“I just wish there was an option between $300 and $400 that offered enough performance to propel us firmly into the 1440p era.” That was the conclusion of my colleague Tom Warren when reviewing the $399 Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti and the $269 AMD Radeon RX 7600.
On September 6, AMD may get closer: that’s when it’ll ship the new $449 RX 7700 XT and $499 7800 XT, with a free copy of star field to sweeten the pot.
The company claims that both cards can average over 60fps in the latest games at 1440p at maximum settings and without fancy upscaling tricks, including PC ports with issues like The Last of Us Part I and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Both GPUs average over 100 fps on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, claims the company.
Where things get really interesting is in comparisons to Nvidia, where the $450 7700 XT could beat the $400 GeForce 4060 Ti, and the $500 7800 XT can beat the $600 RTX 4070 in raster games (and even a couple of games with ray tracing). while leaving a whole hundred dollar bill in his pocket.
Now remember, we weren’t particularly impressed with the gen-to-gen upgrades to any of Nvidia’s cards, and we can’t yet say if AMD has offered enough of an improvement to tempt gamers away from previous-gen cards. But as of yesterday, a last-gen 6800 XT was still going for over $530 retail. Are GPUs heading in the right direction again?
They are still a bit big; even AMD’s Radeon RX 7800 XT reference design occupies 2.5 slots wide on a desktop, compared to Nvidia’s two-slot design for RTX 4070 Founders Edition and below. They also require more power, up to 265W compared to the 200W GeForce. Some will appreciate sticking with a pair of 8-pin PCI-E sockets, though.
But they might have it in the memory department, where some of Nvidia’s lesser GPUs have been needlessly crippled, with the RX 7700 XT packing 12GB of GDDR6 and a 192-bit interface for 432GB per second of bandwidth. total bandwidth, while the RX 7800 XT comes with 16GB, 256-bit, and 624GB per second in total.
If AMD’s results and prices hold up, these cards could definitely tempt gamers like me to steer clear of Nvidia, but keep in mind that GPU prices tend to lean towards what buyers are willing to pay, and its rival could afford to cut prices to maintain its market share. . Nvidia just made $6 billion in pure profit from its AI chips, and the company hasn’t forgotten where it came from.
In addition to the cards themselves, AMD will also release FSR 3 on September 6. The latest version of its enhancement technology adds frame generation, which uses machine learning to imagine a new frame among existing ones, like a more sophisticated version of motion smoothing on TVs. (Nvidia added this in DLSS 3.0 and AMD calls it “Fluid Motion Frames.”)
FSR 3 also includes “Native Anti-Aliasing”, a new optional mode that uses FSR techniques to smooth and improve in-game graphics. instead to enhance them from a lower resolution.
AMD says FSR 3 is already scheduled for release cyberpunk 2077, abandoned, Immortals of Aveum, Avatar: Borders of Pandora, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2, frostpunk 2, Equipment, Starship Troopers: Extermination, Black Myth: Wukong, crimson desertand Like a dragon: infinite wealth.
star field it won’t ship with FSR 3 but with FSR 2. By the way, AMD says that Bethesda may add Nvidia’s DLSS to that game as well.
While FSR still works on rivals’ graphics cards, as long as game developers add the technology to their games, AMD will also add frame generation to its driver at an unspecified date. That way, you’ll be able to inject extra frames into any DX10 or DX11 game with your AMD graphics card, without the need for developer support.
On September 6th, the driver will also include Hypr-RX, a unique switch that can automatically activate FSR (or the more limited RSR, when FSR is not supported), Radeon Anti-Lag, Radeon Boost, and other compromising image but features. that improve performance. “Our research tells us that 70 percent of customers are willing to compromise on image quality,” says AMD’s head of gaming Frank Azor. (I definitely have friends and family in that 70 percent.) Fifteen games will be validated for Hypr-RX to start.
AMD will sell its RX 7800 XT reference design directly at amd.com with the two-fan cooler you see in the rendering above this post. However, it seems that most of AMD’s partners are opting for triple-fan coolers. Below are some of the nicest ones, in my opinion.
