In the past week, amd presented in Las Vegas the graphics cards Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX. Both models have stood out for significantly improving the performance of their predecessors —on paper, at least—, and for reaching the market with prices that, although not cheap, are considerably below those of their flagship GPUs. Lifelong rival: NVIDIA. However, those led by Lisa Su have been quick to acknowledge that their new hardware does not compete directly in performance with the GeForce RTX 4090.
so indicated Frank GoshawkAMD’s lead game architect, in a recent interview with PC World. In it, the executive clarified that the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX have been designed, in fact, to rival the RTX 4080. The statement is not too surprising, considering that, although there is talk every year of the arrival of a GPU that puts the green team on the ropes, it never happens. And that does not mean that the Radeons are bad, or anything like that, but they are still far from being the much talked about NVIDIA killers.
“Let’s face it: It’s a $999 card. Not a competitor to the 4090, which costs 60% more. This is a competitor to the 4080, so let’s be clear about the class [de hardware] we’re talking about,” he explained.
Azor’s reference points specifically to the Radeon RX7900XTX, which is presented as the new top of the line option from AMD. It will go on sale next December 13, with the aforementioned price of $999. In the case of the XT version, which offers a more modest technical sheet, it can be obtained in exchange for $899.
If the Radeon RX 7900 XTX competes with the RTX 4080, why doesn’t AMD compare them directly?
The question was unavoidable. During the presentation of its new GPUs, AMD refrained from showing benchmarks where I compared them directly with NVIDIA graphics. So if the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is in direct competition with the RTX 4080, why not compare them directly to get a more realistic look at their performance?
Frank Azor did not escape the question, and took the opportunity to blame Jensen Huang’s men. “NVIDIA hasn’t sent me a 4080 yet, so I’m waiting for it to arrive so I can have the comparisons”, warned the manager of AMD in a laughing tone. However, he assured that they trust the performance of the new Radeon RX 7900:
“This card has been designed to compete with the 4080, and we don’t have the benchmark numbers for that card yet, which I think we’ll only see in a few weeks. So that’s the main reason you haven’t seen any comparisons. with NVIDIA. Also, our business is not to give them free marketing and publicity; they don’t put our benchmarks on their charts, so I won’t do them any favors in that regard. We don’t really know how the 4080 will perform, but considering how we’re getting playing us, yes we are very comfortable and confident that we will make them sweat.
AMD’s Frank Azor on the performance of the new Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
Thus, AMD has tried to clarify why the comparisons of the Radeon RX 7900 in terms of performance improvements have only been against other of its models, such as the RX 6950 XT.
Regardless of how they perform when compared to the latest NVIDIA models, the new GPUs in the team red boast features that make them stand out on their own. Of course, it will be necessary to see if in practice the same results that were presented in the papers are obtained. But if it really delivers what it promises, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX has everything to be one of the most attractive options in terms of price-performance.
Let’s not forget that the GeForce-RTX 4080 It was going to arrive in versions of 12 and 16 GB, although NVIDIA has decided to cancel the first. Only the version with more RAM will hit the market, in exchange for $1,199 —$200 more than AMD’s most powerful model—, which is expected to be between 25 and 37% slower than the 4090.