AMD input RX 7900 XTX graphics cards have been spotted in leaked benchmarks, putting the flagship RDNA 3’s performance on par with the RTX 4080 – and since Team Red’s GPUs are quite a lot cheaper, that could worry Nvidia.
Like Tom’s Hardware (opens in a new tab) discovered, Benchleaks – which is a regular source of benchmark leaks on Twitter – has been collecting Geekbench results for the RX 7900 XTX (add your own spice, like any leak).
[GB5 GPU] GPUCPU unknown: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X (8C 16T)Min/Max/Medium: 5245/5443/5417 MHz Codename: RaphaelCPUID: A60F12 (authenticated AMD) GPU: Radeon RX 7900 XTXAPI: VulkanScore: 179579, +71.5% vs. RTX 3070https://t.co/mkOspAbgFCDecember 5, 2022
As you can see above, in the Vulkan performance test for Geekbench 5, the 7900 XTX scored 179,579. That’s only slightly faster than the RTX 4080, which, as Tom pointed out, hit 178,105 on average across a number of user scores that our sister site discovered.
Other results shared are for test OpenCL (opens in a new tab)where the 7900 XTX hit 228,647, but in this case, RTX4080 somehow outstripping that number with an average result of 264,482.
Analysis: Nvidia counterattack in the plan?
Looking at these results, then, the Vulkan scores certainly seem to back up the claim AMD made in pre-launch marketing – namely that the 7900 XTX is on par with the RTX 4080. In fact, it’s completely on par by that benchmark (technically, 3 . DNA flagship is just under a percentage point faster, but that hardly makes any difference).
On the other hand, the OpenCL benchmark shows Nvidia’s RTX 4080 leading by 15%, which is definitely more noticeable. Not that we should be doing any pre-release benchmarks, of course – whichever way it’s based – and speaking of pre-release, AMD’s drivers aren’t complete either. And Geekbench isn’t the strongest benchmark player on the gaming front, so we should keep that in mind, above everything else.
However, this is a clear hint that the RX 7900 XTX will be able to successfully balance out the RTX 4080 and use Nvidia’s more expensive second-tier Lovelace GPU.
This is where it gets really interesting, diving into other rumors where we’ve heard reports that Nvidia could drop the price of the RTX 4080 in mid-December, when the 7900 XTX (and 7900 XT) will go on sale. . As we discussed recentlythat’s very much a counterattack to AMD’s RDNA 3 launch, as the 7900 XTX is for sale a lot cheaper than the RTX 4080 (MSRP is $999, versus $1,199).
The sources of the RTX 4080 price cuts claim that Nvidia isn’t reacting to AMD, but rather wants to tweak the overall value proposition — the 4080’s key price/performance ratio — to boost lackluster sales. , and that is certainly true . Sure, the RTX 4080 has a lot worse sales than the leaked figures we’ve seen (figures). RTX4090 sold distant more units), and to put it mildly, the 4080 suffered an unpopular reception.
So Nvidia needs to take action, but the timing of the price drop pretty much coincides with AMD’s release of the new RDNA 3 GPU is certainly no coincidence. It’s not a leap to theorize that maybe Nvidia is valuing AMD’s next-gen flagship as a major RTX 4080 competitor in terms of all of this.
Either way, we can still expect a more competitively-priced RTX 4080 to compete with the 7900 XTX, as that’s clearly good news for enthusiast consumers looking to shell out a budget. a large sum of money to buy graphics card.
