Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT review: AMD’s ‘reasonable’ stab at 4K gaming | Engadget

While I was anxious to see how these new GPUs compared to NVIDIAs, I had to run several rounds of driver and motherboard BIOS updates on the Ryzen 9 7900X before both cards were stable enough to actually use. This is something I sometimes run into when testing high-end hardware (NVIDIA cards also require a BIOS update), but there are still issues with AMD cards even after that. infinite auraFor example, refuse to start matches with either card. Sometimes my computer would shut down completely during testing Cyberpunk 2077 moviewhich required me to disconnect the desktop and reset the BIOS before Windows would boot again.

I’ve installed AMD and NVIDIA video cards on this PC, which is equipped with a 1,000-watt Corsair power supply, over the past several months with no stability issues. So it was surprising to see how much havoc these GPUs can wreak. I haven’t seen other reviews complaining of similar issues, so I’m going to give mine a try first drivers. AMD just released a new driver that fixes the problem of high power draw while encoding video, so I’m hoping the company will also try to address the bugs I’m seeing.

When the cards were running smoothly, they proved fairly competitive with the RTX 4080. The 7900 XTX was on par with the 4080 when it came to 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme benchmark and Geekbench 5’s Compute test. The 7900 XT scored a 1,000-point drop on TimeSpy Extreme, which was 3,000 points higher than last year’s RTX 3080 Ti, but was bested by NVIDIA when it came to Geekbench. Hitman 3 It also ran blazingly fast on both cards at 4K, hitting 165fps and 180fps when I flipped the FSR upgrade. Just like NVIDIA cards, there is little reason to run any game in 4K without the help of advanced upscaling technology.

The performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA appeared as soon as I started messing with ray tracing. The 7900 XTX and XT both scored well below the RTX 4080 in the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark (at least they managed to beat the 3080 Ti). I also only saw about 57fps Cyberpunk 2077 movie On a Radeon 7900 XTX while gaming in 4K with full ray tracing And the AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution technology. Without FSR, that frame rate dropped to an unplayable 25fps. The slower 7900 XT managed 50fps at 4K with FSR and ray tracing enabled.

Basically, if you’re eager to get a video card that hits 60fps in 4K With Ray tracing, you have to look elsewhere. But if you can live at 1440p, you’ll find more to like: The 7900 XTX hit 130fps Cyberpunk With ray tracing it maxed out at the FSR and graphics settings, while the 7900 XT hit 114 fps. That’s almost enough for a max 120Hz gaming monitor! Personally, I still find 4K gaming overrated — 1440p still looks great, and you may never notice the benefits of paying more pixels. But I’ll admit I was spoiled by NVIDIA’s DLSS3 upscaling technology, which allowed me to hit 74fps Cyberpunk While gaming in 4K with ray tracing. This is as close to gaming heaven as I have ever been.

But there’s one thing you’ll find with these AMD GPUs that you won’t with NVIDIA: affordable street prices. Even after their release, you can still get close to the 7900XT and XTX at retail. Meanwhile, many RTX 4080 models are going for about $1,500 at online retailers (assuming you can find them in stock at all). It’s still hard to bear spending close to $1,000 on a video card, but at least it makes more sense than going for $1,500.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT are a solid step forward for AMD, especially when it comes to 4K gaming. But I’m hoping the company can tidy up driver placement, possibly improving ray tracing performance in the process. Most gamers are still better off waiting for next-generation mid-range cards from AMD and NVIDIA, which are sure to launch soon. But if you’re an AMD fan, you’ve finally got the high-end upgrade you’ve been waiting for.