Question Is a 6950 XT worth it over a GTX 4070 ?

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rds1220

rds1220

Splendid
Sep 10, 2011
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Well I've been waiting and waiting for the GTX 4070 to come out. Its out and as expected it is disappointing and over priced ad I am now re-evaluating my options. That said would it be worth getting a 6950XT instead? It has more memory is only a little more expensive than a 4070 and compared to the 4070 it doesn't seem to bad. I guess what I'm saying is with the 6950XT it seems like you are getting more for your money. Thoughts?
 
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It uses more power than the 4070, and its RT features aren't as good. But it does have 16gb VRAM and better raster performance

I was going to get a 6950xt last year but the site I was going to ended up not having the card. I was not happy for a few days. Of the two, I would probably get it based on that video. It really depends if you want RT or not.

Some games use more than 12gb vram now if you have it, and more are likely to in the future. Consoles have 16gb unified, so it makes sense to match them.

suggested PSU for a 6950xt is 700w whereas the 4070 would work with what you have. Possible you would be fine with either. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6950-xt.c3875
 
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Colif said:
It uses more power than the 4070, and its RT features aren't as good. But it does have 16gb VRAM and possibly better raster performance

I was going to get a 6950xt last year but the site I was going to ended up not having the card. I was not happy for a few days. Of the two, I would probably get it based on that video. It really depends if you want RT or not.

Some games use more than 12gb vram now if you have it, and more are likely to in the future. Consoles have 16gb unified, so it makes sense to match them.

suggested PSU for a 6950xt is 700w whereas the 4070 would work with what you have. Possible you would be fine with either. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6950-xt.c3875
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I'm heavily starting to lean that way as I don't care about raaytracing or DLSS. I see both as gimicky and really I just want performance.
 
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The 4070 doesn't quite have the performance, but you will notice the difference in your energy bills, especially if you live anywhere not called the United States. The cost difference will grow quite a bit between those two year over year.
 
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KyaraM said:
The 4070 doesn't quite have the performance, but you will notice the difference in your energy bills, especially if you live anywhere not called the United States. The cost difference will grow quite a bit between those two year over year.
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that’s not a good reason. For example, you can also easily say, “Get a 75W gtx 1630 if you’re worried about energy costs, the 200W rtx 4070 is very expensive year over year comparatively.”
 
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The Historical Fidelity said:
that’s not a good reason. For example, you can also easily say, “Get a 75W gtx 1630 if you’re worried about energy costs, the 200W rtx 4070 is very expensive year over year comparatively.”
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No you can't in context of this question because the 1030 is nowhere near the performance of either of those GPUs. This is a strawman argument and has no place here, sorry. In the given context, energy consumption  is a valid argument because we are talking about two GPUs that fall within a 15% performance difference here. Not some low-end trash card only good for putting out a display signal vs a high-performance chip.
 
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How much power is used depends on PC usage. My GPU meant to have high usage but if i sit on desktop it only uses 27watts which isn't a lot. It uses about 163watts in games though
I don't know if my idle is high or not.
Power wasn't something I thought about when buying outside of - do I need a new PSU. Same can be said about VRAM too.
 
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KyaraM said:
No you can't in context of this question because the 1030 is nowhere near the performance of either of those GPUs. This is a strawman argument and has no place here, sorry. In the given context, energy consumption  is a valid argument because we are talking about two GPUs that fall within a 15% performance difference here. Not some low-end trash card only good for putting out a display signal vs a high-performance chip.
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1630 not 1030…
 
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I would edge on the side of caution if you use a multi monitor setup if going for the AMD gpu. Its not just the idle power but a lot of other daily driver abnormalities you might come across. Just do your research of what is possible for your interests and enjoy whatever GPU you buy.
 
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If you only plan to use it for 1440p, then 4070. But if you think about 4k the 4070 shouldn't be your first choice.

If you not playing competitive shooters the DLSS 3 frame generation on the 40series cards actually works pretty nice. I play mostly single player games such as Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk, etc. and the frame generation works like magic. 4070 gives you that, but for 4k the Vram is not big enough.....you might run in situtation where you have to reduce settings (textures) in 4k
 
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I would definitely take an RX 6950 XT over an RTX 4070. In Radeon terms, the RTX 4070 is an RX 6800 XT (which is no slouch, I own one), but it's no match for the RX 6950 XT as this chart will show:
1440p-p.webp

(credit to Techspot)
You see here how the RX 6950 XT puts even the RTX 3090 to shame and matches the RTX 3090 Ti, leaving the RTX 4070 in the dust.

The only real advantage that the RTX 4070 has is power use which may or may not matter (just look at the people with i9-13900K CPUs). However, there's no question that its 12GB frame buffer will cripple the card badly long before (we're talking years here) the RX 6950 XT's 16GB gives the same problem. The RX 6950 XT is therefore the much better long-term investment.

If you're a gamer, then it's a no-brainer, the RX 6950 XT is the better buy and I wouldn't think twice about choosing it.
 
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4070 only real selling point is it uses less power than the 6950xt. THe 6950xt was a flagship model, the 4070 is mid range, so it makes sense they aren't going to be equal
The 4070 would need to be a performance increase like the 3070 to make it closer
Mostly what Nvidia offered this generation are feature upgrades. Not performance.
 
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Colif said:
4070 only real selling point is it uses less power than the 6950xt. THe 6950xt was a flagship model, the 4070 is mid range, so it makes sense they aren't going to be equal
The 4070 would need to be a performance increase like the 3070 to make it closer
Mostly what Nvidia offered this generation are feature upgrades. Not performance.
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Heck if the OP cares about power that much then get the 6950xt and customize the soft power play tables to a lower wattage while retaining a 16 GB vram buffer. Bringing down the power from 335 watts to ~250 watts might give it the raster performance of a 4070. I’ll need to test wattage levels tonight and see if my 6950xt still performs well at that wattage.
 
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rds1220 said:
I really don't care much about power consumption. I am in the US and our power bill isn't that expensive, plus the amount of time I'll actually have the computer running will only be a few hours at night to game after work.
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In that case, the RX 6950 XT is the obvious choice. It is head and shoulders above the performance level of the RTX 4070 and as we've recently seen, VRAM MATTERS! 😉 👍
 
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