AMD’s 7900 XTX graphics card is taking on Nvidia’s RTX 4080 for less money!
I’ve compared both graphics cards in 20 different games at 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions
to show you all the differences!
AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX has 24 gigs of GDDR6 memory, while Nvidia’s GeForce RTX
4080 has less with 16 gigs, but it's got faster GDDR6X.
The 7900 XTX has a bigger memory bus and more memory bandwidth though.
The 7900 XTX also has a higher TGP, it needs more power, which is why AMD recommends an
800 watt power supply as a minimum, while Nvidia recommends at least 750 watts for the
4080.
The 7900 XTX is launching with an MSRP of $1000 USD, while Nvidia’s RTX 4080 costs
$200 more at $1200 USD.
So is it worth paying more for Nvidia’s RTX 4080?
To find out, I’ve compared both graphics cards in this test system.
The latest version of Windows 11 22H2 was used with core isolation off, and the latest
drivers with resizable BAR enabled.
Alright let’s get straight into the 20 game comparison at 3 different resolutions!
After the games we’ll compare everything else like thermals, power draw, performance
per watt and cost per frame to find out which GPU offers the best value.
Let’s start out with Cyberpunk 2077.
There’s no ray tracing, DLSS or FSR here, but we’ll test with those enabled shortly.
I’ve got the 1080p results down the bottom, 1440p in the middle, and 4K up the top, with
the 7900 XTX below the RTX 4080.
AMD’s 7900 XTX was reaching a higher average FPS at 1440p and 4K, however the 4080 had
fewer dips in performance, as shown by the much higher 1% low results at all three resolutions.
The 7900 XTX is able to beat the 4080 in 1% lows in other games like Apex Legends though.
This game has a 300 FPS limit, which both GPUs were reaching at 1080p, and I’m guessing
this must be affecting the 1% low result too, because the 7900 XTX was providing a far higher
1% low at 1440p, and about the same at 4K as 1080p.
Halo Infinite on the other hand preferred the RTX 4080, regardless of resolution.
The differences at 1440p and 1080p were the biggest in favor of the 4080 out of all 20
games tested.
The 7900 XTX really struggled here, which sounds crazy to say as it’s still doing
92 FPS at max settings 4K, it’s just that percentage-wise the 4080 was much better in
this one.
Radeon graphics tend to do better in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and that was the case with
the 7900 XTX as well, which was reaching higher average FPS and 1% lows at all three resolutions
compared to the more expensive RTX 4080.
Other games like Fortnite typically prefer Nvidia graphics.
The RTX 4080 was 16% faster than the 7900 XTX at 1440p.
This game usually has DLSS support, which could be used to boost the 4080 even further,
however at the time of testing it’s not available in the latest chapter 4, which moves
to unreal engine 5.1, but apparently it’s coming back later.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is our first Vulkan game, and although the RTX 4080 had a subtle
lead at 1080p, the 7900 XTX was further ahead at 1440p and 4K, with a 7% and 18% lead respectively.
Both graphics cards were quite close in Microsoft’s Flight Simulator at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
The 4080 had a subtle lead, but once we get to the highest 4K resolution the 4080 has
a much more obvious 18% higher average frame rate.
The difference to average FPS wasn’t really that big in Dying Light 2, but check out the
dips in performance as measured by the 1% lows.
The 7900 XTX was much further ahead, which means a more consistent and stable experience,
something I’d much prefer when playing compared to the negligible differences seen with the
average FPS.
God of War was another where the 7900 XTX had massive boosts in the 1% lows, in this
case at 1080p and 1440p, with the difference at 4K being much smaller.
Forza Horizon 5 was also more consistent with the 7900 XTX, as its 1% lows were clearly
ahead of the 4080 at all three resolutions.
That said, the 4080 was reaching higher average FPS, but the margins are smaller compared
to what we’re seeing in the 1% lows.
That’s not the case in all racing games though, F1 2021 was clearly doing better with
the 4080 at all resolutions, both in terms of average FPS and 1% lows, one of the biggest
losses for the 7900 XTX out of all 20 games tested.
Borderlands 3 tends to do better with Radeon graphics from my past testing, and that was
seen here too.
The 1% lows were very close at 1080p, but otherwise the 7900 XTX had a clear lead.
Meanwhile Metro Exodus Enhanced was doing better with the 4080.
The extreme preset sets ray traced reflections to ultra, so this might be why the 7900 XTX
suffered its biggest loss at 4K out of all 20 games tested here.
We’ll look more at RT, DLSS and FSR in a moment.
Watch Dogs Legion was ahead on the 7900 XTX at 1440p and 4K, but as you’ll see soon,
things change quite a bit if we want to make use of ray tracing.
Rather than talk through the last 6 games, I’ll just quickly skip through the results
so we can get into the more interesting stuff.
Feel free to pause the video if you want a closer look at these results.
The reason I try to test at least 20 games is so that we can get a better rounded average,
instead of making conclusions from fewer data points.
On average over all 20 games tested, at 4K the RX 7900 XTX was 0.26% faster than the
RTX 4080, so basically nothing.
11 of the 20 games tested were leaning towards Nvidia, but the differences could be bigger
with AMD.
It really depends on the specific game, but generally speaking in a 20 game average there’s
basically no difference between the two GPUs.
Stepping down to the lower 1440p resolution and the 7900 XTX was almost one percent slower
now.
Again it’s not much of a difference on average when we factor in all 20 games, but some titles
really favor AMD, while others like Halo Infinite do way better with Nvidia.
The gap gets larger at the lower 1080p resolution, with the 7900 XTX now almost 4% slower than
the 4080.
Again Halo seemed to favor Nvidia the most out of these 20 games, while only a few games
had a clear lead with the AMD GPU. 14 of our 20 games saw less than a 5% difference one
way or the other though.
At this lower resolution CPU difference is important too, as hardware unboxed has the
7900 XTX a little ahead of the 4080 in their 16 game average at 1080p, but they used a
5800X3D CPU.
If we instead compare the games where 1% lows were measured, well the 7900 XTX has more
of a lead compared to just looking at the averages.
Which makes sense, as in many of the games we looked at the 1% lows were clearly ahead
there, so even if AMD isn’t straight up winning in average FPS, in many more cases
it does seem to offer the more stable experience.
Here’s how frame rates look if we instead take the average of all 20 games at all resolutions.
I think this better allows us to visually see the difference.
The RTX 4080 was ahead at 1080p, it still maintained a slight lead at 1440p, and then
the 7900 XTX just managed to edge in front at 4K.
It’s no surprise that the 7900 XTX is offering better value.
It costs $200 less compared to the RTX 4080, and as we’ve just seen it’s putting up
a good fight in terms of average FPS too.
Of course this doesn’t factor in other benefits Nvidia offers, such as superior ray tracing
or DLSS.
Here’s how Cyberpunk 2077 runs on both graphics cards at 1080p.
I’ve got the 7900 XTX above and the RTX 4080 below.
The stock result without RT is first, followed by RT on, and then we’ve got RT on plus
available upscaling methods.
This game has support for both FSR and DLSS, and both performed basically the same on the
4080.
The 7900 XTX can’t use DLSS, but with FSR enabled it’s reaching a 51% higher average
frame rate compared to FSR off.
The 4080 was getting a 52% boost with FSR on, so a similar margin.
Although both GPUs were quite close together without RT or any upscaling, with RT on the
4080 now has a massive 57% lead.
This pattern continues at the higher 1440p and 4K resolutions as well.
Nvidia clearly has an edge in this game with ray tracing enabled, and whether we choose
to use FSR or DLSS, the 4080 runs about the same, though of course visual quality will
also differ.
Dying Light 2 also has both DLSS and FSR, and again the 4080 was running about the same
with either enabled in terms of frame rate.
At 1440p and 4K the 7900 XTX was reaching higher frame rates with RT off, but then once
ray tracing gets switched on the 4080 now has a clear lead, once again indicating Nvidia’s
superior RT performance.
Watch Dogs Legion is an example of a game that has DLSS, but no FSR support, so it’s
not possible to get a speed boost with the 7900 XTX.
Of course there are other games that only have FSR support and no DLSS, but Nvidia can
still use FSR, so being able to use both FSR and DLSS is a clear advantage with the 4080.
The 4080 was still doing better with RT on in this game, despite the fact that the 7900
XTX was doing better with RT off, at least at 1440p and 4K.
The PC with the 7900 XTX installed was drawing more power from the wall in three different
games at 4K max settings.
Dying Light 2 was using 8% more power with the 7900 XTX, Cyberpunk was using 7% more,
while DOOM was using 6% more.
So this explains why AMD recommends a bigger power supply.
This results in the RTX 4080 being better from a performance per watt perspective in
all three of these games.
The 4080 was hitting higher FPS in Cyberpunk and DOOM while also using less power, but
was behind in Dying Light 2, which is why that difference in that game was much smaller
in terms of performance per watt.
Now while the RTX 4080 card I’ve got is quite large, the fact is pretty much all 4080s
are on the bigger side when compared to the 7900 XTX.
The 7900 XTX is much more reasonable, and more like a normal graphics card size.
With that big cooler size difference in mind, the 7900 XTX was running a bit warmer in Cyberpunk
at 4K max settings, though this isn’t really directly comparable as the way both GPUs use
sensors to measure temperature differs anyway.
As for driver stability, I didn’t have any major issues with either card.
There was one instance where Red Dead Redemption 2 completely froze up on the 7900 XTX, but
that was the only problem I had and I wasn’t able to reproduce it, and I definitely have
had random one of issues like that with Nvidia as well.
So I wouldn’t read too much into this, from my own testing both cards seemed quite stable.
Something strange I noticed was that it took much longer to boot the system with the 7900
XTX installed.
Almost double the amount of time between pressing the power button and getting to the Windows
desktop.
The AMD system just stayed at a black screen for far longer.
I’m not really too sure what the deal is there, maybe it’s just that my MSI Z690
Unify motherboard will have an upcoming BIOS update that improves it, but I did check with
Steve at Hardware Unboxed and he didn’t have this problem with his 5800X3D test system.
Alright so both of these GPUs are clearly excellent for gaming, but is the RTX 4080
worth paying 20% more money for?
Honestly for most people, probably not.
That’s quite a premium to pay for better features like DLSS and superior ray tracing.
So I really think it depends how much you value those.
The 4080 was generally faster at lower resolutions like 1080p, but most people probably aren’t
spending this much money for 1080p gaming anyway.
The gap closes in at higher resolutions with the 7900 XTX eventually doing a little better
in our 20 game average.
The cheaper price with the AMD card results in better value from a cost per frame perspective,
while still being able to run any modern AAA game at 4K max settings.
The 7900 XTX does use more power and runs a little warmer, but it’s much smaller and
will fit easier in smaller cases.
Plus it also offers DisplayPort over Type-C and it still uses the older power connectors
if that’s something you’re really paranoid about.
If you’re planning on buying either of these GPUs then you’re probably after a high-end
CPU too, so check out this video over here next where I’ve compared the best CPUs from
Intel and AMD.
Or if you want to see how much better the RTX 4080 is compared to what Nvidia offered
last year then check out this video instead.
I’ll see you over in one of those next!