GPU advice. AMD 5700XT Partner cards vs Nvidia RTX 2070 Super Founders

Sloppy Bob

Recently built my first PC.

It's a Ryzen 3700x and I'm looking for a graphics card for it. I'm currently using an older RX570 borrowed from a friend.

I've been waiting for the 3rd party 5700XT's to come out and quite like the look of the Powercolour Red Devil @ ~£450
I was also looking at RTX 2070 Supers but they were nearly £100 more with no great gains however the RTX 2070 Super Founders card has just come back into stock and from what I can gather, unlike the AMD blower reference cards, the Founders edition NVIDIA are pretty decent. It's coming in @ £475 with a couple of games.

I have a Freesync 100Hz 1440p monitor so from what I can gather I can now use Freesync with either Nvidia or AMD now.

Not really up on all this stuff as I'm coming from decades of laptops.

So, opinions from the forum on a post (not a card)

TIA.

next010

Benchmarks wise the 5700XT and GTX 2070 Super are in the same ball park.

The differences come down to
* RTX has hardware ray tracing support, at low ray-tracing levels this is usable at 1440p.
* RTX DLSS is a smart upscaling & anti aliasing system, requires support in game and only works at fixed resolutions like 1440p or 2160p.
* Nvidia support Freesync now but only over Displayport not HDMI.
* AMD Freesync works over DP and HDMI.
* The 5700XT has an image sharpening tool built into the AMD driver which can counteract blurry AA and doesn't need built in game support.

Really either will do, if you don't care at all about RT and are comfortable with AMD the 5700XT is a fine pick.

EndlessWaves

Powercolour is generally a budget brand, so expect a slightly noisier card. Both are massively power hungry cards though, drawing significantly more than every other component put together, so don't expect silence when in use from any of them.

Sloppy Bob

I've just noticed the Nvidia doesn't have a 0rpm fan idle when not under load. That might be a deal breaker as my PC is, purposely, on the quiet side.

I've got a 750W PSU so I've got a bit of headroom there unless I went silly with the GPU.

EndlessWaves

Cards are low power in idle and 2D work so it'll be near silent then regardless of whether it has a spin down mode or not. It's dealing with the 200W-odd of heat it's pumping out when gaming that's hard to do quietly.

Sloppy Bob

I'm too busy killing things to notice then.....

I know you say it will be silent but the RTX 2070 Super spins at 1500 rpm when doing nothing. That's a bit much.

next010

Nvidia have just released a new driver with some useful features to close the gap with AMD in certain areas.

Also one other thing that applies to both AMD and Nvidia is if your freesync monitor tops out at 100Hz for optimal results install RTSS, have it load at startup and limit the frame rate to 98 or 99fps just below the maximum refresh rate with vsync enabled in games. This will keep the display in freesync mode at all times.

AMD have a built in frame rate limiter but its not as reliable as RTSS, some games these days also have these built in and while they are the best option not all do have this.

Sloppy Bob

Cheers all.

Having read a couple of reviews of the 5700 XT partner cards that have been released it seems while the GPU is good and competitive at the pricepoint even those cards are having issues with temps or fan speed and noise to control the temps.
The other one I read couldn't maintain reference speed, despite the temps.
The Saphire Pulse looks decent but it's fugly IMO and the Powercolor won't be out for another month. So......

Got an RTX 2070 Super FE this morning for £475,  so only £25-£50 more than the AMD and I got 2 free games with it. It's running at 65C while under load, I've got a custom fan curve going with MSI Afterburner meaning it doesn't run all the time and my PC is quiet and cool when I'm not stretching it.

The card makes a "slight" difference over the RX570 I was using /cough

As well, it looks really nice in my build which has a white and silver theme. Just need some nice cables or maybe sleeve ones myself to finish it off.