GPU Upgrade – Size Matters!

Four and a half years ago, I upgraded my graphics card from an AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB to a Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB, which you can read about in this article: I Just Upgraded To The ROG Strix RX-5700 XT GPU. Four years is a long time in tech, and when it was launched in 2019, the RX 5700 XT was competing against the Nvidia RTX 2070Ti. I had been hankering for an RTX card for ray tracing, but Nvidia’s prices were sky-high, combined with a worldwide shortage of GPUs. Anyway, it satisfied my outbreak of STS – Shiny Thing Syndrome – and has performed beautifully ever since, unlike AMD’s Adrenaline drivers, but that’s another story.

STS Strikes Again!

Gaming and GPU technology move quickly, and soon enough, STS hit me again. With so many games adding new features and GPUs getting faster and faster, I began to look at replacing the 5700. Perhaps FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – could also have been a factor, so I set my sights very high and began to look at AMD’s new RDNA 4 9000 series cards and Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series. In the end, it was a toss-up between AMD’s RX 9070 XT 16GB and Nvidia’s RTX 5070Ti 16GB cards. This time around, I really wanted to go the Nvidia route since I hadn’t used one of their cards since the GTX 970 in 2015, and I was keen to see how the RTX series did ray tracing. However, the debacle over Nvidia’s 12VHPWR (or 12+4 pin) 16-pin power connector burn-outs ultimately put me off, so it had to be the RX 9070 XT.

Gigabyte Aorus Elite RX 9070 XT 16 GB

I really wanted to continue with an Asus card, but they were difficult to find, and the Asus Prime examples were in shops located in dodgy areas of Buenos Aires. In the end, I found Gigabyte’s top-of-the-line card in a city centre shopping mall dedicated to all things computer-related – paradise for me. Naturally, I had researched the GPU market extensively, and once I got tired of endless YouTube benchmarks and bar charts, I got on my bike and bought the card.

Is Your PC Case Big Enough?

I have a Cooler Master Storm Trooper full tower case. It’s enormous, will accommodate up to eight spinner hard drives, has numerous filters, and when fully loaded, weighs an absolute ton! But, I was under the mistaken belief that practically any GPU would fit in the case, because when I bought the case, most GPUs were less than 30cm/11.8in long, with the RX 5700 XT being around 31cm. However, I spent so much time investigating the Gigabyte RX 9070 XT that I didn’t pay enough attention to its dimensions – it’s 34cm/13.4in long, and I struggled to fit it in the case, with literally mm to spare.

The card also came with a sturdy anti-sag bracket, but because the fit was so tight, I’ve been unable to set that up. However, since it’s been nearly five years since I gave the PC a good spring clean, I’ve stripped the case down to the metal and will be rebuilding it over the next couple of days.

How Does The RX 9070 XT Perform?

It’s more than twice as powerful as the RX 5700 XT, has double the VRAM, and will handle ray tracing, so I’ll be writing a further article with some before and after benchmarks once I’ve put the PC back together, if I can remember where everything goes.

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