AMD's RX 7900 XTX is faster than Nvidia's RTX 4080
The first reviews of the two new AMD graphics cards are here and look promising. It's even enough to beat the slower card from the Nvidia competition.
With the RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT, AMD is launching the first cards in the Radeon 7000 series. Initial tests show that AMD can compete with Nvidia.
Techpowerup
W1zzard from Techpowerup highlights the chiplet approach of the new Radeon cards. Here, the computing unit no longer consists of one large chip, but several small ones. The advantage of this approach is that it is cheaper to manufacture. In addition, different structure widths can be used in one model. The central processing unit is manufactured by TSMC using the 5-nm process, while the memory units are manufactured using the 6-nm process.
In total, the RX 7900 XTX is four per cent faster in games than Nvidia's RTX 4080. This is the case in Rasterizer games, i.e. without ray tracing. With ray tracing activated, however, the Nvidia card is 15 per cent faster. Compared to the predecessor card, the RX 6900 XT, the performance leap is 47 per cent.
The RX 7900 XT, which is also new, is 16 per cent slower than the RX 7900 XTX in 2160p resolution. In lower resolutions, however, the difference is significantly smaller.
In terms of efficiency, the new Radeon flagship is behind Nvidia's models - 10 per cent behind the RTX 4090 and 16 behind the RTX 4080. In games, the card draws 350 watts. For $1000, the RX 7900 XTX is the current best graphics card in terms of price-performance ratio, .
PC Games Hardware
Raffael Vötter of PC Games Hardware comes to a similar conclusion. He says the RX 7900 XT offers all the features of the RX 7900 XTX with an average of 87 per cent of its performance. The card is about ten percent behind the RTX 4080. The RTX 3090 Ti distances the new Radeon card by ten percent. On average, the card consumes 310 watts, which makes it slightly less efficient than the 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080.
The author's assessment of the cards' ray tracing capabilities is less good. AMD has missed the chance to catch up. Although the technology is still in its infancy, the manufacturer runs the risk of missing the boat.
Bad is the ray tracing capability of the cards.
The power consumption of both newcomers is bad in low-power modes. Even with a 4K 144 Hz monitor connected, the power consumption is up to 100 watts. AMD needs to improve here.
The new AMD cards will go on sale on 13 December.
From big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.