Radeon 7900 XTX and XT review: Faster, hotter, and cheaper than the RTX 4080

Nvidia's RTX 4080 and 4090 GPUs are amazing performers. They are also amazingly expensive, starting at $1,200 and $1,500 and going way up for cards from partners like MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus. The 4080 is nearly twice as expensive as the original $699 MSRP for the RTX 3080.

These price hikes are caused in part by pandemic-era concerns like supply chain snarls and inflation and partly by a cryptocurrency-fueled boom (now over, blessedly) that encouraged a network of scalpers to snap up every single high-end GPU they could. Also at play was a lack of competition and the increasing cost and complexity of building gigantic, monolithic chips on cutting-edge manufacturing processes. Today, AMD is trying to solve the latter two problems with the launch of its Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs.

At $899 and $999, the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX are still objectively expensive—but because they're not a further escalation over the starting price of the RX 6900 XT, both cards are what pass for a bargain in today's GPU market. If you're looking for cards that can consistently handle 4K gaming at 60 fps and higher, these GPUs do it for less than Nvidia's latest, and they're good enough and fast enough that they'll hopefully start driving Nvidia's prices down a bit, too.

But Nvidia still retains some key advantages that complicate an easy David-and-Goliath narrative. These GPUs don't quite feel like a Ryzen moment for AMD's graphics division—a turning point where a scrappy AMD manages to make a big dent in the market share of an entrenched, complacent competitor. But if you can actually find them for their starting prices, they're the first sign we've had in a while that some relief is coming for high-end-but-price-conscious PC gamers.

Bigger Navi

AMD's chiplet design is visible in this shot—a large center die with most of the compute resources, and six smaller dies containing cache and the memory controllers.

Credit: AMD

The RX 7000 series is the third version of the RDNA GPU architecture, also occasionally referred to as "Navi," after the codenames of the GPU chips themselves. RDNA 3 doesn't add anything that feels as significant as RDNA 2's ray-tracing support, but AMD has added plenty of extra hardware and made important under-the-hood changes.

The most significant is a new chiplet-based approach, similar in concept to the one AMD uses for its Ryzen CPUs. Rather than building the entire GPU die on one manufacturing process—increasing the die's size and therefore the chances that some or all of it could be defective—AMD is building the main Navi 3 GPU die on a 5 nm TSMC manufacturing process and a series of smaller memory controller dies (MCDs) on a 6 nm process. These chips are all linked together with a high-speed interconnect, which AMD says can transfer data at speeds of up to 5.3 terabytes per second.

The main graphics compute die (GCD) contains most of the hardware you think of when you think of a GPU—compute units, shaders, ray-tracing hardware, the media encoding and decoding block, and display output. Both the 7900 XTX and XT use the same Navi 31 GCD, but the XTX runs at higher clocks and has more CUs and stream processors enabled. The XTX has 96 CUs and 6,144 stream processors, while the XT has 84 CUs and 5,376 stream processors. Both cards represent a jump up from the Navi 21 die used in the RX 6900 series, which maxed out at 80 CUs and 5,120 stream processors (and that's before you account for other performance-boosting improvements).

RDNA 3 brings a little more of everything to AMD's top-tier GPUs, from CU counts to memory bandwidth.

Credit: AMD

The MCDs all include a single 64-bit memory controller and 16MB of AMD's Infinity Cache, and they demonstrate the advantages of a chiplet-based approach. The 7900 XTX has a 384-bit-wide memory bus and 96MB of Infinity Cache, where the 7900 XT has a 320-bit bus and 80MB of cache; to accomplish this, all AMD has to do is remove an MCD. The exact same MCDs can be reused up and down the stack with all of the different RDNA 3 GCDs that AMD chooses to release, from low-end products with a single MCD up to midrange GPUs that use between two and four. Defects in MCD dies won't require the larger, more complex GCDs to be thrown out or binned, and vice-versa.

In the realm of all-new features for RDNA 3, there are three things of note. First, the GPUs include new AI accelerators, which could be useful both for the plethora of AI-assisted content creation that has sprung up in the last year and for AI-assisted upscaling (if AMD chooses to implement it in some future version of its FSR upscaling algorithm; both DLSS and XeSS use AI for upscaling, but FSR 2.0 doesn't).

Second, the video encoding and decoding block supports hardware-accelerated encoding for the AV1 video codec, just like the RTX 4000 series and Intel's Arc GPUs. This should be useful for both content creators and streamers who want to stream higher-resolution video or video at the same resolution while using less bandwidth.

And third, the "Radiance Display Engine" adds DisplayPort 2.1 support to the GPUs. Monitors that take full advantage of DisplayPort 2.1's extra bandwidth don't really exist as of this writing, but when they do, RDNA 3 GPUs will be able to drive 4K displays at up to 480 Hz and 8K displays at up to 165 Hz.

The actual GPUs

AMD is using the physical size of the 7900 series, in light of the huge 4000-series GPUs.

AMD is using the physical size of these new GPUs as a selling point, as well as the fact that they use typical 8-pin power connectors (there have been jokes). We've only seen the first-party cards AMD is making and selling itself, but if their partners follow their lead, these GPUs will be notable for looking like a run-of-the-mill 2.5-slot GPU. Unlike the RTX 4090 and 4080, they're not so huge that you'll need to worry about whether they'll fit in your case, and you won't need to learn the ins and outs of a new power connector.

Like some of the 6000-series cards, the 7900 series is somewhat odd in that it includes a USB-C port instead of a third DisplayPort; a USB-C-to-DisplayPort or USB-C-to-HDMI adapter or cable will let you use it like you would a regular display output, but for the (still rare-ish) gaming monitors with USB hubs and USB-C ports, it can handle display output and USB data over one cable. The Gigabyte M28U I use does meet these criteria, so I appreciate the addition; for people who need three DisplayPorts, it means another adapter or a cable with different connectors at both ends.

The 2.5-slot 7900 series is still thicker than 2-slot cards like the Radeon RX 6800 (top).

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The 7900 XTX is, by a very small amount, the larger of these two cards, though they're in the same ballpark. The XTX is also the only one of the two with any kind of LED lighting—some relatively low-key white strips on the fan-side of the card, similar to what Nvidia is doing with the RTX 4090 and 4080. The XT does away with LED lighting altogether. If this is the kind of thing you'll like, you'll need to look at partner cards to see whose gigantic rainbow lights can brighten your case the most.

Game performance

We don't have a 6900 XT or 6950 XT to test against, so we'll focus mostly on comparisons to Nvidia's products (we have provided AMD's own numbers for reference). The RTX 4080 is the most important comparison—it's what the 7900 series has been priced in response to, and it's the cheapest next-generation GPU Nvidia has on the market while we wait on the rebranded 12GB RTX 4080 to come out.

But we've also tested it against Nvidia's RTX 3080 Ti, which is still being sold new for as much or more than AMD is asking for the 7900 series cards. Used and refurbished RTX 3080 Tis offer a better value, of course, but they come with the standard caveats: You don't know where a used GPU has been, you have to be careful not to get scammed, and you usually don't have a warranty to fall back on if something goes wrong.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

We don't spend a ton of time poring over synthetic benchmarks in GPU reviews, because their results aren't always borne out in real-world games. But in this case, the results do capture the RX 7900 XTX and XT's performance in a microcosm. The XTX is faster than the 4080 in the DirectX12-based Time Spy test and DirectX11-based Fire Strike test, while the XT runs a bit behind the 4080. But the 4080 does better in any test that touches ray-tracing, including the Port Royal benchmark and the ray-tracing-specific test. Both cards outrun the 3080 Ti in most tests, but it's closer in the ray-tracing-enabled benchmarks.

Results with an asterisk were collected using a different test PC. Results should be comparable, overall.

Andrew Cunningham

Results with an asterisk were collected using a different test PC. Results should be comparable, overall. Andrew Cunningham

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AMD's testing data comparing the RX 7900 XTX and XT to the 6950 XT.

AMD

Both cards acquit themselves well in actual games, too. In titles with no ray-tracing features included or enabled, there's not a single one of our tests where the RTX 4080 can beat the RX 7900 XTX. The 7900 XT is usually behind the RTX 4080, but it generally keeps it close.

It's true that AMD's best card can't catch up to the RTX 4090, which beats it across the board (and sometimes by a lot). If you're solely focused on "performance crown"-type bragging rights, Nvidia is still the way to go. But that card is also $500 more expensive, so there's absolutely no question which GPU offers the better value for the money.

So far, so good for the RX 7900 cards. But things get more complicated when you start tracing rays.

Hit-and-miss ray-tracing

Ray-tracing performance was one of the RX 6000 series' biggest downsides. The situation does improve with the 7900 series, insofar as more ray-traced games will be playable on these cards than were playable on 6900-series GPUs. But there's still a notable performance gap between both 7900 GPUs and the 4080. There are still some games, both in our tests and in AMD's reference scores, where the 7900 XTX can score small wins. But the consistent wins for the 7900 XTX and near-misses from the 7900 XT that we've seen in other games don't really materialize here.

Andrew Cunningham

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AMD's own numbers show similar results to ours: it's not impossible for the RX 7900 XTX to beat the RTX 4080 in games with ray-tracing enabled, but those results are the exception and not the norm.

Both 7900 cards can handle ray-tracing at 4K reasonably well, especially in games where it's used more sparingly (the sun-drenched glassy locales in Hitman 3 tax the card more than brakelight effects in Forza 5 or torches in Tomb Raider do). But in Quake II RTX and Hitman 3, the cards both struggle at 4K, and FSR 2.0 at its highest-quality setting doesn't help the Radeon cards as much as DLSS can help Nvidia's; the 7900 XTX performs a bit more like the 3080 Ti, not the 4080, in these ray-traced games.

The 1 percent low scores from Hitman are telling—the RTX 4080 with DLSS is twice as fast here as the RX 7900 XTX with FSR 2.0, which means that the game feels playable throughout on the RTX 4080, while the Radeon cards still struggle with choppiness.

This isn't a disaster for AMD. Some of the games we tested ran quite well at 4K, and more challenging games like Hitman and Quake II RTX run pretty well if you step down to 1440p (or use a high-performance FSR setting, instead of the high-quality setting we default to for testing). But it does complicate the narrative a bit. The 7900 XTX and XT are good 4K graphics cards unless you need consistently great ray-tracing performance, in which case Nvidia still provides the better experience.

Good and bad news on power efficiency

The RX 7900 series still uses 8-pin power connectors, the same as older GPUs.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

AMD rates the 7900 XTX's total board power at 355 W and the 7900 XT's at 315 W (up from the 300 W it was originally announced at). The RTX 4080's total board power is listed at 320 W, and the 3080 Ti's is 350 W.

We measured average GPU power draw while running the Hitman 3 and Borderlands 3 benchmarks, just to get a basic sense of each card's power efficiency.

There's good and bad news for AMD here. On the bad side, the RTX 4080 is the more efficient card, especially in games with ray-tracing effects enabled—its average power consumption also came in quite a bit under the rated 320 W. The 7900 XT consumes a little more power to provide slightly worse performance in Borderlands 3, and the Hitman comparison is particularly unflattering.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The good news is that the 7900 XTX at least manages to provide better performance in exchange for its power use, as long as ray-tracing isn't involved. And both cards are a major improvement over the power efficiency of the RTX 3080 Ti in non-ray-traced games, providing better performance in Borderlands 3 at similar power levels (for the XTX) and much lower power levels (for the XT). For most people, these cards should represent an efficiency upgrade even if they can't quite catch Nvidia's.

The smaller cooling systems on these cards plus the higher power consumption do mean that these Radeon cards run a bit hotter than the RTX 4080. While HWInfo measured its average temperature at 57.6 degrees during the Hitman test and 56.1 during the Borderlands 3 test, the 7900 XTX averaged 70 degrees in both tests, and the 7900 XT was 66.4 and 64.6 degrees, respectively. These aren't dangerous temperatures, but especially in the XTX's case, I could feel that extra heat being vented out of my case during extended gaming and benchmarking sessions.

Status quo

Xbox Series S for scale. The 7900 XTX is smaller than the 4080, but that doesn't make it tiny.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT don't alter the balance of power in the GPU business. As has been the case for years, Nvidia has the edge in power efficiency, high-end performance, and add-on features like DLSS, while AMD gets by with pretty good cards that emphasize raw rasterized gaming performance for the money. At $899 and $999, these are a far cry from the RX 480 and RX 580 days a few years ago, but the dynamic is the same—AMD has undercut the RTX 4080 on price while staying within spitting distance on performance in most non-ray-tracing games (the 7900 XTX usually beats the 4080 in games we tested, while the XT trails a little behind).

Impressively, both of these cards are solid performers at 4K and can be counted on to hit or exceed the important 60 fps average in the games we tested, even before you factor in the modest boosts possible with FSR 2.0. Of the two, the 7900 XTX is the better deal by a hair. The XT costs 90 percent as much and consumes 90 percent as much power but usually delivers between 80 and 90 percent of the performance, a minor but notable discrepancy. And let's be honest: If you have $900 to drop on a graphics card, you probably have $1,000 to drop on a graphics card.

The big question is how much you care about ray-tracing. If the answer is "a lot," AMD still can't beat Nvidia, even at the 4080 tier. The Radeons are solid 1440p cards for ray-tracing-heavy games, but the experience at 4K is good in some games and poor in others. If the answer is "not much," then the 7900 series gives you as-good-or-better performance than the 4080 in games without ray-tracing, with none of the logistical problems like the 12VHPWR connector or the gigantic case-busting heatsink and fan assembly. And at $899 and $999, they handily eviscerate the handful of new, price-inflated 3080 Tis and 3080s that some retailers are still offering at and well above those prices.