Looks like you have to go AMD to get a cheap high-end gaming PC these days

The past few months have seen prices for gaming PCs steadily climb as system builders and manufacturers slowly run dry of pre-memory shortage stocks. The last thing I expected to see, therefore, was a high-end gaming PC such as this one for $1,500 at Newegg.

I highlighted a similar RX 9070 XT PC at the same price a few months ago; I was surprised back then and I certainly didn’t expect to be seeing one for the same price later on in the year.

Here we are, though: another high-end, RX 9070 XT gaming PC for $1,500 thanks to its discount. This makes it the same price as a bunch of deals on RTX 5070 gaming PCs—good deals, mind you, given a lot of RTX 5070 rigs are pushing closer to $2,000 these days with the Nvidia price hike.

Compared to the RTX 5070, the RX 9070 XT offers an extra chunk of performance at 1440p, almost keeping neck-and-neck with the RTX 5070 Ti in terms of raw raster performance. It also performs very well with upscaling (and frame gen) enabled, allowing for genuinely high refresh rate gameplay at 1440p in most games.

RX 9070 XT gaming performance

The RX 9070 XT and two other graphics cards benchmarked in a bunch of games at 1440p with and without upscaling/frame gen.

Black Myth Wukong (1440p High + Upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5070	107 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 Ti	124 Avg FPS, 107 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 XT	121 Avg FPS, 104 1% Low FPS

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5070	122 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 Ti	167 Avg FPS, 118 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 XT	174 Avg FPS, 106 1% Low FPS

F1 24 (1440p Ultra high +upscsaling (Quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5070	176 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 Ti	226 Avg FPS, 142 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 XT	292 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS

There are, of course, sacrifices to achieve this low, discounted price. Specifically, and expectedly: we’re getting just 16 GB of RAM. However, that should still do just fine for gaming, though you’ll have to be conscious of how many apps you have open at once.

It also at least looks to be dual-channel RAM, during a time when almost every new discount I see on a mid-range gaming PC is for one that has a single stick of RAM. Here, assuming the pictures do not deceive, we’re getting 2×8 GB of fast (6000 MT/s) DDR5 memory.

The Andromeda Insights rig here also has a current-gen Ryzen CPU in the form of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. It’s only a six-core affair, so don’t expect heavy multithreading chops for productivity work, but for 1440p gaming it’ll be fantastic. Plus it’s socket AM5, which means you should be able to upgrade to a current or next-gen X3D chip if you so wish, when they launch (assuming they do).

It’s mainly about that RX 9070 XT, though. That’s a truly high-end GPU, here in a very reasonably priced rig.