The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT: A Solid Mid-Range Graphics Card

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT has finally arrived, offering a strong competitor to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 at a lower price point. While it may not excel in ray tracing workloads, this graphics card holds its own in traditional rasterization, outperforming its more expensive counterpart in some games. Despite its $500 price tag, the RX 7800 XT is a top choice for most people, especially those who want to avoid the used GPU market.

Is the RX 7800 XT a Mid-Range GPU?

Compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, the RX 7800 XT feels like a mid-range graphics card despite being priced lower. At $499, it marks a return to affordable GPUs for AMD, reminiscent of their Radeon RX 480 in the past. It’s unfortunate that a mid-range card now costs $499, considering the prices in the earlier 2010s. However, for those who want a decent graphics card without breaking the bank, the RX 7800 XT or RTX 4070 are the best options. While the RTX 4070 offers additional features such as DLSS 3.0 and improved ray tracing performance, the RX 7800 XT is $100 cheaper and performs just as well in rasterization.

Design and Specs

The RX 7800 XT is a solid mid-range card built on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, featuring 80 Compute Units and 16 GB of RAM. With 64 Streamining Multiprocessors per Compute Unit, totaling 3,840, the card delivers impressive performance. It also includes AI accelerators, although they are currently intended for other AI workloads and not AI-based upscaling tech.

Despite AMD’s less extravagant cooler design, the RX 7800 XT does an excellent job at keeping temperatures low, peaking at around 80°C. The card’s angular design and red motifs give it a distinctive look, while the all-metal shroud adds a premium feel to it.

Performance

When it comes to ray tracing performance, the RX 7800 XT falls behind the RTX 4070 in most tests, particularly in games like Cyberpunk 2077. However, in games with lighter ray tracing or without it altogether, such as Total War: Warhammer 3, the RX 7800 XT performs remarkably well, even surpassing the RTX 4070 in some cases.

While there will be games that heavily utilize Nvidia GameWorks tech where the RX 7800 XT lags behind, players can simply disable ray tracing and still enjoy an incredible gaming experience. Overall, the RX 7800 XT stands out as the highlight of this generation, especially when paired with the slightly cheaper and only marginally slower 7700 XT.

Conclusion

Considering its price and performance, the RX 7800 XT is a strong contender for anyone in the market for a 1440p graphics card who doesn’t prioritize ray tracing or Nvidia’s proprietary upscaling tech. While it would be ideal for the card to be priced lower, it remains a solid choice in this generation. For those diving into games like Starfield, the RX 7800 XT is definitely worth considering.

(Note: The purchasing guide has been omitted)