AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE review: the most compelling RDNA 3 graphics card yet

Game benchmarks: Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Returnal.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on 26 Feb 2024

Our rasterisation benchmarks come to a conclusion on this final page of tests, where we continue to expect AMD's RDNA 3 cards to be more competitive against their Nvidia 40-class rivals.

Once again, if you're jumping straight to this page without looking at prior results, we should stress that our benchmarking system offers a number of ways to get to the data you want, the presentation varying according to the device you're using. You'll get a basic overview of our findings on mobile, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is an interactive bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Hitman 3

Hitman 3 is staggeringly fast when its RT effects are disabled, to the point where we'd likely be recommending using RT with reconstruction for Nvidia users - but it's still a handsome game at native 4K on otherwise ultra settings. It's also AMD-friendly, with an excellent 20 percentage point advantage to the RX 7900 GRE up against 4070 Super. Even the RX 7800 XT is essentially on par with RTX 3090 performance here (!).

The gaps actually increase at 1440p, where the GRE scores exceed RTX 4070 Super by 30 percent, rising to a remarkable 35 percente up against the vanilla 4070. At 1440p, the chances are that AMD's lower DX12 driver overhead means you get more performance from the CPU here. A fascinating result.

Hitman, Ultra, TAA

A Plague Tale: Requiem

We had to include this game in our test suite simply because it's so beautiful - a proper next-gen showcase. It's perhaps not surprising that AMD continues to deliver a lead over Nvidia here, with RX 7900 GRE essentially 13.7 percentage points clear of the RTX 4070 Super, which costs more money, of course. At price-parity with the non-Super 4070, it's 32 percent ahead - an entirely different class of performance.

Again, the only complaint you can raise is that the 7800 XT now looks too expensive - the GRE is 10 percent more expensive, yet delivers 18 points more performance.

A Plague Tale Requiem, Ultra Settings

Returnal

We love the game but we don't enjoy the stutter - something which the benchmark has none of whatsoever. Once again, AMD emerges triumphant with the RX 7900 GRE delivering a nigh-on eight percentage point lead over the RTX 4070 Super, rising to 25 percent against its non-Super counterpart. That's at 4K, by the way, but I noted no effective difference at 1440p resolution either.

The performance differentials against the 7800 XT close up a touch, mind you. With the GRE, ten percent more money is getting you around 12 percent more throughput. For the record, the GRE is almost as fast as the older RTX 3090 flagship at 4K, beating it by nine points at 1440p.

Returnal, Epic Settings

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Since we've got Miles Morales in our RT and reconstruction categories, why not rasterisation too? This one's interesting as this 'addendum' to our rasterisation suite actually sees the RTX 4070 Super delivering very, very similar scores to the GRE at both 1440p and 4K. That's a rare sight in our rasterisation suite, for sure.

The good news is that the RX 7800 XT redeems itself a little here, delivering performance in line with its price differential against the GRE.