RTX 5060 Ti 16GB or RX 9070 XT for local AI? Which 16GB graphics card to buy

You have set aside the money, you have a PC with room for a new card, and you want to run an AI model at home: a chat assistant, a coding helper, maybe image generation. Sixteen gigabytes of video memory is where most people start, and two cards sit at that level: the ASUS Prime GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and the ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB. Here are the questions buyers ask most, answered side by side.

Is the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB good for AI?

Yes, and for a first build it is the safer choice. Its 16GB of GDDR7 memory runs at 448 GB/s, and it uses NVIDIA's CUDA, the software that Ollama, llama.cpp, PyTorch, ComfyUI and most projects on GitHub assume. Independent testing shows what that buys. An 8 billion parameter model generates roughly 51 to 60 tokens a second, a 14 billion parameter model about 33, and OpenAI's gpt-oss 20B around 82. A larger mixture-of-experts model, Qwen 3.5 35B-A3B, still managed about 44 tokens a second with a very long context of around 100,000 tokens. All of that from a card rated at 180 watts.

What will not fit on it?

Seventy billion parameter models do not fit at all. A 27B dense model fits only with a tiny context and runs at about 15 tokens a second, and a 32B model fits only in a heavily squeezed form and crawls at about 10. Think of 16GB as the card for 8B to 14B dense models plus mixture-of-experts models up to about 35B.

Is the RX 9070 XT the better buy?

Sometimes. It has the same 16GB but a wider memory bus, up to 640 GB/s against 448 GB/s, and it is the stronger gaming card. If you play as much as you run AI, that counts. For AI it uses AMD's ROCm on Linux or the Vulkan route, which both work with Ollama and llama.cpp but ask for more decisions about drivers and operating system, and ComfyUI lists only experimental support for it on Windows.

Which one if I mostly chat with models?

If you run mostly text models and are comfortable on Linux, the RX 9070 XT is reasonable, especially if it is clearly cheaper where you live. If the two cost about the same, the 5060 Ti is the easier road.

What about the 12GB RTX 5070?

Skip it for AI. Twelve gigabytes limits what loads, and extra gaming speed does not help a model that does not fit.

Should I buy a used 24GB card instead?

A used 24GB RTX 3090 is faster, at about 87 tokens a second on an 8B model against the 5060 Ti's mid-50s, and it handles 27B to 32B models with real context. But it draws about twice the power, needs a bigger power supply, and the used market is a gamble, so buy only from a seller you trust and compare it with the price of a new 16GB card.

Which should you choose?

• First AI build, Windows, image generation, tutorials: the 5060 Ti 16GB.

• Serious gamer too, mostly text models, happy with Linux: the RX 9070 XT, if it is clearly cheaper.

• Want 27B to 32B models comfortably: look at 24GB rather than stretching either card.