AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT vs Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070: Which GPU is better for your needs?

• Source: AMD

  AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT

  Great for gaming

  The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is simply a great GPU for gaming. Whether you’re using a 1080p or 1440p monitor, the RX 7800 XT will perform well enough to provide butter-smooth gameplay.

  Pros

  • More VRAM
  • Excellent for 1440p gaming

• Image: Nvidia

  Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070

  Better for ray tracing

  Nvidia’s RTX 40-series GPUs are excellent for gaming with ray tracing and other resource-intensive features, and the GeForce RTX 4070 is no exception. This is a solid card for 1080p and 1440p.

  Pros

  • Better ray tracing
  • Excellent for 1440p gaming

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is a great mid-rage, more affordable GPU compared to some of the more expensive graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia. AMD launched the Radeon RX 7800 XT to take on Team Green’s RTX 40-series GPU, but the real question is: Which graphics card is best out of the two, and which GPU should you buy? We’re going to look at the specifications, pricing, and in-game numbers to help you make the right decision.

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT vs Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070: Price, specs & availability

Choosing the best graphics card you can afford is the best way to ensure you have ample performance to enjoy all your favorite games. The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 are two excellent graphics cards capable of running the latest PC titles at 1080p and 1440p. They’re similar in many ways though they’re designed for different gamers. The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is best for those seeking the best value, though Nvidia’s RTX 4070 is a great pick for ray tracing.

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT runs on the company’s RDNA 3 architecture, which brought with it notable improvements over the RDNA 2 platform. Nvidia managed to achieve gains through its Ada Lovelace architecture. Ada Lovelace introduced 4th Gen tensor cores, 3rd Gen RT cores, DLSS 3, and AV1encoding. AMD added 2nd Gen RT cores, 2nd Gen Infinity Cache, AI acceleration, and a new chiplet design. What all this means for gaming is both GPUs are running on modern architectures.

• 	AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT	Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
  Brand	AMD	Nvidia
  Architecture	RDNA 3	Ada Lovelace
  Process	5nm, 6nm	4nm
  Transistors	28.1 billion	35.8 billion
  Shader Units	60	5,888
  Ray Accelerators/Cores	60	46
  Stream Processors	3,840	46
  Base Clock Speed	2,124MHz	1,920MHz
  Boost Clock Speed	2,430MHz	2,480MHz
  Memory Bus	256-bit	192-bit
  Memory Bandwidth	2,708.4GB/s	504.2GB/s
  Power Draw	263W	200W

There are 28.1 billion transistors inside the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and 35.8 billion for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070. AMD uses 3,840 stream processors for handling all the compute work while the RTX 4070 is able to rely on 5,888 shader units. AMD has the upper hand with 14 more RT cores at 60, but Nvidia’s 3rd Gen RT cores are able to power through more intensive workloads and display high-quality lighting effects with less of a performance hit.

Clock speeds are similar between the two cards with 2,124MHz and 1,920MHz for the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 for base speeds. The RX 7800 XT can boost up to 2,430MHz, which falls short of the RTX 4070’s 2,480MHz. AMD is able to offer considerably more memory bandwidth through a wider memory bus and leveraging its Smart Access Memory with an AMD processor. It’s something worth considering, though we found the GPU to perform almost as well with Intel hardware.

Performance

We found both graphics cards to perform well in our reviews with the Radeon RX 7800 XT coming out on top with most games in our testing suite. Nvidia was able to hit back with certain resolutions, and the 12GB is able to handle high-resolution textures. AMD’s RX 7800 XT has 4GB more VRAM for a total of 16GB that makes it better at running games at 4K, though we’d only use either card for up to 1440p.

Ray tracing is once again a different story as Nvidia is able to comfortably pull away from AMD. Regardless of title and resolution, Nvidia’s RTX 4070 largely performed better than the RX 7800 XT, and as such it’s the go-to GPU for those who want to enable the feature.

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT vs Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070: Which is right for you?

We’d strongly recommend the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT as a great gaming graphics card for 1080p and 1440p gaming. We’re fans of what AMD was able to achieve with its RDNA 3 architecture, and while it’s still behind Nvidia in terms of driver support, AMD cards have usually fared better over the course of a GPU lifespan with driver performance improvements.

Source: AMD

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT

Best for 1080p and 1440p gaming

The king of AMD’s RX 70-series graphics cards for 1440p gaming, this is the GPU you should buy if you’re after butter-smooth 2K performance. The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is also fairly good at 4K gaming, especially when paired with FSR.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is the graphics card to buy if you’re after the absolute best ray tracing performance. This is something many may not value as an important decision-making factor, but if you want the best visuals, Team Green is the way to go.

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070

Best for ray tracing

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 is a midrange card in the RTX 40-series based on the Ada Lovelace architecture.