AMD's RX 7900 series – particularly the flagship RX 7900 XTX – has consistently ranked among the top 10 best-selling graphics cards on major e-commerce platforms during peak shopping seasons. This demonstrates that despite ongoing industry debates, consumers continue to show strong support for AMD through their purchasing decisions.
Our previous performance evaluations revealed that while the RX 7900 XTX leads AMD's lineup, it generally trails behind NVIDIA's RTX 4090. However, when factoring in pricing considerations, AMD's value proposition becomes clear: the RX 7900 series offers significantly more accessible pricing compared to NVIDIA's RTX 4090 and RTX 4080.
This analysis focuses on AMD's core strength – price-to-performance ratio. We aim to determine: What specific advantages do the RX 7900 XTX/XT offer? Are there limitations to these benefits? Additionally, we examine whether driver updates over the past year have altered the competitive landscape between AMD and NVIDIA's flagship products.
Test Platform and Methodology
Following our standard evaluation approach, the test platform was configured with an Intel Core i7-14700K processor, paired with dual 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-6800 memory modules and an MSI MPG Z790 EDGE TI MAX WIFI motherboard – a combination designed to eliminate system bottlenecks and maximize GPU performance.
For the graphics card evaluation, we selected flagship models from both AMD and NVIDIA: AMD’s Yeston Sakura Sugar Series RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, alongside NVIDIA’s ZOTAC RTX 4090 AMP EXTREME AIRO and GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition.
Moving beyond synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark, our testing focused exclusively on real-world gaming scenarios. All evaluations were conducted at 4K resolution with native 1.0x rendering scale, using either exclusive fullscreen mode (or borderless fullscreen where unsupported). Visual settings were configured at the maximum preset quality tier, with VSync disabled and frame rate limits removed to assess raw performance.
The game selection comprised 12 rasterization-focused titles spanning competitive esports and AAA genres. Performance metrics including average frame rates and 1% low frame rates were captured using CapFrameX software to ensure measurement consistency.
Rasterization Gaming Tests: Exceptional Value Proposition
The overwhelming superiority of the RTX 4090’s specifications ensures its undisputed dominance across all tested games (potentially all current titles), making it the natural 100% performance baseline for our comparison.
In competitive esports titles, significant performance gaps emerge. For instance, in Counter-Strike 2, the RTX 4090 outperforms the RX 7900 XTX by a substantial 34%, while in Overwatch 2, it maintains a 29% lead. The performance difference between the RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XT remains relatively stable across these titles, hovering around 9%.
Transitioning to AAA games reveals nuanced dynamics. AMD’s graphics cards demonstrate exceptional performance in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, with the RX 7900 XT surprisingly outperforming the RTX 4080 by nearly 5%. In Forza Horizon 5, the RX 7900 XTX trails the RTX 4090 by less than 15%, while subsequent cards exhibit consistent 10fps gaps in average frame rates.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage showcases near-identical performance between the RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4080, with negligible differences in both average and 1% low frame rates. The demanding The Last of Us Part I highlights a 21% performance deficit for the RX 7900 XTX against the RTX 4090, with neither the RX 7900 XT nor RTX 4080 surpassing 70fps.
Dying Light 2 sees the RX 7900 XTX lagging 23% behind the RTX 4090 but maintaining a 5% advantage over the RTX 4080. Hogwarts Legacy presents a similar pattern, where the RX 7900 XTX falls short against NVIDIA’s flagship while matching the RTX 4080’s performance.
Our testing reveals Starfield continues to suffer from suboptimal optimization, yet showcases the narrowest performance gap between the RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4090 at approximately 10%. The remaining GPUs (RX 7900 XT and RTX 4080) demonstrate negligible comparative differences here, as both struggle to deliver adequate frame rates in this title.A similar performance hierarchy emerges in Cyberpunk 2077’s non-raytraced mode.
Alan Wake 2 and Forspoken present a closer contest between the RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4080, though AMD’s flagship maintains a marginal advantage. Meanwhile, the RX 7900 XT barely achieves playable framerates in these demanding titles.
Aggregating results across all 12 tested games reveals the RX 7900 XTX delivers approximately 80% of the RTX 4090’s rasterization performance at 4K resolution, with the RX 7900 XT reaching over 90% of the RTX 4080’s capabilities.
When factoring in pricing considerations, AMD's advantages become undeniable. Notably, due to export restriction lists, current pricing trends for NVIDIA's RTX 40-series mid-to-high-end GPUs continue to rise, with the RTX 4090 maintaining premium-tier pricing on major e-commerce platforms. Calculating based on promotional pricing for the RX 7900 XTX reveals users can obtain approximately 80% of flagship-tier rasterization performance at 30% of the competing product's cost – a price-to-performance ratio that stands unmatched in the current market.
Ray Tracing Performance Evaluation: Identifying Limitations
To omit this section would risk accusations of partiality in our assessment. The reality remains clear: AMD continues to trail NVIDIA in ray tracing implementations, a trend consistently observed across our historical testing data. Activating ray tracing effects frequently triggers disproportionate performance penalties on Radeon GPUs, particularly evident in frame rate degradation.This performance gap becomes exacerbated by NVIDIA's ecosystem advantages: DLSS 3.5's simultaneous deployment of Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction technologies has become standard in mainstream ray-traced titles. While AMD offers FSR 2 upscaling, its FSR 3 Frame Generation currently supports only Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, with the driver-level AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames) technology remaining in preview testing. These limitations underscore the architectural and software maturity gaps AMD must address.
Our comparative testing methodology reveals stark contrasts: Even when pushing FSR 2 to its Performance Mode (1080P rendering), the RX 7900 XTX fails to match the RTX 4080's performance using DLSS 3.5 Quality Mode (1440P rendering). This disparity becomes more pronounced at equivalent rendering resolutions.
Cyberpunk 2077
Alan Wake 2
Conclusion: Apart from ray tracing, it performs perfectly for 4K rasterized gaming
The test results unequivocally position the RX 7900 XTX as the second-most powerful rasterization GPU behind the RTX 4090, with the RX 7900 XT demonstrating competitive performance against the RTX 4080 in select titles. However, this advantage evaporates when ray tracing enters the equation – the RX 7900 XTX struggles to match even the RTX 4080 in such scenarios. Thus, the RX 7900 series establishes itself as a cost-effective 4K gaming solution, though strictly within rasterization-focused workloads.
This market reality aligns perfectly with mainstream gaming priorities. Most consumers prioritize baseline playability over graphical perfection , explaining the RX 7900 XTX's repeated dominance in major sales events. The current gaming ecosystem remains predominantly rasterization-driven, with only a minority of enthusiasts maximizing ray tracing settings.