NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super vs AMD RX 7800 XT: Which GPU to Buy?
Apr. 19, 2024These latest generation GPUs from Nvidia and AMD target the mid-range segment of the graphics card market. So, should you spend more money on your next graphics card to get the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super over the AMD RX 7800 XT? We have tried to answer this question by comparing these two GPUs based on pricing, specifications, overall feature set, streaming capabilities, software, and more.
After reading this, you will know the key advantages offered by both of these choices. Whether it is Nvidia’s GeForce or AMD’s Radeon GPU brand that you prefer, you can make an informed decision about your nextGPU upgrade.
RTX 4070 Super vs RX 7800 XT: Pricing
Nvidia made the RTX 4070 cheaper by $50 after the release of the new Super variant. The new GPU offers some performance upgrades. It looks like the Nvidia GPUs are available for around $600, but the Radeon RX 7800 XT is overall cheaper by around $100 in the US and other regions.
AMD’s offering also has more VRAM capacity whilst being more affordable. Note that this is slightly slower GDDR6 memory instead of GDDR6X. Both GPUs perform similarly as you’ll find out shortly. Overall, in the price department, the winner is Team Red.
Winner:AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super has a total graphics power (TGP) rating of220W. AMD’s RX 7800 XT, on the other hand, demands263W. So, Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super is clearly the more efficient graphics card between the two.
On the AMD Radeon GPU, the power consumption is higher by 19.5% if we compare the TGP. It can be treated as a negligible difference, but only if you already have a 700W PSU as required by the RX 7800 XT. This aspect is animportant specificationto consider before deciding on which GPU you should (or can) add to your build.
Both the RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 Super require2x 8-pin PCIe power connectorson yourpower supply. Keep in mind that some aftermarket variants of these GPUs can have higher power limits too.
By the way,RTX 4070 Superoperates on the new16-pin GPU power connectorstandard. Still, there is an included adapter with these RTX 40 Super GPUs to plug in the traditional 8-pin PCIe connectors to convert it into a 16-pin power connector, which can then be plugged into the GPU.
If you have limited headroom with your existing power supply, then Nvidia’s GPU may be more desirable. The power supply unit (PSU) capacity requirement for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super is 650W, while it’s 700W for the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT.
Winner:Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super
When comparing the performance in today’s games with only traditional rasterization (Ray Tracingturned off), the RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 Super both stand tall against each other with Team Red offering you morevalue for money. With this in mind, the RX 7800 XT gives you a similarif not bettergaming performance whilecosting lessthan the RTX 4070 Super.
Some games are optimized better for Nvidia, while others can be highly optimized for AMD. In some cases, the RX 7800 XT is only a little behind or matches up to the RTX 4070 Super. However, when it comes to performance with Ray Tracing turned on, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super graphics card takes the lead.
I mean, Radeon RX 7800 XT doesn’t have poor Ray Tracing performance. But yes, the performance isn’t very desirable in modern games like Cyberpunk 2077. If you consider the overall performance in Ray Tracing-enabledscenarios to be very important, the RTX 4070 Super is the better choice.
Check out how the Nvidia-exclusiveDLSS 3.5tech featured on Cyberpunk results in breathtaking ray-tracing visuals!
Let’s also discuss the performance in the synthetic 3DMark Time Spy Extreme (4K) test. 3DMark is notably known to be the gamer’s benchmark. The average benchmark score of over a thousand RTX 4070 Super & RX 7800 XT graphics cards can be found on 3DMark’s website. The average graphics score for the RTX 4070 Super is10,155while Radeon RX 7800 XT scores9,436.
The Nvidia GPU is7.6% aheadin this metric, but this minimal difference points towards both GPUs beingsimilarly performant.
The RTX 4070 Super GPU wins over the AMD RX 7800 XT in overall performance, factoring in the RT-enabled gaming performance. But it’s not so simple of a comparison. Given that the RX 7800 XT is about $100 cheaper than the RTX 4070 Super, we have to factor that in too. With that in mind, in terms of performance, there is no clear winner here. As I said before, AMD’s offering is also similar to traditional rasterization performance while costing less. Overall, it’s a tie.
Winner:Tie
The key specification to discuss here is the VRAM capacity. Radeon RX 7800 XT features16GB GDDR6memorywith an effective memory clock of 19.5Gbps. On the other hand, the RTX 4070 Super packs12GB GDDR6Xmemory. Notice the X after GDDR6, it denotes faster speeds for the VRAM. The RTX 4070 Super has an effective memory clock of 21Gbps.
While AMD gives you more VRAM capacity, Nvidia offersfasterGDDR6X memory. Now, while 12GB of VRAM is surely enough, 16GB is still morefutureproof. This futureproofing is going to come in handy when you play a game that demands more graphics memory.
Many GPUs on the market used by gamers have 8GB of VRAM. So far, only a few games have issues with 8GB of VRAM. Since the RTX 4070 Super already features 12GB GDDR6X VRAM capacity, itcanbe considered as enough. Still, a key advantage is offered with the AMD Radeon GPU with its additional 4GB of VRAM capacity.
Here are all the specifications of the GeForce RTX 4070 Super and Radeon RX 7800 X. AMD’s Ray accelerators & AI accelerators can be thought of as similar to Nvidia’s RT cores & Tensor cores. This is also true for AMD’s compute units and Nvidia’s streaming multiprocessors.
We just discussed that lower VRAM capacity isfinefor the current generation of games. Despite this, the higher16GB VRAMcapacity can be considered as an advantage of the RX 7800 XT.
With lower VRAM capacity, even if you have similar gaming performance to a GPU with higher VRAM capacity, youmaystill end up with aslightly degraded graphical quality. This is because many games can dynamically adjust the graphics quality at times when there are VRAM constraints.
With AMD’s AI accelerators on the RDNA 3 architecture, applications such as Davinci Resolve see benefits in the workloads of productivity-centric users as they canacceleratetheir content creation. Still, Nvidia GPUs are overall considered to bebetterfor productivity as compared to AMD Radeon.
Plus, with the money demanded by these GPUs, having more VRAM will give you additional peace of mind. I declare AMD to be the winner here, although the RTX 4070 Super isn’t far behind.
It’smore of a tie, but in my opinion, the additional 33% VRAM capacity on the RX 7800 XT makes it a better GPU than Nvidia’s in terms of specifications. Above, we talked about the performance and how RTX 4070 Super has better overall FPS in today’s games when Ray Tracing is enabled.
But the thing is, Nvidia’s advantage in Ray Tracing doesn’t feel very major to me when considering that some demanding games of the future could run at maxed-out graphics (especially the texture quality) with AMD’s Radeon RX 7800 XT and its 16GB VRAM.
Winner:AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
The Nvidia RTX 4070 Super comes with a suite of features to enhance the experience. The latest additions to this are theChat with RTXapp, an AI chatbot that can run locally on your PC, plus the newRTX Video HDRfeature which is available in the control panel and turns normal SDR content into lively, higher dynamic range (HDR).
With these, you can take plenty of advantage of Nvidia’s Tensor cores on the RTX 4070 Super. Plus, filters can be enabled to help tune the look of your game.
Nvidia also just recentlyretiredits old GeForce Experience software and unveiled a newNvidia app. With this, everything got quite streamlined. It was a significant update that even brought over some things previously found in the Nvidia Control Panel. There’s also Nvidia Reflex, which enables lower latency in games, and the Broadcast app that brings many effects to improve your game streaming.
AMD RX 7800 XT also offers many features that can give a similar experience to what Nvidia offers. This includes Anti-Lag (and the new Anti-Lag+, which iscoming soon), Noise Suppression, Radeon Boost, and more. The app for Radeon Adrenalin even has atuning featureto customize the GPU’s performance.
Overall, while AMD offers a good level of competition to Nvidia, there are more features and nice-to-haves on Team Green’s side. With this, the RTX 4070 Super wins.
Winner:Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super
Although NVIDIA used to be way better than AMD when it came to game-streaming, things are tied now. Talking about the streaming capabilities, both GPUs have support forAV1, the latest standard. Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super and AMD’s RX 7800 XT can both output a high-quality stream. Sadly, not all platforms support the AV1 codec completely. Twitch has alreadyannouncedAV1 support, but it’s notably “exclusively available” only for GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs for now.
YouTube does support selecting the video encoder as AV1, even on AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs like the RX 7800 XT. An advantage of Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Super is theBroadcastapp, which we spoke of before. It offers many features such as background removal, replacement, and noise reduction. And it’s all in one place, which is super convenient.
If you pick the RX 7800 XT, you could still use OBS Plugins to enable similar functionality. There is also AMD’s Noise Suppression for optimizing your microphone quality. But if you need to stream on Twitch, prefer simplicity, and want to use features found in Nvidia’s Broadcast app, the RTX 4070 Super would be better for you in this aspect. It’s a close call here, but Team Green wins.
Winner:Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super
AI frame generation is one of the most exciting features offered on the latest-generation AMD and Nvidia GPUs.DLSS 3 and FSR 3are found in supported games, and these technologies insert AI-generated FPS alongside your real FPS, which enhances the perceived smoothness.
Overall, the FPS gains are major. Keep in mind that both the RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 Super are powerful GPUs. The raw performance these GPUs provide in today’s games is more than acceptable even without DLSS 3 or FSR 3 being enabled.
I have tested both these AI frame generation technologies from AMD and Nvidia. In the best-case implementations and with the latest drivers, the experience is very good on both FSR 3 and DLSS 3. Input lag has also been reduced quite heavily as compared to the state of AI frame generation at its initial launch.
DLSS 3 has had better adoption than FSR 3, but it is also older. With FSR 3 being open-source, adoption is expected to grow steadily in the future. AMD’s RX 7800 XT has one more trick up its sleeve, and it’s another form of AI generation calledAdvanced Fluid Motion Frames(AFMF). This is a driver-level feature and can be enabled across many DX11/DX10 games.
Even in a game likeTekken 8, which is locked to 60FPS, you could enable AFMF technology with the RX 7800 XT. With this, you would technically see & experience 120 FPS gameplay. The inputs would still be recorded with the real 60 FPS, and I’m alsonot suggestingthat you should play this game at 120 FPS. This is simply an example to show thatAFMFis a super-cool feature present on AMD’s latest RDNA 3 GPUs.
The fact that you can enable AFMF onbasically any gameis also impressive and a major plus point for Team Red. So, the overall winner is AMD in this category!
Winner:AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
In this comparison, AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT takes the lead in 3 out of the 7 categories. These are pricing, specifications, and AI frame generation. Speaking of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super, it won in 3 out of 7 categories, i.e. streaming capabilities, software, and power consumption.
Overall, it’s a tie.There are specific reasons to prefer either one of these GPUs, which we have detailed below. In the end, both the RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 Super are similarly performant to each other.
With this in mind, no matter which of these two GPUs you end up buying, I’m sure you will have a delightful experience for 1440p and even 4K gaming.
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