | 180W | 175W | 225W | 215W |
Price | R6,299 | R7,499 | R7,199 | R8,699 |
1440p Gaming Benchmarks
These graphics cards are high-end GPUs, capable of driving any game at around 100FPS at a standard 1080p resolution.
Subsequently, we opted to compare their performance in 1440p gaming applications, as this provides a closer indicator of true performance across applications.
We used performance data from Anandtech’s benchmark database to compare the frames-per-second (FPS) delivered by each card across multiple games and calculated the average performance across all titles.
The results are shown below:
Game Benchmark (1440p) | Radeon RX 5700 | GeForce RTX 2070 | Radeon RX 5700 XT | GeForce RTX 2070 Super |
---|---|---|---|---|
Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 65.9 | 63.8 | 72.5 | 72.5 |
F1 2019 | 87.9 | 82.8 | 98.5 | 96.6 |
Assassins Creed Odyssey | 56.4 | 66.4 | 67.8 | 70.5 |
Metro: Exodus | 52.6 | 47.9 | 58.4 | 55.9 |
Total War: Three Kingdoms | 45.5 | 50.6 | 51.0 | 57.9 |
The Division 2 | 57.5 | 62.3 | 65.3 | 73.1 |
Grand Theft Auto V | 72.1 | 85.0 | 82.2 | 93.3 |
Forza Horizon 4 | 88.4 | 76.9 | 98.8 | 90.2 |
Average FPS | 65.8 | 67.0 | 74.3 | 76.25 |
The results show that AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 lineup competes favourably with Nvidia’s RTX 2070 and RTX 2070 Super in 1440p games, delivering slightly less performance while costing well over R1,000 less than the Nvidia GPUs.
However, if you plan on purchasing titles which support ray-tracing, you will need to pick up an RTX-branded graphics card, as standard GPUs lack the specific hardware which can deliver good ray-tracing performance.
If you don’t require ray-tracing support though, you can pick up a Radeon RX 5700 XT for less than an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 at the moment, with the AMD card offering 10 more FPS in 1440p gaming at a cheaper price.
The price of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 may come down as the Super variants become available, which could make them a viable purchase as they are phased out of stock.