AMD’s next generation of graphics cards have arrived, bringing the RDNA 3-powered RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT to consumers. These new cards aim to deliver high refresh rate gaming at 4K resolutions, as well as improve on their predecessor’s raytracing performance for gamers. But how do they stack up?
Specifications:
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
- Architecture: RDNA 3
- Manufacturing Process: 5nm GCD + 6nm MCD
- Transistor Count: 57.7 billion
- Die Size:
- 300 mm2 GCD
- 220 mm2 MCD
- Compute Units: 96
- Ray Accelerators: 96
- AI Accelerators: 192
- Stream Processors: 6144
- Game GPU Clock: 2300 MHz
- Boost GPU Clock: Up to 2500 MHz
- Peak Single Precision Performance: Up to 61 TFLOPS
- Peak Half Precision Performance: Up to 123 TFLOPS
- Peak Texture Fill-Rate: Up to 960 GT/s
- ROPs: 192
- Peak Pixel Fill-Rate: Up To 480 GT/s
- AMD Infinity Cache: 96MB 2nd Generation Cache
- Memory: 24GB GDDR 6
- Effective Memory Bandwidth w/ AMD Infinity Cache: Up to 3500 GB/s
- Memory Bus Interface: 384-bit
- PCIe Interface: PCIe 4x16
- Total Board Power (TGP): 355W
- Rear I/O:
- 2 x DisplayPort 2.1
- 1 x HDMI 2.1
- 1 x USB-C w/DP 2.1
- Price: $999
AMD RX 7900 XT Specifications
- Architecture: RDNA 3
- Manufacturing Process: 5nm GCD + 6nm MCD
- Transistor Count: 57.7 billion
- Die Size:
- 300 mm2 GCD
- 220 mm2 MCD
- Compute Units: 84
- Ray Accelerators: 84
- AI Accelerators: 168
- Stream Processors: 5376
- Game GPU Clock: 2000 MHz
- Boost GPU Clock: Up to 2400 MHz
- Peak Single Precision Performance: Up to 52 TFLOPS
- Peak Half Precision Performance: Up to 103 TFLOPS
- Peak Texture Fill-Rate: Up to 810 GT/s
- ROPs: 192
- Peak Pixel Fill-Rate: Up To 480 GT/s
- AMD Infinity Cache: 80MB 2nd Generation Cache
- Memory: 20GB GDDR 6
- Effective Memory Bandwidth w/ AMD Infinity Cache: Up to 2900 GB/s
- Memory Bus Interface: 320-bit
- PCIe Interface: PCIe 4x16
- Total Board Power (TGP): 315W
- Rear I/O:
- 2 x DisplayPort 2.1
- 1 x HDMI 2.1
- 1 x USB-C w/DP 2.1
- Price: $899
Design
AMD has built the world’s first chiplet GPU, with the goal to deliver high frame rate 4K gaming for under a thousand dollars. The new AMD silicon takes cues from AMD’s work in the CPU space, taking the lessons learned there to help design the chiplet architecture that powers AMD’s RDNA 3.
The GPU is split into two parts: the 5nm Graphics Compute Die in the center with the 6nm Memory Cache Die flanking the center unit. These are connected with a high-speed 5.3 TB/s interconnect, bridging the GCD with the MCD with a huge amount of bandwidth. Each GPU has six MCD blocks, though, for the RX 7900 XT, one of those blocks is dummy silicon, with only five of the MCD units active.
AMD enabled the bandwidth needed by modifying its interconnect, taking cues from its work on Ryzen and EPYC CPUs, to create a denser, more compact design. This is how the company was able to allow the amount of bandwidth necessary for a GPU, while still staying within AMD’s power usage goals.
AMD has packed the RX 7900 XTX 96 Compute Units, as well as 96 second-generation of Ray Accelerators to power these titles, while the RX 7900 XT has 84 Compute Units and Ray Accelerators. Both cards have a boost clock over 2Ghz, with the XTX with a rated 2.5Ghz boost, while the XT is a smidge lower at 2.4Ghz. AMD tells us at their event in early November that the reason they went with GDDR6 instead of the faster GDDR6X was simply down to price and power targets, but both the XTX and XT have an impressive amount packed into their MCD: 24GB and 20GB, respectively.
AMD’s 7900 series also comes with the company’s second-generation Infinity Cache, with the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT employing 96MB and 80MB, respectively. While these numbers are down from the RX 6950 XT’s 128MB of Infinity Cache, the second generation is more efficient and brings improvements with a faster memory bus and more bandwidth compared to the RDNA 2 card.
We broke down many of the details in our post from the AMD RDNA 3 reveal event, which you can read here.
From a design standpoint, AMD has opted for a three-fan design on both cards, each of them a muted gunmetal gray. Gone are the sharp angles and aggressive look of the 6000-series cards, instead the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT feel more reserved. I do rather like it, though I have to say I miss the giant Team Rocket-style “R” on each of the fans. And while I do like the LED lights on the sides of the cards, I really would prefer the red outline we saw on the RDNA 2 cards on the side instead. I guess I just really miss the look of the 6000 series as a whole.
Between the two cards themselves, both have three fans, but the 7900 XTX is a bit wider. The 7900 XTX also has a thermistor in the fan housing to measure ambient case temperature to help dynamically control fan curves to give the best performance in a situation.
Both cards have a metal backplate with the Radeon logo emblazoned in the company’s iconic red, as well as a signature red strip on the heatsink fins themselves. As I said, a more reserved design compared to the RNDA 2’s aggressive look, but it’s not bad.
Features
Dual Media Engine
The RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT have a dual media engine that allows content creators to utilize hardware-accelerated AV1 encode. This media engine also allows for simultaneous encode or decode streams on the GPU, up to 8K60.
Radiance Display Engine
One of the major features AMD touted during their November reveal was the fact that the RX 7900 XTX and XT feature DisplayPort 2.1. This port, combined with its HDMI 2.1 port, sees the RX 7900 XTX and XT sport the port as an industry first for a consumer GPU.
Whether or not gamers will actually be able to take advantage of these ports right now remains the question, as the number of DisplayPort 2.1 monitors isn’t that many in the wild right now. But the inclusion is a “future” facing addition, and it’s nice to have it and not need it than the inverse.
As a result, the AMD RX 7900 XTX and AMD 7900 XT are capable of supporting incredibly high refresh rates and resolutions, including 8K165. In our testing, our performance hasn't come close to the DisplayPort 2.1's cap, but in esports titles where graphics aren't as intense, that extra-high framerate bandwidth will likely come in handy.
AMD’s RDNA 3 cards can also leverage Smart Access Memory when paired with a Ryzen CPU, giving a Risen CPU direct access to the GPU, increasing performance in games when used. They can also utilize AMD’s FreeSync technology to enable a smoother gameplay experience with a compatible variable refresh rate monitor.
FidelityFX Super Resolution
AMD’s 7900 series cards can also use AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), which is an upscaling technology that helps to improve frame rates at high resolutions. FSR 2.0, which has recently released in 2022, improves upon the existing temporal upscaled used to produced the image, utilizing motion vectors, frame color and depth to produce the image. FSR is used in games, particularly those with ray tracing to produce a quality image while also increasing performance.
AMD's GPUs are also powered by its own Adrenaline software, which acts as a space where you can download and install drivers, launch games with optimized settings, overclock your GPU easily, as well as record gameplay for later. Adrenaline also has its own performance metric tracking, so you can see exactly what your framerates and more are at any given moment.
The AMD software suite also includes more FidelityFX features, such as Radeon Super Resolution (not to be confused with FSR), Radeon Anti-Lag, Radeon Boost and more. These can all be toggled on in the Adrenaline software, as well as set up as a custom preset to help tweak your system for your needs at a moment's notice.
AMD RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT Gaming And Synthetic Benchmarks
But how does this all stack up in practice? We put both the RX 7900 XTX and the 7900 XT through their paces, utilizing a series of gaming and synthetic benchmarks. We compared the 7900 series cards to not just the competitor’s new 40-series GPUs, but also an array of 30-series cards in addition to AMD’s previous 6000 series of GPUs.
A note about our GPU suite: due to the nature of our site and our hardware testing, we currently do not have an AMD RX 6900 XT or 6950 XT, AMD’s previous-gen flagship cards. We do have the RX 6800 XT, which we have included in these benchmarks to help glean the gen-on-gen improvements.
Test Bench:
- CPU: Intel i7-10700K @ 3.8GHz (Boost Clock up to 4.8 GHz)
- Cooling: Corsair 100i 240mm Liquid Cooler
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus Z490 Ultra
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB @ 3200MHz
- Storage: Intel 760p 2TB M.2 NVMe, ADATA Falcon 1TB M.2 NVMe
- PSU: Gigabyte 1200 W Platinum PSU
- Case: Lian Li 011 Dynamic
- Nvidia Driver: WQHL 527.37
- AMD Driver: 22.40.00.57 Beta Driver
One thing to get out of the way as well: The 7900 XTX is AMD’s new flagship, though AMD themselves aren’t comparing it to their competition’s new flagship. Instead, from a price and performance standpoint, AMD is pitting it against the RTX 4080-class of GPUs, stating during their November event that the RTX 4090 was in a class of its own. We have included the RTX 4090 in these graphs to show the comparison, but from a value and performance proposition, we’ll be looking more at the RTX 4080 as well, as it’s the nearest priced competitor to the RX 7900 XTX.
In our Test Bench, we compared the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT to the following GPUs from Nvidia:
- RTX 4090 Founder’s Edition
- RTX 4080 Founder’s Edition
- EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra
- RTX 3080 Ti Founder’s Edition
AMD cards Included:
We ran through a number of titles with various game engines, specifically looking at a mix of DX11 and DX12 titles. We also ran 3DMark’s suite of synthetic benchmark testing designed to show relative performance in DX11, DX12, and of course ray tracing applications.
Where we could we used in-game benchmark tools to provide the most consistent result and runs across each card. Where we couldn’t, such as in Remedy’s Control or Sony’s Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, we used a predefined path as much as possible and replicated it as much as we could for the most consistent result.
While testing Fortnite, we used a gameplay replay to test, starting and stopping at the same time to ensure as consistent a run as possible.
For games that supported it, we used the Performance preset for both AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution and Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling. Where DLSS 3 and Frame Generation were present, these were enabled on the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPUs.
Since we do not have a Ryzen CPU in our test bench, we were unable to test the benefits of Smart Access Memory, but it should be noted that it has been proven to boost performance when utilized. For more information, check out GamersNexus’ coverage here.
AMD RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT Synthetic Benchmarks
In both FireStrike Ultra and TimeSpy Extreme, both 4K benchmark tests, the RX 7900 XTX and XT perform admirably. The RTX 4090 Founder’s Edition leads the pack of GPUs by a wide margin, with AMD’s flagship taking second place in both tests, beating out the RTX 4080 Founder’s Edition along the way.
The RX 7900 XT lags behind the RTX 4080, but solidly sees improvements over last-generation’s 30-series GPUs as well as the AMD 6000-series cards in our suite. But synthetics only tell part of the story, how does this shake out in real game testing?
AMD RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT Raster Gaming Benchmarks
The RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT easily deliver on the promise of high refresh rate gaming at 4K. In all our testing, both cards performed quite well across the breadth of our suite of games, with the RX 7900 XTX staying above 60 FPS at 4K in every one of our tests. Our RX 7900 XT only dropped below 60 in one game, the most demanding in our suite, Cyberpunk 2077.
Compared to each other, at 4K, the RX 7900 XTX enjoys a 15% increase in performance on average compared to the RX 7900XT, which isn’t bad for the $100 price difference between the two. Games such as Final Fantasy XIV, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla show the largest gulfs in performance on average, while the widest margin percentage-wise sees the RX 7900 XTX take a 21% performance gain over the 7900 XT in Total War: Warhammer 3.
Compared to the RDNA 2 cards, the RX 7900 XTX is a beast gen on gen, seeing a massive performance gain over the RX 6800 XT Reference Edition in each title at 4K. The 6800 XT isn’t a bad 4K performer either, and AMD has done a stellar job over the life-span of the RDNA 2 cards through driver optimizations to really get as much out of the 6000-series cards, but the gains gen on gen are simply huge.
Games like Control see the RX 7900 XTX take an 82% increase in performance over the RX 6800 XT (73fps versus 40fps, respectively). The RX 7900 XT also sees massive increases over its predecessors, with a 51% increase in performance in Cyberpunk 2077 over the 6800 XT (56fps vs 37 fps).
Compared to Nvidia’s RTX 4080 Founder’s Edition, in normal raster applications, the RX 7900 XTX beats out the competition in nearly every title. The RX 7900 XT takes third place against the other two in these tests, with the RX 7900 XTX seeing a 16% increase at 4K over the Ada Lovelace card in Watch Dogs Legion, while the RX 7900 XT only has 1% edge, well within the margin of error. On average, the RX 7900 XTX is 6% faster at 4K than the RTX 4080 Founder's Edition, in our rasterized testing.
Overall, though, the RX 7900 XT loses out more consistently to the RTX 4080 FE, but it is a much cheaper card by comparison. On average, we see the RX 7900 XT lose out to the RTX 4080 FE by about 8% across our testing.
We tested 1440p because it’s becoming more the standard monitor resolution gamers are using nowadays. While all of these cards have been advertised as 4K performers, the RX 7900 XTX and the 7900 XT can still deliver high refresh rate 1440p gaming to those who have yet to upgrade.
At 1440p, the RX 7900 XTX outperforms its RDNA 3 brethren, though the numbers are a bit closer in margin, likely due to some CPU bottlenecking at the lower resolution. In fact, in some instances we see the 7900 XT pull out some wins against its more powerful brother, with the 7900 XT seeing a 5% edge versus the 7900 XTX.
The RX 7900 XTX however, still by and large outperforms the RTX 4080 FE here, with the AMD card enjoying a 7% performance advantage in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, as well as a 9% advantage in Cyberpunk 2077. The 7900 XTX doesn’t escape unscathed, though, with the RTX 4080 FE winning in Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker.
But, given that these are all touted as performant ray tracing cards, how does RDNA 3 stack up?
RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT Ray Tracing Gaming And Synthetic Benchmarks
Ray tracing on the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s a gen-on-gen improvement over the RDNA 2 cards, providing massive uplift over the 6000 series cards in every title we tested. At 4K, the RX 7900 XTX has a commanding 85% lead in performance over the 6800 XT, while the 7900 XT sees a still impressive 61% uptick.
Overall, though, at 4K, without any upscaling tech used or frame generation, the RTX 4080 is 23% faster in ray-traced titles versus the RX 7900 XTX, in our testing. As for the RX 7900 XT, the RTX 4080 FE, on average in our testing, came out 42% faster overall when using ray-tracing.
Control shows similar results, with the 7900 XTX heading into the playable framerates at 4K, while the RX 6800 XT lags behind at 19fps when ray tracing is enabled at 4K. The 7900 XT also performs well, with a 52% increase in performance (19fps up to 29fps). Marvel’s Miles Morales also shows an uplift for the RDNA 3 cards, with the RX 7900 XTX seeing 56fps at 4K, the RX 7900 XT at 47fps, while the RX 6800 XT sits around 35fps (upticks of 68% and 34% respectively).
However, against the competition cards, the RDNA 3 GPUs seem to be more on par with the Ampere generation of GPUs rather than Nvidia’s third-generation Ada Lovelace cards. The RTX 4080 beats the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT cards handily in every test, and in some cases, it’s not close.
In Control we see a 17% increase when playing at 4K for the RTX 4080, and when DLSS is turned on, that uplift over the RX 7900 XTX is a whopping 102% increase. In Watch Dogs Legion, we see the RTX 4080 FE take a 76% increase when DLSS is enabled over the RX 7900 XTX, while it beats RX 7900 XT by 102% increase in performance.
FSR bridges the gap some, but in many cases, it brings performance on par with the 30-series GPUs, while Nvidia’s 40-series cards pull ahead. At 4K in Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 4080, using FSR 1.0, sees an average fps of 75fps, while the RX 7900 XTX sits around 54fps at ultra settings and psycho RT across the board. Meanwhile, the RX 7900 XT lags behind even more, at 48%, a 56% uplift for the RTX 4080 FE.
Fortnite and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales continue the trend of FSR keeping the RDNA 3 card competitive, but ultimately, the 3rd Generation RT Cores on Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace GPUs pull ahead in the end. Fortnite sees the RTX 4080 FE gain a 17% increase in performance over the RX 7900 XTX at 4K with Hardware Ray Tracing enabled, while in Miles Morales the inclusion of frame generation and DLSS 3 on the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 completely change the game, handily sitting atop all the cards in the bench at 4K.
1440p we do see more parity, but this could also be CPU bottlenecking coming into play, especially since we’re using the Performance preset of both DLSS and FSR. As a result, the internal rendering resolution is much lower than 1440p, and in our testing, we’ve noticed that in some cases the GPU isn’t anywhere near the 100% utilization you want to see.
As a result, many of the 1440p numbers, like in Miles Morales, Cyberpunk 2077, and Watch Dogs Legion are pretty much on par with one another. This isn’t a bad thing - all of these framerates are inherently playable, with the RX 7900 XTX and XT seeing average framerates in the 70s and 80s in these tests while using ray tracing.
Temps and Power Consumption
Thanks to its three-fan design, both the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT remain pretty cool under pressure. The max temperature the RX 7900 XTX hit was during Control’s ray tracing test at 4K, hitting 70 degrees celsius, while the 7900 XT hit a max of 65 degrees celsius while testing Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K. Pretty cool, especially when previous AMD cards had a tendency to run somewhat hot. It’s incredible, too, as the GPU was able to maintain relatively cool temperatures while ramping up the GPU clocks higher than the rated boost, with the RX 7900 XTX peaking at 2945MHz under load while playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Meanwhile, the RX 7900 XT hit an also impressive 2834Mhz in ACV.
Both cards hit near their rated Total Board Power, though never going over the limit. Considering AMD boosted the TBP limit on the RX 7900 XT from 300W to 315W ahead of the release of the card is also telling, as they are squeezing every ounce of performance out of this silicon while still hitting their power and temp considerations.
Performance Thoughts and Conclusion
So what do we make of all this? The RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are both great cards. For those looking for pure 4K performance, they deliver in spades, especially when we’re talking about normal raster applications. In every title we tested, the RX 7900 XTX bested the RTX 4080 Founder’s Edition in normal rasterized games, while the RX 7900 XT still gave high refresh rate gaming at 4K.
These are great cards by any definition, and when you consider the price, they aren’t too out of the realm of the extreme for those enthusiasts who held out to see what Team Red was bringing to the table. Between the two cards themselves the RX 7900 XT is a great performer, but I struggle to understand exactly who the RX 7900 XT is for in the end. For $900, you’re getting almost the performance of the RX 7900 XTX, with lesser RT performance, though it too performs well if 4K gaming is what you're after.
However, I can’t imagine if someone has $900 saved up, the extra $100 for the RX 7900 XTX wouldn’t simply be the more compelling option between the two. Though I feel that many consumers, especially those who don’t like the idea of spending a grand on a GPU, might see the XT as the more attractive option.
Then there is ray tracing performance. The RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are the second generation attempt by AMD to provide ray tracing performance for their consumers, and while it’s a leap compared to their first-generation offering, it still lags behind the competition in the end. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Miles Morales, and even Fortnite push the boundaries of graphics tech and, with the inclusion of Fortnite, make ray tracing even more mainstream than before. More and more games are adding ray tracing. It’s no longer a “future-facing” tech: it’s here and it’s only going to continue to grow.
As a result, it’s hard to recommend the RDNA 3 cards over the competition if you’re purely looking for ray-tracing performance. It’s not bad, per se - in fact it’s good performance, especially in games that leverage FidelityFX Super Resolution, or other upscaling technologies, to help lighten the load on the GPU. For most players, the numbers in Fortnite at 4K aren’t going to be anything to complain about on either the 7900 XTX or the 7900 XT. Miles Morales performs incredibly well, too, as does Cyberpunk 2077 once FSR is enabled.
This, though, brings us to the large, frame-generated elephant in the room. At AMD’s event in Las Vegas last month, the company made a huge deal about ensuring that the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT could deliver every frame thanks to its inclusion of DisplayPort 2.1. It represented a way for AMD to look to the future.
During my testing, though, I never really ran into an instance where I needed that extra display bandwidth. It’s one of those additions where I’m glad it’s there if I ever need it, especially as we do know the company is working on FSR 3.0, as well as their own version of frame generation, it’s not here today with the launch of the 7000-series cards.
This mirrors the lifecycle of FSR when the 6000-series of GPUs launched a few years ago. They too launched without their DLSS competitor, and as a result, those early months were a slog if you wanted to ray trace on the cards. While it won’t be a slog per se on the 7000-series by these numbers, it does leave a lot to be desired when the competition already has these future-facing technologies available today, and are slowly expanding the library of titles to take advantage of them.
For me, personally, it’s hard to buy something based on future promises, even if it’s a bit cheaper. Being able to turn on DLSS 3 in Miles Morales and just get smoother, more performant visuals at the same graphics settings is hard to pass up.
Games like Warhammer 40,000 Darktide felt fundamentally different without frame generation when I went from gaming on the RTX 4090 Founder’s Edition to the RX 7900 XTX for this review. It felt unresponsive and sluggish by comparison, and I felt as though my experience was lacking having lost that feature. I found myself wishing for it in the end.
Now, DLSS 3 has its own issues with visual ghosting and introducing some latency, but it’s also only available on the 40-series GPUs - a high price tag for those extra frames. If AMD continues its trend with FSR being open source with FSR 3.0, and eventually AMD's Fluid Motion Frames technology we know they are working on, we could see this technology come to not only the 7000-series GPUs but also the 6000 series and even the competition in the future. Potentially.
However, it should be said that ray tracing looks better on the RDNA 3 cards than their RDNA 2 predecessors. One test where I'm constantly looking for this is in Control. Entering the first room that leads into our benchmark area, there is a puddle with orange pipes overhead. Previously, when using ray-traced reflections in this scene, those pipes were present in the reflection, but it was muddled completely. However, the competition's reflections are pretty much clear, a huge difference that comes across in gaming.
With the improvements made to how the 7900 series' Ray Accelerators calculate ray tracing, as well as an improved denoiser, the results were a clearer, more accurate image that had me stop and stare for a moment. It was great to see, and it's something I noticed too in Miles Morales, especially on the windows of New York's tall buildings.
FSR 2 has come a long way as well, but it still has a ways to go. While it looks so much better than its 1.0 counterpart, FSR 2.0 and 2.1 can still exhibit some distracting ghosting while in motion. This was mostly on display while testing Miles Morales as ghosting in the trees or around Miles himself was extremely distracting, especially at high speeds.
DLSS 3’s frame generation also sees some ghosting thanks to the AI estimating where pixels should be next, but it’s not to the degree where I would find it distracting. However, with FSR 2.1’s ghosting in Miles Morales, it was inherently distracting. Using higher-quality presets on the FSR will clean this up some, but hopefully, more improvements will be made leading up to FSR 3.0.
This all said, FSR is in a much better place today than it was when it first launched over a year ago, and with more and more developers adopting it and utilizing it in their games, it’s only going to get better.
While a case could be made that these are great for 1440p (and the numbers back that up) they just feel too expensive for that resolution target, especially when AMD’s own 6750XT and Nvidia’s RTX 3070 series fit that bill just fine for less money. These are 4K cards, and both the performance and price showcase that.
The RX 7900 XTX, though, feels right at its price. As AMD’s flagship card this generation, it doesn't go blow for blow with Nvidia’s flagship RTX 4090 Founder’s Edition but compared to its next-nearest competitor, the RX 7900 XTX stands tall. It drives stellar visuals at high framerates, while also maintaining its cool under pressure. While ray tracing performance still lags behind, FSR bridges the gap to bring the RDNA 3 card closer to its competition.
The AMD RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are both great cards and worth a look, even if you’ll have to wait on some of the future-facing tech AMD has in the works. The two chiplet GPUs are hard to recommend over the 40-series if ray tracing is most important to you today, but they're not a bad option. They make a compelling argument thanks to their pricing and sheer performance gains over the last generation of AMD cards, not to mention their competitiveness with Nvidia's latest offering.
If the best ray-tracing performance today is what you're looking for, though, AMD might keep you waiting a bit longer.
AMD’s first chiplet GPU has truly come out swinging, resulting in some beautiful, high-refresh results. In the end, it easily fits the brief: high-performance 4K gaming for a thousand dollars (or under). If you’re looking for an upgrade and these fit in your budget, I don’t think you can necessarily go wrong with either.
Full Disclosure: The Products Discussed in this piece were provided by the manufacturer's for the purposes of this review.