As we move into the mid-range sector of the GPU market, AMD’s latest – and last – RDNA 3-based desktop graphics cards represent yet another golden opportunity for AMD to grab some precious market share from Nvidia. Put simply, the RTX 4060 Ti is the least compelling offering in the entire desktop 40-series line-up – it’s the closest AMD is going to get to an open goal – while the RTX 4070’s value proposition was controversial, being the most expensive 70-series card Nvidia has ever made.
On the face of it, AMD’s new $499/£479 RX 7800 XT certainly offers a strong alternative to the RTX 4070. Based on US pricing, it’s $100 cheaper, you get undeniably more potent rasterisation performance and the 12 gigs of VRAM offered by the Nvidia card gets a 4GB boost on its new AMD competitor. This is AMD making life tricky for its competition.
The $449/£429 RX 7700 XT? We’re reminded of launch pricing for the RX 7900 XT – it offers proportionately less performance for the money than its more powerful counterpart with 4GB less framebuffer memory too, this time with a more impactful drop from a 16GB to 12GB allocation. It’s absolutely baffling, as the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB was a turkey, and in the meantime, price cuts on the 16GB model add further pressure to the 7700 XT. It just doesn’t quite make sense.
| RDNA 3 GPUs | RX 7600 | RX 7700 XT | RX 7800 XT | RX 7900 XT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Navi 33 | Navi 32 | Navi 32 | Navi 31 |
| Compute units | 32 | 54 | 60 | 84 |
| Game clock | 2250MHz | 2171MHz | 2124MHz | 2000MHz |
| Boost clock | 2655MHz | 2544MHz | 2430MHz | 2400MHz |
| GDDR6 memory | 8GB | 12GB | 16GB | 20GB |
| Memory interface | 128-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit |
| Memory speed | 18Gbps | 18Gbps | 19.5Gbps | 20Gbps |
| Infinity Cache | 32MB | 48MB | 64MB | 80MB |
| TDP | 165W | 245W | 263W | 315W |
| RRP | $269/£259 | $449/£429 | $499/£479 | $899/£899 |
As we noted in our coverage of their official announcement, both of the new AMD graphics cards are based around a singular Navi 32 GPU, with the RX 7800 XT being the fully-enabled 60CU model and the RX 7700 XT using a cut-back 54CU specification. That means the two cards should offer relatively similar performance compared to the last-gen RX 6800 XT and 6700 XT, which have 72CUs and 40CUs respectively.
Other spec points are also close between the two cards, with an 18W TDP and 1.5Gbps memory speed advantage for the 7800 XT, partially made up for a rated 114MHz boost clock advantage for the 7700 XT.
1 of 9 Caption Attribution The RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT side-by-side.
Despite sharing a common Navi 32 GPU, the two cards we tested for this review come in slightly different clothing. The RX 7800 XT is AMD’s reference design, a curvy dual-slot model with two fans and two eight-pin power inputs; while the RX 7700 XT we received is a Sapphire Pulse model with a boxier appearance but matching fan count and I/O. With no special 12VHPWR connector, these can be used with a wide range of power supplies sans adapter.