AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX review: can RDNA 3 bring the value?
The Digital Foundry verdict.
The Navi 31 processor at the heart of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT is a highly ambitious design that sets the stage for the future of high-end graphics. The cost benefits of fusing together multiple chiplets into a single design was established by AMD with Ryzen and after several iterations, it proved capable not only in challenging the competition but establishing market leadership. The RDNA 3 GPUs reviewed today are highly capable and deliver distinct advantages over their predecessors - a considerable achievement bearing in mind that AMD is rewriting the rulebook on how graphics hardware is made. However, it's equally fair to say that this necessary transitionary step hasn't delivered a knock-out blow against Nvidia.
Last-gen, the RX 6900 XT took the fight to the top-end, matching and even beating RTX 3090 in rasterisation performance. AMD hasn't been able to match that achievement this time around, but handily enough, it has a much easier target to compete against, bearing in mind the terrible pricing of the RTX 4080.
There are a number of takeaways from our testing, both good and bad, but ultimately AMD is making a value play based on a competing product that is simply too expensive. Still, it's good to see that ray tracing performance sees the biggest sustained gen-on-gen advantages and while AMD's new flagship is effectively competing against Nvidia's last-gen RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti, that's still a very useful amount of RT performance to have. AMD positions this by saying that its price/perf ratio is in line with RTX 4080, but I'm not sure that's the correct message to send out bearing in mind just awful the pricing is on the Nvidia rival.
It's better to focus on the clear win in rasterisation performance, where the XTX does much better, so if you're not particularly interested in ray tracing features, the RX 7900 XTX is well worth considering - assuming that the level of performance delivered by the discounted RDNA 2 cards is not enough for you. However, even here there is some disappointment, as we were expecting 1.5x to 1.7x improvements compared to the RX 6950 XT based on AMD's marketing. In many scenarios, it's lower than that - even compared to the slower RX 6900 XT. Even so, there's much to commend the RX 7900 XTX when looking over the complete package.
The RX 7900 XT is a decent offering at the wrong price-point. AMD targeted Nvidia (and more specifically, the RTX 4080) on value - and this is clearly the competition's critical weak spot right now - but it's highly ironic to see the Radeon team make a similar mistake to Nvidia on its second-tier product. Virtually every benchmark in our line-up demonstrates that the XTX offers better overall value than the XT, which should be at least $100/£100 cheaper - if not more. Specs-wise, the gap between 7900 XT and 7900 XTX is wider than the equivalent between RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT, which makes the pricing make even less sense. The Nvidia tactic of delivering max value with the flagship model, then hiking prices on the next product down, returns here - the only redeeming factor for AMD here being that overall pricing across the line is lower compared to extremely expensive products from Nvidia.
All of which puts us in the strange position of reversing the recommendations we made in the RDNA 2/Ampere period. At that time, the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT were the obvious cards to have, offering a decent balance of price vs performance at established price-points. This generation, both Nvidia and AMD are using pricing to push users towards the flagships instead, rewriting the established rules of the GPU Power Ladder - that the cheaper you go, the more performance you get. This was worrying when Nvidia set the precedent and even more concerning now that AMD has followed suit. It suggests that price hikes are set to continue the further down the stack you go.
All of which makes the purchasing decision for a new GPU vexing. If you want the best of the best with money as no object, there's only one game in town: RTX 4090 is a brilliant product that does things no other GPU can. It's rare for AMD to even trouble the Nvidia juggernaut, even in rasterisation, while RT is on another level. Radeon RX 7900 XTX is well worth consideration at its price-point too, owing to creditable rasterisation results and decent RT performance - but it's down to you to judge whether $999/£999 is worth it in a world of discounted last-gen GPUs. With both RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XT, they're both decent offerings at varying levels of indecent prices - and it's down to the users to vote with their wallets if they're not impressed with them.
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX analysis
- Introduction, hardware and power analysis
- RT benchmarks: Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Control, F1 22
- RT benchmarks: Hitman 3, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
- RT/DLSS vs FSR2 benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
- Game benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal
- Game benchmarks: F1 22, Gears 5, Hitman 3
- Game benchmarks: Forza Horizon, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX: the Digital Foundry verdict