In a rather impressive move, TechPowerUp has managed to overclock a AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX to a point where it can fit Nvidia RTX 4090 in the rigorous standards of Cyberpunk 2077.
Now, let’s not worry too much: in theory, the $999 GPU is on par with the $1,599 card in terms of gaming performance, which is, in theory, a huge loss for Nvidia. But this is just a test; TechPowerUp is also found that their overclocked RX 7900 XTX could not achieve the same performance as the RTX 4090 in other benchmarks, although performance has improved significantly.
Still, it was impressive – and not entirely unexpected. It was reported that there was a clock speed issue with the Navi 31 die powering the RX 7900 XTX, which is said to have limited its performance somewhat – something AMD was able to address with future driver updates. It still won’t really overshadow the 4090 (which will have its own new driver), but it’s worth noting that AMD’s flagship GPU isn’t currently using 100% of the available power. TechPowerUp’s powerful 3.2 GHz overclock gets more graphics out of the card.
Analysis: Even more trouble for Nvidia
Nvidia has been troubled with issues surrounding the next-gen Lovelace launch graphics card – are from molten 4090 power adapter to the hasty ‘no debut’ of RTX 4080 12GB – and this looks like another problem for the Blue Team.
TechPowerUp used a factory overclocked Asus TUF card for testing, which was slightly faster than the original AMD RX 7900 XTX we tested in our review. Taking into account manual overclocking (which involves a complex voltage drop to get the most out of the GPU), it’s 23.1% faster than the competition. RTX 4080 16GB.
Sure, this is comparing an overclocked card to one running at a reference clock, but it’s still disturbing news for Nvidia. The 16GB RTX 4080 has been criticized by many for not being powerful enough for its hefty $1,199 price tag, and this lends more credence to that argument: AMD’s new flagship GPU is $200 cheaper and comfortable outperforms it in most areas.
Note that we said ‘most’ – it’s worth noting that Nvidia cards still win in Blender and other software that prioritize CUDA cores in terms of performance. If you are looking for a GPU for professional creative work, then Nvidia is still the right choice. However, these numbers corroborate AMD’s repeated claims that Radeon is the best choice for gamers.
This is not likely to change until Nvidia makes it available more affordable cardthat’s new RTX4070 and 4060 models or through discounts on the existing RTX 4080 16GB. Even then, Team Green will likely be in an advantageous position: AMD’s pricing curve gives it the edge here, so we can expect Team Red’s budget and mid-range RX 7000 GPUs to very competitively priced. Bottom line: Nvidia has an uphill battle ahead. A lot of gamers’ goodwill was wasted due to the mess surrounding the new Lovelace cards, and AMD was quick to capitalize on the situation.
