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As usual, we focus our performance testing on native resolution, without frame generation, unless otherwise noted. Starting with our 1440p results, this represents the target resolution for a card like the RX 7900 GRE — you can run 1080p or 4K or ultrawide resolutions as well, but 1440p is a good starting point.
We have tried AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF), to see how it feels and looks, and our initial impressions were not great. Its driver-level frame generation tries to inject extra frames, but the feel of several games that we tried was worse than with AFMF disabled. Your mileage may vary, and it does seem to have more issues in more demanding games — precisely the sort of games where you'd be more likely to use frame generation.
We'll start with the high-level overview, then the rasterization results, and finally ray tracing performance. We also have our bonus games at the bottom of the page, which are not factored into the other geometric mean charts.
AMD RX 7900 GRE 1440p Overall Performance
AMD's goal with the RX 7900 GRE is to take on the now reduced price RTX 4070. At 1440p ultra, you can see that our overall 1440p chart shows it coming in just slightly ahead of the RTX 4070 — with a 3.4% lead. The 7900 GRE on a 4070 is also slightly higher than the lowest priced RTX 4070 at present, so it costs 3.8% more. You basically get performance roughly in line with price.
The composite score of 79 fps means that most of the games in our tests suite are breaking 60 fps. We'll have the individual charts below, but every rasterization game averaged 80 fps or more, while only one ray tracing game cleared 60 fps (barely). It's the usual story of AMD beating Nvidia in rasterization and losing in ray tracing.
1440p also ends up being the best result for the 7900 GRE when comparing it to other nearby AMD GPUs. It's 9.3% faster than the 7800 XT, again showing linear scaling in FPS per dollar spent. The 7900 XT meanwhile leads the GRE by 16.5%, so there's still quite a gap between the new card and the next step higher.
AMD RX 7900 GRE 1440p Rasterization Performance
Rasterization games are a strong point for AMD and the 7900 GRE. Overall, it basically ties the more expensive RTX 4070 Super, with a negligible 1.3% lead. The individual games meanwhile show a range of -11% (Total War: Warhammer 3) to +15% (Borderlines 3), though five of the six remaining games show less than a 2% difference — Watch Dogs Legion has the GRE winning by 5%.
Against the similarly priced vanilla RTX 4070, of course, AMD's RX 7900 GRE delivers much better performance. It's 17% faster overall in our rasterization tests, with a lead ranging from 2% (Flight Simulator, which is CPU limited even at 1440p on these GPUs) to 35% (Borderlands 3, as usual).
1440p with rasterization is also a great option for people with high refresh rate displays, particularly those with VRR (variable refresh rate) technology like FreeSync and G-Sync. The 7900 GRE averages 114 fps and ranges from 77 fps (Plague Tale: Requiem) to 160 fps (Horizon Zero Dawn).
Note that 1440p matches the FSR 2/3 Quality upscaling resolution at 4K, and while there's some overhead, in general all the rasterization games with FSR 2/3 upscaling support should also be able to run just fine at 4K.
AMD RX 7900 GRE 1440p Ray Tracing Performance
Ray tracing continues to be less of a focus for AMD GPUs — and it's not just about raw performance. We've noticed minor differences in rendering quality with a few ray tracing games, plus AMD-promoted games that use ray tracing (like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora) almost always seem to not do as much with the technology. Minor differences in shadows and reflections may still be noticeable, but often the Nvidia-promoted games that use ray tracing gave clearly superior shadows, reflections, and other lighting effects.
Here the RTX 4070 ends up beating the RX 7900 GRE by 16% overall, with a range of -2% (Metro Exodus Enhanced) to +53% (Minecraft). DLSS Quality mode is also supported in all six of the DXR games we're testing, while FSR 2/3 is only in half of the games — and that's true in general, DLSS is in about twice as many games as FSR 2.3. Both can give about 30~50 percent higher performance, though DLSS still looks superior in a lot of cases.
That's the Nvidia advantage right now. It has superior ray tracing hardware, coupled with superior AI hardware, and then paired with more developer engagement to get games to utilize both features. It's the combination of hardware and software that proves so enticing.
Many people will say that ray tracing performance doesn't matter, but the more accurate statement would be that you should not plan on competitive ray tracing performance if you use and AMD card. It's still not a huge problem, as few games really use the technology in ways where the resulting difference in image quality makes the performance hit justifiable. But you can certainly experience FOMO if you opt for non-Nvidia hardware — particularly if RTX Remix mods become more common.
AMD RX 7900 GRE 1440p Bonus Games
We have four more recent 'bonus' games as well. Alan Wake 2 is an Nvidia-promoted game that uses full path tracing when you select the high or medium ray tracing settings. It also supports DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, which improves the denoising quality on Nvidia GPUs. We test with FSR 2 or DLSS Quality mode upscaling (but without frame generation).
For this review, we've added Assassin's Creed Mirage, an AMD promoted game with a built-in benchmark (which seems to have inconsistent pacing compared to the actual game, but it's at least repeatable). The other two games are also AMD promoted. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has ray tracing enabled for all settings, though it doesn't push RT hardware as much as other games in our experience. It also has FSR 3 and DLSS 2 support, and we use Quality mode upscaling again to improve overall performance. Finally, The Last of Us, Part 1 has been around a bit longer and tends to run better than when it initially launched in earlier 2023.
Our bonus games are more demanding titles — much more demanding in the case of Alan Wake 2. Consider the use of three AMD promoted games versus one heavily Nvidia promoted game to be our way of trying to keep things somewhat balanced.
Starting with Alan Wake 2, 1440p with full path tracing just brutalizes AMD GPUs — even with upscaling. You basically need 4X Performance mode upscaling to actually get even close to playable performance from the faster AMD GPUs, and it still won't get the 7900 GRE above 30 fps. Even Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti manages higher performance than any of AMD's GPUs at 1440p with path tracing enabled.
Assassin's Creed Mirage does much better, in part because it doesn't use ray tracing in any form. It zips along at a heady 117 fps, 6% ahead of the RTX 4070 and 4% ahead of the RX 7800 XT. It's not a huge advantage but it's at least something.
Avatar is also very playable at 78 fps, but this time the 7900 GRE comes in a few percent behind the RTX 4070. As noted above, the game uses some ray traced effects for shadows and reflections, though with no direct toggles to enable/disable ray tracing it's a bit hard to say how much the effects actually improve visuals.
Performance in The Last of Us, Part 1 echoes what we see with Borderlands 3, in that it's one of the games that most strongly favors AMD's GPUs. Here the 7900 GRE leads the RTX 4070 by 21%, and even beats the RTX 4070 Super.
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