Competition Works: AMD RX 7800 XT/ RX 7700 XT Review vs RTX 4070/ RTX 4060 Ti Review

Nvidia cutting prices to better compete? The new AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT show some impressive stuff from the new Navi 32 silicon... and the 7800 XT is competitively priced too. Rich has the lowdown on AMD's impressive specs and performance, but is it enough to counter Nvidia's cutting-edge new technologies?

00:00 Introduction
00:19 AMD's Golden Opportunity
01:55 RX 7700 XT Pricing Doesn't Make Sense
02:20 RX 7700 XT/ 7800 XT Tech Specs
03:15 Reference 7800 XT, Sapphire Pulse 7700 XT
03:54 Power Efficiency vs RTX 4070/ 4060 Ti
06:03 Rasterisation Performance
10:14 Ray Tracing Performance
13:52 Can DLSS Features Command A Price Premium?
17:46 Is AMD's Pricing on 7800 XT Too Good To Ignore?
18:48 And Now, The Conclusion

[TeranToola]

Fair review with multiple points laid out very well in an honest manner. Much prefer Richard’s reviews and review style

[SevendashGaming]

I'm very curious to see FSR 3, but AMD bringing good value is a start!

[shodan]

As a hold out on the GTX 1060, the AMD option does look good to me. I've played through TLoU 1 using FSR 2 and found it a surprisingly good experience all things considered. I'm glad raytracing is happening in games but it does look like it needs a few more years before it can be taken seriously as an option as i think we need more headroom in GPU performance than exists currently.

[Saith]

Cool review. But what I really want is more optimized games. The bells and whistles can come after we get the basics back.

[humorinpolitics]

I upgraded to all AMD, and I couldn't be happier. I was able to buy a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, m.2 drives, etc, with the money I saved.

[Tony-jpyl]

I use Reshade in most games so i would rather have pure rasterization headroom and more vram. AMD seems like the best option. And still interested in seeing FSR 3 as well.

[AlistairNY]

You could use Frames per Joule rather than Joules per Frame, to line up with Frames per Second. And then one FPJ could be called one Leadbetter. Though you did popularise frame time, so frame energy is probably fair enough. A Leadbetter can be one Joule per Frame then :)

[nobody_vi]

Damn, this was a really good review. I just ordered a 7800XT because for me frames are the highest priority and make the largest impact on my experience BUT this definitely got me thinking about where the other visual aspects should be on my priority list. My personal experience with GPUs over the last 5 ish years has been that no matter which team color you choose there are going to be scenarios were you will regret your purchase, be it due to drivers or upscaling or FPS count.

[TheOriginalNeomix]

Another advantage that the amd cards have, which most reviews miss, is the better compatibility with Linux.!

[jefmes]

Great perspectives as usual. From my own perspective, my personal setup is on an ultrawide display at 3440x1440, and I aim to be around 90FPS whenever possible. I love high end PC graphics and cant get enough of RT and HDR gaming, so I went for the RTX 4080 after having a RX6800 for a short while, and I dont regret it one bit. Gaming in 2023 to me means enabling RT and DLSS in Quality mode, or if the game isnt too demanding Ill use DLAA since I'm more and more thinking of it as the full TAA replacement. ALL of that said, when building gaming PCs for my nephews, I'm going to be considering AMD first, because they're gaming at 1080p or 1440p and cant be bothered to go into settings and make sure things are running properly. They're just not interested, so why spend the extra money? In the end though, doing reviews purely on rasterization, or going in with RT enabled but no upscaler just does not reflect the reality of the PC gaming market. I'm still not fully on-board with frame generation, but I will say I do now leave it enabled on Witcher 3 Complete Edition and absolutely will use it in Cyberpunk 2.0. Bottom line is that it has to be considered as a core part of the experience at this point, at least probably for anyone watching Digital Foundry.

[simracingchannel]

I have the 7800 XT since release and so far it performs really good

[davismcgravis]

Jensen’s way too absorbed with the finishing touches of Skynet to respond to us petty gamers right now

[flow]

It's aggravating that we have to choose between VRAM and the superior upscaling tech, but that's where things are. For the games I play, I think I'd still take DLSS. Also the 4070's impressive power efficiency is nothing to sneeze at.

[KraknDfx]

Have a 4070Ti in my main Windows PC and as of a couple of days ago a 7800XT in my SteamOS console PC. Both cards are definitely beasts for my needs, and with an AMD card kind of being the sole "plug and play" option for Linux w/o fighting with different driver revisions depending on the game, the 7800XT was the best choice in my case for my Xbox/PS replacement console PC gaming setup.

[ZeroZingo]

Excellent review showcasing the strengths of each card well

[cidiracing]

I upgraded from a 2070 and got a 7800xt on launch. Yes nVidia has better RT, but there a lot of games that don't use RT and the gap to 4070 was just too much for my budget. And where possible I prefer not to run upscalling. So for my needs the 7800xt fit right into what I was looking for when upgrading. It was at the upper limit of my budget and it beat similarly priced nVidia cards in running games (without RT).

And yeah, once the reviews came out and showed the 7700xt performance in comparison that card was off the table as an option. For me it wasn't worth saving the 50 bucks.

[kelownatechkid]

One of the best reviews I've seen from you Rich. Really interesting to consider the tradeoffs right now.

[WujoFefer]

I'm happy RX 7800 XT user, with it I also bought Ryzen 7 7800x3D and 64GB RAM... For me it's great performance. All Total War games works perfectly. I'm playin in 5120x1440 resolution and it looks stunning for me.
I don't need enything more right now. Maybe in the future my 850W PSU will handle refresh this spec... maybe not next but after 2 or 3 generations I will replace currewnt GPU and upgrade to newest x3D AM5 CPU.

[Thretau]

I ended up ordering RX 7800 XT for 659€ since I rarely play games with RT and RTX 4070 with similar cooler costs 789€ here. I got more VRAM and 8% more FPS in 1440p and I lose DLSS and better RT performance. Also free Starfield is a nice bonus.

[MasterCog]

So as someone who upgraded from a 3080 10Gb to a 7900 XTX, this is a summary of my experience.
So at native 4k with ray tracing I'd say my performance is about on par with the 3080 at 1440p in most titles. Additionally in every game where I've required upscaling the 3080 resolved a better image. With that said I have not needed to rely on upscaling nearly as much as I did with the 3080. Obviously the 7900xtx is a more powerful card when it comes to rasterization, but I will say it has been far more enjoyable to get high framerates at a native resolution than being able to crank RT with DLSS. As Great as DLSS is I find native gameplay to be much more pleasant to the eye, regardless of what extra quality DLSS will allow for