The GPU Roller Coaster of 2025
2025 has been a wild year for PC gamers who care about graphics cards. On paper it looked like a dream: new generations of GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia, promising better performance, smarter upscaling, and smoother frame rates. In reality the launches were messy, with ugly driver issues, hardware quirks, and most of all brutal pricing and low availability.
Early adopters saw cards selling way above MSRP, sometimes hundreds more than the official price tags. It was hard to get excited about next generation performance when most people could not even find the cards in stock, let alone at a fair price.
The good news is that the rest of the year has mostly fixed those early headaches. Pricing has calmed down, availability is far better, and many of the rough edges have been smoothed out with driver updates. That means right now is actually a solid time to upgrade if you have been holding out for a modern GPU.
There is one catch. Memory prices across the tech industry are spiking thanks to huge demand from AI data centers. That is pushing up costs on anything that uses RAM or VRAM. So while GPU prices have improved, the wider PC market is still feeling the squeeze.
AMD Fights Back: Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 XT
This generation might be remembered as the point where AMD finally went properly on the offensive against Nvidia in the mainstream gaming space. Instead of wasting resources trying to crush Nvidia at the ultra high end, AMD focused on where most gamers actually spend money: mid range and upper mid range cards.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT is the star of that strategy. AMD aimed directly at Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and delivered very similar gaming performance with a much lower MSRP. On paper the RX 9070 XT launched at 599 dollars versus 750 dollars for the RTX 5070 Ti, which is a huge difference when you are building or upgrading a full PC.
Of course at launch that neat price gap did not exist in reality. Both cards blew past MSRP and sold for around 900 dollars because of low stock and high demand. At those levels the Nvidia card often made more sense. But as supply improved prices have finally settled close to their intended levels. With both hovering around MSRP, the RX 9070 XT now stands out as the smarter high end buy for many gamers.
AMD has also made big strides on features, not just raw frames per second. Ray tracing performance is now genuinely competitive rather than an afterthought, and the latest version of FSR now just called FSR with the Redstone update brings machine learning powered upscaling and frame generation that is far better than older AMD solutions. That closes one of the biggest gaps between Radeon and GeForce for players who care about modern visual tech.
Below that sits the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB, which doubles down on value. This card targets the busy mid range where a lot of 1440p gamers live. Performance is in the same ballpark as Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti but with a key advantage: 16 GB of VRAM instead of 8 GB on the weaker Nvidia cards.
At launch the RX 9060 XT was an easy recommendation. Compared to the RTX 5060 it was clearly superior: more memory, higher performance, and only about 50 dollars more. For anyone who wants to keep a GPU for several years, that extra VRAM is a big deal as modern games chew through more and more memory, especially at 1440p with high textures.
Even now with prices shifting and the 16 GB RTX 5060 Ti closer in cost, the RX 9060 XT remains one of the cheapest ways to get a 16 GB card. It delivers excellent 1440p performance and offers some future proofing for upcoming titles that will demand more video memory.
Nvidia’s Heavy Hitter: GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
On the Nvidia side the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is arguably the most interesting Blackwell generation card for gamers. It arrived as a very strong upper mid range option, only to be immediately overshadowed on price by AMD’s RX 9070 XT, which targeted the same performance tier for less money.
Once initial scarcity calmed down, the RTX 5070 Ti and RX 9070 XT ended up much closer together in real world pricing. That makes the comparison more about features and small performance edges than huge price gaps.
If you value Nvidia’s ecosystem the RTX 5070 Ti has a lot going for it. Features like DLSS upscaling and frame generation, mature ray tracing support, and Nvidia’s wider software stack can tip the scales for some players. With prices roughly aligned and performance neck and neck or slightly ahead for Nvidia in some games, many enthusiasts still lean toward the RTX 5070 Ti.
There is another surprise: overclocking. For several generations GPU overclocking has mostly been a waste of time, offering tiny gains for extra heat and power draw. The RTX 5070 Ti and other RTX 50 series cards break that pattern. They have real headroom, allowing users to push clocks noticeably higher without killing efficiency or temperatures.
That means you can squeeze out extra performance that in some cases gets uncomfortably close to far more expensive cards like the RTX 5080. For gamers who like to tweak and tune their rigs, the 5070 Ti is one of the most fun Nvidia GPUs in years.
Between AMD’s aggressively priced Radeons and Nvidia’s feature packed RTX cards, 2025 has ended up as a strong year for anyone looking to refresh their gaming PC. Whether you care most about 1440p value, high end ray traced visuals, or maxing out frame rates with clever upscaling, there is finally real competition again. That is good news for every PC gamer shopping for a new GPU.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/pc-gamer-hardware-awards-the-best-graphics-card-of-2025/
