AMD’s Greedy Upsell: RX 7900 XT Review & Benchmarks vs. XTX, 4080, & More

Sponsor: Crucial DDR5 Memory
AMD’s RX 7900 XT is basically just an upsell technique for the RX 7900 XTX. The XT fails to provide any meaningful value over last generation cards, it fails to beat any NVIDIA 40-series cards, and it is clearly a greedy play at pushing consumers to the RX 7900 XTX — just like the 4080 is designed to push people to the 4090, except NVIDIA at least has the defense of being the literal ‘best’ on the charts. This review and benchmark of the AMD RX 7900 XT will test it vs. the RX 7900 XTX, the NVIDIA RTX 4080 and 4090, the AMD RX 6950 XT, and more. We’re looking at gaming performance, ray tracing, thermals, and power.

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – The AMD RX 7900 XT Video Card
01:26 – The Background
03:30 – Benchmarking the Number of Xs
04:42 – RX 7900 XT Power Consumption
05:46 – Thermal Benchmarks on the RX 7900 XT
07:11 – The Fan is too Aggressive on the 7900 XT
07:50 – Frequency Validation on 7900 XT
08:20 – Total War RX 7900 XT Benchmarks (4K, 1440p, 1080p)
12:04 – Tomb Raider GPU Benchmarks 2022
14:18 – FFXIV RX 7900 XT vs. 7900 XTX
15:01 – F1 2022 GPU Benchmarks
16:05 – Rainbow Six Siege RX 7900 XT vs. RTX 4080
17:15 – Horizon Zero Dawn RX 7900 XT vs. 6950 XT
18:00 – Ray Tracing Benchmarks – Cyberpunk
19:19 – Ray Tracing Tomb Raider RX 7900 XT
20:15 – Ray Tracing Control Benchmarks
21:18 – Conclusion: It’s An Upsell Card
24:00 – WHIIIIRRRRRR

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Host, Writing, Editing: Steve Burke
Testing: Patrick Lathan
Camera, Editing: Andrew Coleman
Video Editing: Vitalii Makhnovets
Video Editing: Mike Gaglione


There's a problem with X inflation that X's have gotten really expensive so the 2600x for example is 50 more than the 2600 non-x but the 7900 XTX is it ends Up being so the 700 XT is 33 fewer X's At 10 less money Clearly one of the worst downgrades in PC history ever review over we can all Move on now X inflation aside and video did AMD a Massive favor by launching its 4080 at 1200 and 40.90 at sixteen hundred Dollars and the most interesting aspect Of our 7900 XTX review was the fact that The 4080 is 1200 bucks so you end up at A thousand for the 700 XTX and 900 for The 700 XT that we're reviewing today in This video and at the time of filming Nvidia hasn't budged we'll see if they Do they probably will at some point Because there's a lot of them sitting on The shelves even here in Taipei but for Now the 4080 it remains uh not really That that good of a value so we're Reviewing the 700 XT we're still on the Other side of the world from our usual Studio but we have all the usual data For you let's get started before that This video is brought to you by crucial And it's ddr5 memory for Intel or AMD Ryzen CPUs crucial makes ddr5 kits that Are Deployable and ryzen 6000 laptop Systems and in ryzen 7000 systems or Intel they're like including both budget

Oriented and performance-based memory Modules if you're building a new system Click the link in the description below To learn about crucial ddr5 memory this Video is going to be more of a test for Our editors than a test for the cards With all the highlights and all of the Different x's and the product names so Bear with us and the chart highlights For this one but we're going to do our Best there's the XTX that we reviewed And then as we call it sometimes the XT Non-second act we have a lot more we Want to do with these cards when we get Home to analyze the data closer but Today we're focusing on gaming for Rasterization we'll also be looking at Ray tracing hello at raytracing Performance Hawks for asterization out Here in Taipei and uh we'll be looking At Thermals power and some fan and Frequency response Behavior today for Some quick references the 900 7900 XT Puts it above the 6950×10 price and the 6900 xtn price with those two still Right now today as I'm filming in the 650 dollar Mark and we saw them up to About 700 so that's probably the closest Competition for AMD right now is its own Parts from last generation for some Quick specs so the RX 7900 XT steps down To 20 gigabytes of memory from 24 Gigabytes on the 700 XTX with the stream Processor count dropping from 6144 to

53.76. those are big changes for a Hundred bucks memory bandwidth also Drops to 800 gigabytes per second from 960 gigabytes per second partially a Result of turning off one of the six Mcds the full die has one gcd or a Graphics compute die and 6 mcds but the 7900 XT moves to a dummy die plus five Mcds now the dummy die is just for Stability and keeping the cooler Mount Consistent doesn't do anything although It may be fused off in Silicon and not a Pure dummy we're not sure in the XCX Review we also went over pressure maps Flatness and we went over a transient Spikes which you go check out if you Haven't seen it but for this one let's Just start with some some of the Benchmarks and get into gaming right Away our first Benchmark is one we Reserved for the 7900 XT it's a unique One we've spent years refining it and we Don't think you're going to see this Data anywhere else on the internet we've Got it locked down at this point this Chart shows the number of x's in a Product name with higher obviously being Better as shown here the future XFX RX 7900 XTX has more X's than it has other Letters in its name at five we counted This name four times to make sure we got It right so this testing is just as Accurate as our other tests the AMD RX 7900 XTX only has three X's allowing XFX

A lead of 67 percent to X's that's as Many X's as Ace attack has for liquid Cooling Partners so it's a lot the 700 XT is a step down from that still at Just two x's this means that an extra 100 gets you fifty percent extra X's if You move to the XTX as for NVIDIA the Nvidia RTX 4090 only has One X and Egregious oversight that we can't Believe we missed in our original review With the XFX rxxtx I had a 400 lead Extra X's honestly the review is kind of Over before it even started X we'll step Down to less important testing with Power benchmarks looking at average Power consumption during a workload it's Not as good as the x's and the number of Them but for this one we ran transient Tests against the rx700 XTX and our XTX Review so check that video out for Oscilloscope shots like these and Background information on Transit Handling and voltage regulation for the 700 XT we just focused on the nominal Power consumption during a constant load Though here we saw the XT pulling 313 Watts when stock or 362 Watts when Overclocked this is using the stock amdb BIOS with a maximum power offset so it's As far as it can go for this cart the 362 watt number puts it just past the 351 Watts or the 700 XTX which itself Jumps to 416w Watts when overclocked the Stock 313 watt figure is alongside the

6900 XT which pulled 300 watts for its Workload and it's below the 6950 XD at 377 Watts that means that even if AMD is Equal to the 6950 XT and some tests for Gaming results it'll still at least have Better power consumption figures Thermals are up next and this testing we Ran benchmarks using specialized 3dmark Render scenes for a sustained gaming Load the GPU is allowed to hit steady State by running for 30 minutes and Leveling out its fan curve before Averaging hundreds of rows of data the RX 7900 xdx reference card had some Issues here and its main problem was Coil wind that we showed in the XTX Review its memory temperature was a Secondary problem and noisy fan ramp With bad hysteresis was the tertiary one Here the rx700 XT continues the trend of Only being somewhat acceptable the 700 XT is 88 degree memory Junction is Bordering on unacceptable as installing This card into any case that's Sub-optimal for cooling the GPU we'll Push those memory thermals close to the Spec limit the real problem is that the Fan on nearly all gpus except EVGA icx Spins based on GPU temperature only as Long as the GPU is cool and this one is Doing pretty well here the fan won't Spin up fast enough to accommodate the Memory alone GPU thermals have the edge Temperature at an average of 57 degrees

Celsius and the hot spot at 72 degrees For the gcd those numbers are both fine Here mcd4 is disabled on our 7900 XT and All XTS will have one MCD turned off it Just may move around which one it is Ours again was four but the rest of the McD temperatures are all fine and in the 60s and there's no Inlet sensor on the XT so that's not shown here fan response Is up next plotting the GPU Edge Thermals we see they Spike to 60 degrees Before the fan intersects the Temperature and cuts it back down to 56 Degrees Celsius the hot spot is about 72 Degrees so both are operating in good Territory the fan ramp is still too Small spiky though the XTX had the added Problem of spiking initially and then Falling off and then spiking again the XT spikes instantly to about 1800 RPM And then fluctuates in the high 1700s During the test Andy needs to do some Fan ramp tuning on both of these cards This card also has coil wine issues Although we didn't bother recording this One like we did for the XTX the Frequency validation is next tested in The same scenario the 7800 XTX Originally plotted in the 2600 to 2700 Megahertz range with some occasional Spikes higher the RX 7900 XT had a Similar trajectory it jumped to 25 30 Megahertz and then fluctuated plus or Minus 60 throughout the test there were

Occasional spikes to 2700 megahertz but None that mattered and they were overall Few the frequency spec is 2400 megahertz So at least in this test AMD is hitting Its advertised clocks well starter Gaming benchmarks with rasterization as Always and will begin with Total War Warhammer 3. this time we're skipping The 8K test Justin because clearly in Our XTX review 8K was definitely worth Everyone's time and we're glad that AMD Spent all the time it did marketing Something that is so playable and Something that everyone has anyway at 4K The RX 7900 XT non-second X ran at 75 FPS average meaning that spending 100 For an extra letter X is in this game Worth the 20 uplift versus the Non-second X that's a large jump for a Hundred bucks sort of but it's not Always that clean as you'll see in some Of our other games this number is all Over the place and like Nvidia it starts To more look like the classic upsell the XT lands between the 3090 and the 3090 TI outperforming the RTX 3080 by about 18 the 4080 still isn't worth buying at Least at the price it was when we wrote This review but as a comparison it's 16 Ahead of the XT non-second X that's That's the 7900xt clear the 7900 XT out Does the 6900 XT by 40 generationally at Average FPS or 29 over the 6950 XT now Don't get too excited about these

Numbers because they drop down a lot Again depending on the game we'll get to Those against the previous gen Flagship 5700 XT any of these modern gpus would Be a serious upgrade the 700 XT is Included in that list and just remember That at some point you're moving from Old enough Hardware that all the options Will feel significant even if they Aren't the most expensive on the market Prices as of a week before the launch of This card are still very good on last Gen Hardware so you should be looking Around at 30 series and 6000 series Stuff as well at 1440p the 700 XT ran at 155 FPS average establishing the XTX as About 16 percent ahead of the XT that's Reduced from the 4K Delta we saw which We think has to do with some combination Of memory bandwidth and the one inactive McD the 3090 TI falls behind the 700 XT Here once again establishing that the 3090 TI's recent launch was a last Minute grab for gaming users it at least Had some value for people who were using It for the video memory though the lead Of the XT over the 3080 is about 35 FPS Average here or 29 compared to the 6900 XT of last gen the 700 XT pushes a 36 Improvement that's for the 4080 it's Still tactically ahead the 4080 that is But the 1200 MSRP means that 88 of the Performance is achieved at 75 percent of The price finally at 1080p the 7900 XT

Pushed to 233 FPS average allowing the 700x TX and 11 lead reduced from 20 at 4K and 16 percent at 1440p so there's a Clear downtrend here as resolution Decreases the 4080 still has a lead over The 7800 XT although again it's not only That's anywhere near justifiable at the Price as for older Hardware the 6900 XT Is available at time of writing for 660 Dollars or seventy three percent of the MSRP of the 700 XT and 75 percent of the Performance AMD has at least improved Generationally against the launch MSRP But it's older cards for as long as Stock lasts remain competitive with the New options the 4090 establishes the Ceiling here and it's the Undisputed Leader AMD hasn't changed that with its Launch with these two cards although AMD Has further damage to the perceived Value of the 4080 with the XTX at least In rasterization Ray tracing Nvidia is Still in the strong lead Tomb Raider is Next starting at 4K we wanted to see if AMD could repeat the XTX to XT Gap it Achieved in Total War in this one the XTX is 143 FPS average against the XT is 123 FPS average establishes about a 16 Lead for the XTX four percentage points Reduced from Total War but close enough To remain significant it's kind of where This one lands AMD is positioning these Cards similarly to nvidia's top two so Rather than a slight overclock that

Nearly invalidates the flagship like we Used to see there's kind of a real swing That's starting to form here but that Extra 16 costs 11 more money for Reference and this is a clear push to an Upsell as GPU prices in general climb Upwards the 4080 keeps about a 20 lead Against the XT for its 33 price hike Against the 6900 XT we're looking at a Swing of 104 FPS average to 123 FPS Average on the XT it's not the biggest Generational swing and nvidia's lack of Presence at a thousand dollars and below Is really the biggest thing that AMD has Going for it right now with this card The card is obviously nowhere close to The 490 performance but it's also Nowhere close in price so fair enough And someone has to sell something below A thousand dollars at 1440p the XT is 215 FPS average creates only an eight Percent gap between the XT second X and The actually no second X but one first Ax the 4080 and 40 90 aren't that Interesting here they're outperforming The limitations of this Benchmark at 1440p so we'll look down the stack Instead the 700 XT out does the 6950 XD By about eight percent here making the 6950 XT or 6900 XT a better value if you Can buy at the new and lower prices Assuming they're still available when This video goes up eight percent is Little more than a pre-overclock so it's

Basically just a refresh at that point Except way too expensive against the 3080 the XT has a 31 Improvement it's Not worth buying a new GPU if you Already own a 3080 but it may be worth Eliminating or at least reconsidering The 3080 in a raster Focus gaming PC We'll skip 1080ps into two CPU bound to Be useful Final Fantasy still has good Scaling at 4K making it a surprisingly Interesting Benchmark since it Represents an otherwise underrepresented Category of gaming MMOs and it scales Beyond the CPU with some settings the 7900 XTX is 148 FPS average gives it a 19 Improvement of the rx7800 XT similar To Total Warhammer the 4080 is a click Above that at 152 and against the 6900 XT we're looking at a more limited Uplift of 20 to 10 depending on if You're considering the 6950 XD instead So that 10 number against the 69.50 That's really not exciting Generationally for the 700 XT and it's Clear that the XT might mostly exist to Push you towards the XTX again similar To the 4080 to 40 90. next up is F1 2022 This one is a limited data set due to Game updates that required full reruns Recently the rx700 XT ran at 143 FPS Average allowing the XTX a lead of 15 The 4080 leads the XT by five and a half Percent here as for last generation the 6950 XT is 133 FPS average put the 700

XT 7.6 ahead so nothing it basically Just feels like that we overclock again If this particular Trend continues it'll Be shaping up in a disappointing way for The XT but Total War was one of the more Positive results so we'll see how it Unfolds at 1440p for F1 it's even worse The 700 XT only leads to 6950 XT by Three percent at 233 versus 226 FPS Average it's starting to feel entirely Pointless the 6900 XT and the 6950 XT Cards were just available for hundreds Of dollars cheaper so Andy's asking in This game for three percent more Performance but for over 30 more money The new in box 6000 series cards that Just sold recently Rainbow Six looks a Little better at 4K the 700 XT outpaces The 6950 XT by 19 or the 6900 XT by 28 The XTX leads the XT by 19 here and the 4080 is also about 19 ahead as it's tied With the XTX if the 4080 ever comes down In price it may pose an existential Threat for some AMD 7000 series cards But it depends on how much it comes down We just saw dozens of them on shelves in Taipei's biggest Electronics market so We'd imagine the price drop is looming Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p had the 49d Clearly CPU bound and the 4080 Occasionally bound during The Benchmark That means we're not able to see full Scaling the 700 XTX and the 700 XT Remain comparable to each other though

There's about a 1.4 percent benefit on The XTX to the XT or about five percent Over the 6950 XT from the 7800 XT but That was at 1080p so there's clearly Something going on with the 700 XT at 1080P and Rainbow Six that just makes it Not beneficial to use at least compared To something like any of the other cards We just talked about our last non-rt Gaming Benchmark is Horizon zero Dawn at 4K for this one the 700 XT ran at 101 FPS average which has the XTX about 19 Ahead unfortunately for the XT it's About equal with the 6950 XT and only 11 Percent ahead of the 6900 XT the 700 XT Seems mostly dead in the water in this Type of scenario as long as the last gen Guards still exist on the market Although the XTX remains an interesting Contender that's worth considering the 700 XT sometimes posts large gains over Last gen but in this case it's just not Enough to really consider you can save a Lot of money by stepping down to the 6950 XT and basically lose nothing in This specific scenario Ray tracing Performance is next on our list of tests And videos managed to set up a foothold Here and it has kept better positioning Versus AMD but this area is still new And results are varied and we only test A few games for this one right now Cyberpunk can control where the two top Voted games by our community when we

Recently asked on the YouTube Community Which RT games people play and they have Wildly different results between AMD and Nvidia in cyberpunk at 4K and with dlss And FSR at equivalent set ends between The vendors the rx700 XT ran at 37 FPS Average to the xt-axis 41 FPS average Result that's about an 11 lead for the XTX compared to Nvidia it has the 700 XT About equal to the RTX 3080 in this Particular game and just behind the RTX 3090 those are similar to The 3080 as Well and the 4080 has a strong lead at 58 ahead with a 4090 obviously ahead of That at 1440p and with the same settings The raytraced cyberpunk Benchmark Positioned to the rx700 XT at 68 FPS Average so effectively tied with the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 the XTX offered a 14 Improvement over the 700 XCX non-second X with the 4080 61 percent better than The 700 XT Tomb Raider with Ray tracing Is far easier to run just remember that These charts are different from our Earlier Tomb Raider tests because we're Now enabling RT Shadows the rx700 XT Operated at about 68 FPS average here Tied with a 39 DTI this time this is Better relative positioning because most Of this test remains rasterized where AMD does better than in its RT Pure Performance the XTX is 15 better than The XT in this test at 1440p in the same Test the rx700 XT is 125 FPS average

Gave the XTX a small 12 lead hardly Interesting compared to the results with A wider range the generational lead is At least better at about 21 over the 6550 XT the 7900 XT pulls ahead of the 3090 TI in this one with thanks to the Resolution reduction which helps it and Simplification of Ray Trace Graphics Down to just Shadows control is the Other highly voted game from our Community using a heavier workload and Tomb Raider but a lighter one than Cyberpunk it also avoids amd's known Issues with cyberpunk right now where AMD itself has talked about them the 4K Control Benchmark without any DLS as or FSR technology has the 7900xt 39 FPS Average given the xdx an improvement of 16 over the 700 XT and that's at 45 FPS For the 1 000 option versus the 900 for The XT the 700 XT is therefore behind The 3090 and the 3090 TI this time and Roughly tied with the RTX 3080s 38 FPS Average result they're within error of Each other here the 6950 XT is not Though and it's 31 FPS average result Means a generational uplift of 24 here At 1440p the XT is now at 82 FPS average Which has it between the 3090 and 3090 TI the XTX is about 14 ahead as is the 3090 TI with the 4080 establishing a 29 Lead proportionally the 700 XT is Looking better here than it did in some Other games with its 3080 lead of 10

Percent so in total the 700 XT is a Peculiar card it's really weirdly Positioned we think it's more useful to AMD as an upsell than it is necessarily As a 900 video card at this point Because the XCX sometimes it's like 20 Ahead which is massive for a hundred Dollars but then at other times the Value just really isn't there especially Compared to the 6900 XT and the 6950 XT Where if they're still available when This video goes up at 650 bucks They're pretty compelling versus the 79 XT even though the XTX has a more Meaningful uplip and a lot of that is Because in some of the games we looked At the 6950 and the 6900 XT it's like a One to four percent Gap versus the 7900 XT it just depends on the test and Obviously other times it's far far more Than that but the fact that it's a Little variable here is part of the Problem now we've moved away at this Point Nvidia and AMD both from the days Of having a flagship that's four percent Better for 400 more now they have Flagships that are actually meaningfully Better than their second best card but There's still a price hike there so it Seems the companies have realized they Can sell a lot more of these high-end Flagships if they end up pushing them Farther apart rather than closer Together where it was almost an inverse

Upsell in the Titan era or some of the Ti class cards like the 2080 TI versus The 2080 we didn't see gaps like this Back then there's a quick recap you Might be better off saving a few hundred Bucks on the 6000 series if there's Anything left if this point but the ray Tracing performance does pose Significant gains against the 6000 Series in the 7000 series so if you Really care about RT you still need to Look at the 7000 series or more Realistically Nvidia AMD is still behind In Ray tracing performance and it still Has a fighting chance and rasterization So that hasn't changed generationally The XTX manages to bounce the 48 out of The second rank regularly giving it hope If Nvidia sticks to its high price point The 700 XT is worth it sometimes and Pointless other times entirely depending On the test and some of that comes down To how much memory bandwidth versus Compute it's using so for the 700 XT we Really can't get behind this one the XTX Makes more sense where it is there's a Little bit of price creep in here Generationally for both vendors and These not as steep as Nvidia So that's Its strongest point right now is the 4080 at 1200 still doesn't make any Sense and that XTX does actually post Some pretty meaningful gains versus the 6000 series it's just the XT non-second

X that ends up being more of the problem So so it feels like the XT is a little Too expensive for what it is in Aggregate even though in Total War for Example it looks pretty good and uh Ultimately we're analyzing this remotely So just as a quick note there's more Work we want to do once I get back but For today we're limited to what we're Able to do on the other side of the World for a review and that means that There's probably some data analysis some Comparison versus marketing things like That that you'll have to see in a future Video from us because it's very hard Working on a laptop and the Airbnb where There's construction going on Surrounding us the GPU is allowed to hit Steady state by running for So that's it for this one thanks for Watching subscribe for more as always We'll see you all next time

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