Thank you for not spitting in my face – AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT & 7800 XT Review

Summary

This video reviews AMD's new Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT GPUs, comparing them to Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti and 4070. While not revolutionary, the RX 7800 XT offers solid performance at 1080p and 1440p, outperforming Nvidia in value, especially in non-ray tracing games. The 7700 XT sits between Nvidia's 3070 and 4070 in performance, but quirks like higher-than-expected power consumption and inconsistent behavior in certain games raise questions. AMD's FSR 3, a feature similar to Nvidia's DLSS3, is also anticipated. Ultimately, the GPUs are deemed decent, but not groundbreaking.

Takeaways

• 🔧 AMD's new RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT don't offer the same value as older GPUs, but they perform reasonably well against Nvidia's offerings.
• 💰 The RX 7800 XT is positioned against the RTX 4070, while the RX 7700 XT competes with the RTX 4060 Ti. Both AMD cards have more VRAM, which gives them an advantage in certain games.
• 🕹️ For 1080p gaming, the RX 7800 XT outperforms other GPUs, though last-gen RX 6800 XT remains close in performance, offering good value.
• 🎯 At 1440p, both new AMD cards continue to hold a lead over Nvidia's RTX 4070 and 3070, but ray tracing performance still favors Nvidia.
• 🚩 A potential issue with RX 7700 XT’s performance was found in 'The Last of Us Part 1,' where its behavior suggested it was being treated as an 8GB VRAM card instead of 12GB.
• ⚠️ Some software crashes occurred with the new AMD cards, particularly in F123, possibly due to driver-related bugs.
• 🎥 In productivity tasks, like Blender rendering, Nvidia continues to lead, with the RTX 4060 Ti even beating AMD's 7800 XT in compute workloads.
• 🔄 AMD's FSR 3 with Frame Generation is coming soon, promising features similar to Nvidia's DLSS3, but it's too early to judge performance.
• 🔋 The RX 7700 XT had unexpected power consumption results, consuming more power than the RX 7800 XT in some scenarios.
• 💡 While the RX 7800 XT performs well, the RX 6800 XT remains a solid alternative, especially with potential price drops.

Q & A

What are the new AMD GPUs mentioned in the script?

The new AMD GPUs mentioned are the Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT.

How do the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT compare to Nvidia's GPUs?

AMD is positioning the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT against Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070. While the RX 7800 XT shows a 20% performance advantage over the RTX 4070 for just 11% more in price, the RX 7700 XT falls between the RTX 3070 and 4070 in performance.

What is the major advantage of the RX 7800 XT over the RX 7700 XT?

The RX 7800 XT has six more compute units, 45% faster memory, and a wider memory bus, making it about 15% faster than the RX 7700 XT in performance for just $50 more and 18 watts more power consumption.

How does the RX 6800 XT compare to the RX 7800 XT?

The RX 6800 XT, despite being a last-gen card, comes very close to the RX 7800 XT in performance, especially in productivity tasks like Blender and DaVinci Resolve. It can sometimes outperform the RX 7800 XT in compute-heavy applications.

What issues were encountered with the RX 7700 XT during testing?

The RX 7700 XT experienced inconsistent performance in 'The Last of Us Part 1', with frame rate results varying significantly. The team suspects that the game or driver might be treating the 7700 XT as if it has 8 GB of VRAM instead of its actual 12 GB.

What game caused crashes on both the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT?

The game 'F123' consistently crashed the entire system during gameplay on both the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT, which is suspected to be caused by a driver bug.

What is AMD's upcoming FSR 3, and how does it compare to Nvidia’s DLSS3?

FSR 3 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 3) is AMD's upcoming frame generation technology, aimed to compete with Nvidia's DLSS3. While Nvidia uses AI accelerators for this, AMD's FSR 3 uses GPU compute, which might result in lower frame rates than DLSS3. It is designed to enhance performance in games running at 60 FPS or higher.

How does the RX 7700 XT perform in power consumption compared to other GPUs?

The RX 7700 XT reported higher power consumption than the RX 7800 XT in stress tests, with both cards consuming around 300 watts. Despite this, Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 consumed less power than both AMD cards.

What is the performance impact of ray tracing on AMD versus Nvidia GPUs?

Ray tracing performance is much stronger on Nvidia GPUs. Even the last-gen RTX 3070 outperforms the RX 7800 XT when ray tracing is enabled, due to Nvidia's more mature hardware and software implementation of the technology.

What is the reviewer’s overall recommendation regarding the RX 7800 XT?

While the RX 7800 XT offers good performance and value compared to Nvidia’s offerings, the existence of the last-gen RX 6800 XT, which is priced similarly but performs comparably, makes it difficult to recommend the RX 7800 XT outright. The reviewer suggests either waiting for price drops or exploring secondhand GPUs unless an upgrade is immediately needed.