Should you go for AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX or NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080?
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Source: AMD
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Best Value
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is the new flagship for 2022, offering considerable gains across multiple resolutions over the older RX 6000 generation of GPUs.
Pros
- More affordable
- Excellent 4K performance
Cons
- Driver support
- Weaker ray-tracing
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Source: Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition
Best Visuals
The RTX 4080 is the second-fastest card in the RTX 40 series. It may not offer great value, but this remains to be one amazing video card for playing all your favorite games with ray tracing enabled.
Pros
- Better ray tracing
- Better drivers
Cons
- Worse value
- Not much better than AMD
The most important part of any gaming PC is the graphics card. The faster (and more expensive) the GPU, the more capable your system will be of playing all your favorite games at higher resolutions with the majority of graphical settings turned up high. Nvidia’s RTX 40 series of GPUs are incredibly pricey, but they’re also excellent at playing games. AMD also offers graphics cards that are competitive in both performance and value and in this guide, we’ll be looking at the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX vs. Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 to help you make the right decision.
Price, availability, and specs
The two graphics cards were launched in 2022 and AMD came to the market a little later in the year with the RX 7900 XTX. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX costs $999 as the MSRP. This undercuts the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 by $200, a considerable sum of money considering both graphics cards are very comparable on paper and in-game.
The AMD GPU does come out on top in tests, though this quickly flips when ray tracing is enabled. Nvidia’s technologies are more mature than AMD, allowing the company to ramp up performance in heavier areas. We expect AMD to improve the overall experience of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX through driver updates as this generation ages.
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AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition Brand AMD Nvidia GPU Speed 2.30 GHz 2.21 GHz Interface PCI 4.0 PCIe 4.0 Memory 24 GB GDDR6 16 GB GDDR6X Power 355 W 320 W Boost Speed 2.50 GHz 2.51 GHz
Architecture
AMD RDNA 3 is the latest generation of architecture used as a base for the Radeon 7900 series of GPUs. The same goes for Ada Lovelace with the RTX 40 series from Nvidia. These two platforms are excellent for gaming and are the result of decades of research and development from both sides. Like AMD vs. Intel for processors, the two GPU brands have their own solutions.
Nvidia is sticking with a traditional configuration built on a 4nm process whilst AMD brought across its chiplet design from its CPU families. This allowed the company to effectively split up its GPU cores by having the graphic dies on a 5nm process and the smaller memory dies on a mature and less expensive 6nm process. This results in a cheaper design that allows AMD to ramp up its processing power.
This is all new to AMD and the company continues to struggle to keep up with the performance of Nvidia GPUs with ray tracing. Team Green makes use of AI-assisted calculations and when paired with its super sampling tech DLSS, the results are spectacular. AMD has made a notable improvement with RDNA 3 and the RX 7900 XTX, but it still falls short of what the RTX 4080 is capable of.
Performance
Whether you choose the Radeon RX 7900 XTX or GeForce RTX 4080, you’ll have a very powerful graphics card. Connecting either to a 2K or 4K monitor will result in an incredible experience. We’ve compiled a list of game benchmark test results below to show just how close these GPUs are (aside from when ray tracing is activated).
| Game | AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 |
|---|---|---|
| Cyberpunk 2077 |
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| DOOM Eternal |
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| Fay Cry 6 |
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| Metro Exodus |
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| Red Dead Redemption 2 |
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The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 has the lead in almost all games when ray tracing is activated at 2K and 4K resolutions.
Which GPU is right for you?
This is a difficult question to answer as not everyone’s needs are the same. If you’re wanting the best possible performance with ray tracing at 4K, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 will be the graphics card to buy. Should you desire better value with a card that’s still capable of driving video to the same panel with decent results, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is the better buy.
AMD has undercut Nvidia with its new flagship GPUs. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX could still be considered overpriced, but compared to Nvidia’s pricing structure, this is far better bang for your buck. RDNA 3 is new and we’ve come to expect a rougher early adoption experience with AMD cards, but they’re usually vastly improved as the generation matures.
Source: AMD
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Better Value
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is the new flagship for 2022, offering considerable gains across multiple resolutions over the older RX 6000 generation of GPUs.
As aforementioned, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 has the upper hand when ray tracing is enabled in games. Whether you’re at 2K, 4K, or even 1080p, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 is the better GPU to buy if you care more about visuals. That said, it’s considerably more expensive, depending on which aftermarket card you go for and we’d view the RX 7900 XTX as offering better overall value.
Source: Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition
Better RT Support
The RTX 4080 is the second-fastest card in the RTX 40 series. It may not offer great value, but this remains to be one amazing video card for playing all your favorite games with ray tracing enabled.