Help me choose...4070, 7800 XT, or 7900 XT

[sphbecker]

Yes, I know those are all different price points. I like the value proposition of the 7800 at $500, willing to spend up to $800 for the 7900, and the 4070 is an interesting mid-point if I want to stay on team green.

 

I am pretty familiar with the cards pros and cons, so don't feel like you need to spend a lot of time explaining those; just looking for help deciding if I actually want to spend more than $500. I know its personal choice, but I am on the fence here and would like to hear other opinions. Tell me what you would do if it was you. I can easily afford any of these cards, just trying to decide how much I want to spend on my system.

 

PS: I am not considering the 4070 Ti, I absolutely refuse to spend that much for only 12 GB. I am not a big fan of the 4070 for the same reason, but am willing to consider it at the lower price point, and all things being equal, I do have a slight preference for NVidia (but it is slight).

 

I have an older rig, hadn't planned on upgrading the GPU until I built a new system, but my 2070 Super just died, so here we are...

Monitor: 1440p 144hz

CPU: 5800X

RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3600MHz

Board: X470

PSU: high-tier 650 watt (a bit of a risk with the 7900, but I am willing to roll the dice and upgrade if stability is an issue)

[filpo]

1 minute ago, sphbecker said:

am pretty familiar with the cards pros and cons, so don't feel like you need to spend a lot of time explaining those; just looking for help deciding if I actually want to spend more than $500. I know its personal choice, but I am on the fence here and would like to hear other opinions. Tell me what you would do if it was you. I can easily afford any of these cards, just trying to decide how much I want to spend on my system.

it depends which games you play. At 1440p all of these cards shouldn't be bottlenecked by the 5800x but maybe the 7900 xt won't be ok on a 650w psu (if it's not a decent tier rated unit)

 

I'd say the 7800 XT but it does depend what games you play

[Agall]

7800 XT unless you play only ray-tracing games, then the 4070. The 7900 XT would warrant a PSU upgrade as well as be warranted only if you planned to upgrade to 4K in my opinion. With RX 7000 series, the higher the resolution, the higher you want to go for the extra memory bandwidth. The 7800 XT being pretty much perfect for 1440p on price and performance. 

 

Even when discussing ray-tracing, neither the 7800 XT nor 4070 are going to do 'amazing' at it, so you're compromising either way. The RT performance on the 7800 XT being acceptable.

[overbuilt_gaming]

It really depends on if you need the extra vram from the 7900xt based on the games you play.  The only game I've seen come close to 20gb+ of vram usage is Diablo4 on ultra settings while running at 3440x1440 ultrawide.  This also is with the high-res textures installed.

[sphbecker]

Thank you for all the replies; I tend to agree with those suggesting the 7800 XT, it does seem to be a good pairing with my current system, which I hope to keep a few more years.

 

Also, not sure if this is legit or not, but I found this single listing for a 7800 on Amazon for $400. Seems to good to be true, but Amazon is pretty good about returns even when it is a marketplace item like this.

Amazon.com: Sapphire 11330-03-20G Pure AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6, AMD RDNA 3 : Electronics

 

EDIT: the listing I ordered is no longer there. My status shows "ordered" so I'll keep an eye on it and see if it actually ships.

EDIT 2: I got an email from Amazon this morning that my order has been canceled. That seller now longer appears and the listing shows the correct price. Oh well, guess I'm making a trip to MicroCenter over my lunch.

[RevGAM]

35 minutes ago, sphbecker said:

my 2070 Super just died

I don't suppose you recently updated your drivers?

[sphbecker]

55 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

I don't suppose you recently updated your drivers?

Nope, was in the middle of a game and the entire screen switched to a grid of the space invaders ascii character, followed by a heavily artifacted BSOD. I did a full power down, reseated the card and turned it back on. It boots, but there are graphical artifacts everywhere, even during the BOIS screens. I plugged in an old 1030 for now and its working fine (other than a noisy fan and inability to run games).

[RevGAM]

1 hour ago, sphbecker said:

Nope, was in the middle of a game and the entire screen switched to a grid of the space invaders ascii character, followed by a heavily artifacted BSOD. I did a full power down, reseated the card and turned it back on. It boots, but there are graphical artifacts everywhere, even during the BOIS screens. I plugged in an old 1030 for now and its working fine (other than a noisy fan and inability to run games).

Well, that sure was a visual death!

[sphbecker]

I played on the new 7800 XT last night. So far, it's working great! I am actually impressed with AMD's drivers, once installed, it automatically increased my Windows refresh rate to 144hz and enabled FreeSync, notifying me it was doing it with a single click to undo if it wasn't what you wanted. Those are both things I had to manually set with nVidia. Not a big deal if you understand the technology, but definitely a nice touch to help ensure less tech savvy gamers are getting full value from their equipment.

 

I didn't think about this until I saw the PCIe 4 bullet on the box, but my board only supports PCIe 3. I am sure it isn't a problem for this card, but I am glad I didn't spend extra on the 7900 XT or it might have been interface bottlenecked.

[ewitte]

17 minutes ago, sphbecker said:

I didn't think about this until I saw the PCIe 4 bullet on the box, but my board only supports PCIe 3. I am sure it isn't a problem for this card, but I am glad I didn't spend extra on the 7900 XT or it might have been interface bottlenecked.

It is a 4.0x16 card you wouldn't have much of any bottleneck.  The issue is with cards that are 4.0x8 and especially 4.0x4.

[Paul17]

Why are ppl recommending/suggesting the 7800 XT?   Isn't this card just a 6800 XT refresh with better power efficiency?  

[RvrHaze]

Hey there,

 

I had a similar conundrum a few weeks ago... I have always had Nvidia cards but you're right 12gb VRAM at that price is crazy, even since they lowered the price to try to keep up with AMD's new 7000 series. I had a 3060 ti... I used to have a 1440p monitor but my stupid landlord screwed around with the breaker switches one day without telling me... I had just built my system with the 3060 ti and 5600x and he killed the monitor... luckily the computer survived and I learned a valuable lesson about not just using a surge protector but a good one with a switch and at least 4000 joules for a decent PC... I found a new monitor that was 1440p 144hz on boxing day for like half price (1440p is really getting affordable) but I found on newer titles my 1% lows were dipping below 70fps which is unexpectable to me.... so I had the same issue as you... my card isn't dead, in fact I'm still trying to move it if anyone knows what a good price for a QUICK sale on that is please comment on this post....

ANYWAYS, I DECIDED ON THE 7800 XT. I live in Canada where it's going for 700 CAD not 500 USD but it's still a great deal. I actually find my 1440p monitor at 144hz is the thing bottle necking my card now... not a super bad problem to have. It's crazy to think that just a few years ago I was amazed by a 144hz 1080p monitor running at full potential. But yeah, if you're getting the 7800 XT I highly recommend the "Powercolor: Red Devil" It's a beefy card but comes with a gpu stand to stop sagging... nice that they include that... I'd also be a lil worried about running a 7900 XT with a 650 Watt PSU... I was worried my 750 Watt wouldn't be enough to power the 7800 XT. They recommend a 800 Watt for that.

But yeah I'm all team RED now. Intel and Nvidia have broken my heart and wallet one too many times. I think a lot of people are making the switch now that it's viable. Next time I upgrade I'll need a whole new computer though... the PSU won't be enough for 8000 series I assume. I'll also need a new CPU which means the AM4 MB will need an upgrade, which means I minus while upgrade the RAM to DDR5 (Not sure if i'd have to but i would anyways) So yeah, PSU, RAM, MB, CPU, GPU... only thing that will stick around for the next upgrade will be my SSD and case... but I figure I'll prolly end up selling the whole thing as a unit next time, so I'll prolly need a whole new PC next time... but if you want to game at 165hz with a 650 Watt PSU at 1440P... I'd recommend not going to hard and getting the 7800 XT. Get a nice one... AMD doesn't make the margin of cooler manufacturers profits so razor thin so it's only like 30-40$ to get the BEST 7800 XT available. Well worth it IMO.... I'll stop ranting now. Hope you enjoy the new GPU. I certainly am! 7800 XT rips up at 1440p when you get the settings just right. The AMD software is also WAAAAY Better... but yeah rant stopping for real now... pce