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AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT/7700 XT review vs RTX 4070/4060 Ti

The 7800 XT is compelling, the 7700 XT's pricing is baffling.

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT cards shown side-by-side
Image credit: Digital Foundry

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.

AMD's FSR 3 tech is coming soon and ought to level the playing field against Nvidia's DLSS 3 - here are our 'eyes-on' impressions.
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.

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.

Power analysis, using Nvidia's PCAT interposer hardware sitting between the graphics card and its power sources (PCIe slot and auxiliary inputs), reveals better power efficiency for the Ada Lovelace cards in terms of Joules per frame - by a relatively fine margin in non-RT titles and by a much more significant difference in RT workloads where AMD's hardware is on the back foot.

RX 7800 XT RTX 4070 RX 7700 XT RTX 4060 Ti
Dying Light 2, 1440p, High RT 249.3W/45.9fps - 5.4 Joules Per Frame 193.5W/54.68fps - 3.6 Joules Per Frame 229.5W/39.8fps - 5.8 Joules Per Frame 152.2W/42.7fps - 3.6 Joules Per Frame
Control, 1440p, High RT 251W/49.6fps - 5.1 Joules Per Frame 199.1W/57.2fps - 3.5 Joules Per Frame 230.5W/41.4fps - 5.6 Joules Per Frame 153.1W/42fps - 3.7 Joules Per Frame
Forza Horizon 5, 1440p, Extreme, RT Off, 4x MSAA 240.3W/127.7fps - 1.9 Joules Per Frame 164.4W/119.77fps - 1.4 Joules Per Frame 180W/104.1fps - 1.7 Joules Per Frame 114.4W/89.1fps - 1.3 Joules Per Frame
Hitman 3, 1440p, Max, RT Off 252.2W/229.2fps - 1.1 Joules Per Frame 164.4W/119.8fps - 1.0 Joules Per Frame 231.9W/190.3fps - 1.2 Joules Per Frame 154.7fps/148fps - 1.1 Joules Per Frame

For the RX 7800 XT, for example, we're looking at 5.1 and 5.4 Joules per frame respectively in Dying Light 2 and Control with RT enabled, versus just 1.9 and 1.1 Joules per frame respectively in Forza Horizon 5 and Hitman 3 with RT disabled. The RTX 4070, by contrast, requires only ~3.5Jpf in the RT workloads and 1.0-1.4Jpf in the non-RT tests. That works out as the RX 7800 XT drawing around 50 percent more Joules per frame in the RT tests, versus a narrower 25 percent increase in non-RT.

There's a similar margin for the RX 7700 XT versus the RTX 4060 Ti, with around a 55 percent increase in power consumption per frame on average in our two RT tests, versus about a 20 percent average increase in non-RT workloads. Of course, different games and scenes result in different numbers, but it's clear that Nvidia's excellent efficiency with its mid-range 40-series cards remains out of reach for AMD's RDNA 3 competitors.

With the preliminaries out of the way, it's time to get into the benchmarks proper. As usual, we're using a high-end rig that pairs a Core i9 13900K with 6000MT/s GSkill DDR5 and an Asus ROG Maximus Hero Z690 motherboard, minimising CPU bottlenecking to show GPU differences more clearly.

AMD RX 7800 XT/7700 XT Analysis

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About the Author
Will Judd avatar

Will Judd

Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

A bizarre British-American hybrid, Will turns caffeine into technology articles through a little-known process called 'writing'. His favourite games are Counter-Strike, StarCraft and Fallout 2. Will also tweets the latest tech deals at @DigitalFoundry.

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