AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT Review: Stuck in the Middle

The RX 7700 XT struggles to justify its positioning.

By Jarred Walton
published
XFX AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT card photos
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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4K ultra is very much not the intended playground for the RX 7700 XT, at least not if you're playing recent and relatively demanding games. If you're looking to play through Half-Life again, though, that's a different matter. Again, we're only going to provide very limited commentary here, so enjoy the charts at your leisure.

AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT performance charts

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The RX 7700 XT averages just 32 fps across our 15-game suite at 4K ultra. As you can imagine, that means some games (hello, Cyberpunk) are almost into the single-digit framerates. The extra VRAM compared to the RTX 4060 Ti does widen the overall gap to 14%, but all six ray tracing games fail to hit 30 fps. The rasterization games, on the other hand, all manage at least 30 fps, though Total War: Warhammer 3 and A Plague Tale: Requiem just barely hit that mark.

Of course, there are other ways to make "4K" gaming accessible, like FSR 2 and DLSS upscaling. If you run FSR 2 in Performance mode (4x upscaling), you're basically taking 1080p and upscaling it to 4K. The performance for FSR 2 upscaling in that case is generally around 20%, give or take, which means plenty of games can still clear 60 fps. But upscaling isn't quite the same as native 4K, I'm sure most people will agree.

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AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT performance charts
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
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AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT performance charts
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
Jarred Walton
Jarred Walton

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cknobman
    This card will be a winner when the price is reduced to $400.

    Between this card and its bigger brother, the 7800XT, Nvidia's 4060 series of cards (and maybe even the 4070) are completely irrelevant now.
    Reply
  • oofdragon
    cknobman said:
    This card will be a winner when the price is reduced to $400.

    Between this card and its bigger brother, the 7800XT, Nvidia's 4060 series of cards (and maybe even the 4070) are completely irrelevant now.

    I'd say the 7800XT will be a winner in a year or two when it's discounted at $400. The 7700XT at 12GB is more like.. $300.
    Reply
  • Colif
    Both cards released make the 4060 TI even more of a joke than it was already.

    5TGHvXKkhao
    The price difference is bigger in other countries, it makes more sense there.
    7800xt in Australia is about $1000
    7700xt in Australia is about 860

    7800xt selling out fast so 7700xt might be only choice for a few weeks in some places.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    Colif said:
    Both cards released make the 4060 TI even more of a joke than it was already.

    The price difference is bigger in other countries, it makes more sense there.
    7800xt in Australia is about $1000
    7700xt in Australia is about 860

    7800xt selling out fast so 7700xt might be only choice for a few weeks in some places.
    Does it, though?

    272
    So 20% faster in rasterization, 8–10 percent slower in DXR, uses 60W more power, costs 12.5% more. The 128-bit and 8GB is a concern, sure, but it's absolutely not the end of the world. Turn down settings to high and it's fine, even at 1440p.

    7800 XT makes for a bigger gap, and that's definitely the better card of the 4060 Ti/7700 XT/7800 XT class. But the 7700 XT isn't a clear-cut winner in every situation: Higher power, worse RT, worse AI hardware, higher cost.
    Reply
  • P1nky
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    So 20% faster in rasterization, 8–10 percent slower in DXR, uses 60W more power, costs 12.5% more. The 128-bit and 8GB is a concern, sure, but it's absolutely not the end of the world. Turn down settings to high and it's fine, even at 1440p.

    7800 XT makes for a bigger gap, and that's definitely the better card of the 4060 Ti/7700 XT/7800 XT class. But the 7700 XT isn't a clear-cut winner in every situation: Higher power, worse RT, worse AI hardware, higher cost.
    Can't believe you're actually defending the 4060 Ti, a GPU with just 8GB for a massive $400 price. No wonder you gave the 7700 XT a meh rating.

    You must watch HU's investigation of how bad the textures look on just 8GB, even if the framerates are unaffected. There are plenty of games that won't be bottlenecked by 8GB by 30 second benchmark runs. Cards might performs similarly sometimes, but the texture experience and frame drops on on 4060 Ti are a joke on long benchmark runs.
    Reply
  • luissantos
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    So 20% faster in rasterization, 8–10 percent slower in DXR, uses 60W more power, costs 12.5% more. The 128-bit and 8GB is a concern, sure, but it's absolutely not the end of the world. Turn down settings to high and it's fine, even at 1440p.

    7800 XT makes for a bigger gap, and that's definitely the better card of the 4060 Ti/7700 XT/7800 XT class. But the 7700 XT isn't a clear-cut winner in every situation: Higher power, worse RT, worse AI hardware, higher cost.

    Your only valid point is power consumption.

    DXR performance is mostly irrelevant: neither card is sufficiently capable in that regard. Until DXR comes with a 5-10% penalty in performance it will remain a gimmick. In fact, games that have had a "modern render release" like Quake 2 look far better using said new render than DXR. For CP2077 I'm sure I could find plenty of scenes where I could take a screenshot with RT on and off and trick you into guessing incorrectly. Moreover, UE 5's Lumi produces reasonably similar results with RT on and off, and that engine will have the most coverage of any other in the game market for the years to come.

    As for AI, just a few weeks ago AMD announced huge strides in that field as well, but again, that's irrelevant. What percentage of the market is buying a consumer mid-range GPU to focus primarily (or at all) on AI?
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    P1nky said:
    Can't believe you're actually defending the 4060 Ti, a GPU with just 8GB for a massive $400 price. No wonder you gave the 7700 XT a meh rating.

    You must watch HU's investigation of how bad the textures look on just 8GB, even if the framerates are unaffected. There are plenty of games that won't be bottlenecked by 8GB by 30 second benchmark runs. Cards might performs similarly sometimes, but the texture experience and frame drops on on 4060 Ti are a joke on long benchmark runs.
    The texture stuff is mostly game specific. Some games (Gollum, Star Wars, and basically a lot of Unreal Engine stuff) do a poor job at managing VRAM and so when the game exceeds 8GB, they load minimum res on some surfaces and not others. Then you get "texture popping" and stuttering. It's frankly a bad game engine design. Lots of other games exist that look very good and don't have the same problem, so it's pretty much a matter of coding quality and effort.

    The solution is to turn texture and shadow resolution down a notch, which usually drops VRAM use from <12GB to <8GB and rarely has a noticeable impact on visuals. Except some games (again, UE especially) don't even seem to do this very well. Software optimizations, particularly with low-level APIs (DX12/Vulkan) can easily deliver a 50% boost in performance, sometimes more. It's just a matter of how much effort the developers / publishers want to expend.

    I’m not saying 4060 Ti is great. I’m just pointing out that it’s not universally inferior to the 7700 XT / 7800 XT. 192-bit and 12GB or 256-bit and 16GB is inherently a superior configuration to 128-bit and 8GB/16GB. There's no question about that. But VRAM capacity and bandwidth aren't the only factor that matters.
    Reply
  • shady28
    Agree this isn't all that impressive, but neither was the 4060 Ti. I bought a 6700XT last year, and after seeing the 4060 Ti I really have no regrets.

    This 7700XT doesn't really seem to change any of that. If it were say $399 instead of $450, it might be ok. It's kind of a trade off with the 4060 Ti, generally better on performance (but not always) while losing on gaming power draw, but costs $50 more, which is frankly not good enough for an AMD GPU.

    Best deal on your comparison is still the 6700 XT.
    Reply
  • Colif
    its a replacement card, in a year or so the 6700xt may not be so easy to find.
    Reply