Today we’ll be reviewing the Radeon RX 7700 XT, AMD’s new budget GPU for 1080p and 1440p gaming. With an MSRP of $449, the RX 7700 XT 12GB sits between the 8GB and 16GB variants of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. AMD claims that its Navi 32 GPUs offer notably superior gaming performance than their RTX counterparts, including a wider VRAM buffer. We’ll test the Radeon RX 7700 XT across eight titles with separate ray-tracing benchmarks to find its place in the hardware hierarchy.
Test Bench
- CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K.
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Z790 Maximus Hero.
- Memory: 16GB x2 6000MT/s CL37 QC.
- Power Supply: Corsair RM1000E.
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT: 1080p Gaming Benchmarks
The Radeon RX 7700 XT is an excellent GPU for competitive esports at 1080p 144Hz and above. Most of our test suite is composed of massive open-world titles and yet all of them break the 120 FPS barrier at the Ultra Quality preset.
Assassins’ Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077 see the RX 7700 XT average a bit over 120 FPS at 1080p, beating the RTX 4060 Ti by 15% and 25%, respectively.
Dying Light 2 runs poorly across Radeon hardware (even without ray tracing) as the RX 7700 XT drops to 0.2% lows of just 5 FPS. With an average of 80 FPS, it’s the slowest card in our test, falling being the last-gen GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.
F1 2022 is the opposite. Here, we see the Radeon RX 7700 XT average over 200 FPS at 1080p Ultra, beating the RTX 4060 Ti by 24% and coming within 10% of the pricier RTX 4070. An important point to note here is that the GeForce cards suffer from micro stutters every now and then while the Radeon is unaffected.
Hitman 3 runs the best on the RX 7700 XT with an average of 189 FPS at 1080p. It’s faster than the RTX 4070 while completely outclassing the RTX 4060 Ti.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a more balanced title. All three GPUs average close to 200 FPS as the Radeon edges past the RTX 4060 Ti with notably higher lows.
The Callisto Protocol suffers from poor lows across all GPUs with an average lead of 25% over the RTX 4060 Ti at 1080p.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is another AMD partner title but it runs well across all GPUs. The RX 7700 XT is a paltry 8% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti with a massive deficit compared to the 4070.
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT: 1440p Gaming Benchmarks
At 1440p, the gulf between the Radeon RX 7700 XT and the RTX 4060 Ti only grows. The former’s wider memory bus comes into play, offering it a steeper advantage over its rival. It leads by 25% in Assassins Creed: Valhalla (from 15% at 1080p) with roughly the same leverage in Cyberpunk 2077.
The differences remain largely unchanged in Dying Light 2 and F1 2022 (versus 1080p).
In Hitman 3, the GeForce RTX 4070 gains the upper hand over the RX 7700 XT while the 4060 Ti continues to trail by 34.5%.
In “The Callisto Protocol”, the Radeon RX 7700 XT averages 84 FPS at 1440p, beating the RTX 4060 Ti by 31%. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands retains the 1080p deltas.
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT: Ray Tracing Benchmarks
Ray tracing has always been a weak point for Team Radeon. While the RDNA 3 graphics architecture is much better at ray-tracing than the older RDNA 2 parts, it continuously falls behind NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace offerings.
Crysis Remastered uses a mix of software and hardware accelerated ray tracing. And yet the RX 7700 XT finishes last, behind the RTX 3060 Ti.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a welcome change. Despite being an NVIDIA partner title, the RX 7700 XT does fairly well at the RT Ultra Preset averaging just 5 FPS less than the RTX 4060 Ti.
Dying Light 2 was a nightmare for Radeon cards without ray tracing, so enabling it doesn’t really help.
F1 2022 is the first ray-traced title where the RX 7700 XT is faster than the RTX 4060 Ti, narrowly beating it by 8%.
Hitman 3, despite being an AMD partner title runs considerably smoother on the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (with ray-tracing enabled). Conversely, Metro Exodus, an NVIDIA partner title runs better on the RX 7700 XT with an average of 59 FPS.
The Callisto Protocol predominantly favors the RX 7700 XT, granting it a lead of 23% over the RTX 4060 Ti, while also leveling with the RTX 4070 (albeit with worse lows).
Note: All runs were conducted at 1080p native.
Thermals and Power
It’s clear from the below chart that RDNA 3 is a power hog. It draws considerably more power than the RTX 4060 Ti while also leapfrogging past the RTX 4070. It’s even worse than the RTX 3060 Ti that leverages Samsung’s older 8nm LPP process. Luckily, the triple fan variant we tested holds up well in even the most intensive ray tracing workloads.
Conclusion
The Radeon RX 7700 XT is a decent 1440p graphics card. It beats the RTX 4060 Ti by 20-30% in rasterization but falls behind in ray-traced titles. It also draws considerably more power than ever older competitor cards. However, if you’re in the market for a sub-$500 offering, this is a solid option.
