AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT vs RX 7900 XT: Which GPU Is Better?
RX 9070 XT vs. 7900
Performance
Radeon 7900 XT
RTX 3090 Ti-like rastering for high-end 1440p and 4K content.
Ray Tracing: Better than before, but still behind NVIDIA's goods.
AI Features: Supports FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2 to increase frame rates without compromising image quality.
Efficiency: Low load temperatures and high energy efficiency.
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Rastering: Beats the RX 7900 XT in benchmarks and offers superior frame rates at 1440p and 4K.
Third-generation RT processors improve ray-traced game performance.
AI Features: AI accelerators support FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4 for better upscaling and frame generation.
Efficiency: It has a higher TDP but better performance-per-watt than its predecessor.
Technical specs and architecture
Radeon RX 7900 XT
RDNA 3 structure
Calculation units: 84
5,376 stream processors.
The 84 (2nd Gen) Ray Accelerators
GDDR6 20 GB VRAM
Bus: 320-bit
800 GB/s memory bandwidth
Up to 2,394 MHz boost clock
TDP: 300W
Initial Cost: $900
Radeon RX 9070 XT
RDNA 4 structure.
Computer Units: 64
Processing Units: 4,096 Stream
64 3rd Gen Ray Accelerators
128 2nd-Gen AI Accelerators
16GB GDDR6 RAM
Memory Bus 256
640 GB/s memory bandwidth
Up to 2,970 MHz boost clock
TDP: 304 W
The initial price is $599 USD.
Benefits
Radeon RX 7900 XT
Large VRAM: 20 GB GDDR6 runs memory-intensive apps smoothly.
Design Efficiency: Chiplet architecture improves scalability and performance per watt.
DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1 support for high-resolution, fast-refresh panels.
Help for AV1 streaming, content generation, hardware encoding, and decoding.
Radeon RX 9070 XT
RDNA 4's more complex architecture improves efficiency and performance.
Combining AI: AI accelerators improve game speed and graphics, enabling advanced features like FSR 4.
It costs $599, which is reasonable considering its performance.
Display Support: DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b ensure compatibility with the latest screens.
Disadvantages
Radeon RX 7900 XT
Ray Tracing Performance: NVIDIA's RTX series leads.
Point of Price: NVIDIA and AMD contend for its $900 price.
Driver issues may have caused significant power consumption for media playing on many monitors.
Radeon RX 9070 XT
The VRAM: Compared to the RX 7900 XT's 20 GB, 16 GB may limit high-resolution, high-texture games.
Despite fewer games adopting FSR 4 at launch, its support is growing as a new technology.
Power: Higher clock rates are better than RX 7900 XT but use more power.
Video Game Performance
The RX 7900 XT performs well in 1440p and 4K rasterised games with good frame rates.
The RX 9070 XT has a 5–15% advantage in most modern games due to better ray tracing and FSR 4 compatibility.
Ray Tracking
The RX 7900 XT contains second-generation ray tracing processors, however it struggles with demanding RT games without FSR.
Besides having third-generation ray tracing cores, the RX 9070 XT performs better with FSR 4 and handles intricate scenes better.
Content Creation, AI
The RX 7900 XT performs well in Blender, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve with hardware AV1 encoding.
AI acceleration and better encoding pipelines speed up AI model inference, multitasking, and export/render times on the RX 9070 XT.
Memory/VRAM
A 320-bit bus with 80MB of Infinity Cache and 20 GB of GDDR6 allow the RX 7900 XT to handle 800 GB of bandwidth per second.
The RX 9070 XT has 640 GB/s bandwidth thanks to its 256-bit bus, 64MB cache, and 16 GB GDDR6.
Thermals and power efficiency
Despite its high thermal output and idle power consumption, RX 7900 XT consumes 300W.
The RX 9070 XT utilises 304W under stress but is more efficient when idle and watching media.
Driver and Software Ecosystem
RX 7900 XT drivers support Adrenalin (Radeon Boost, Anti-Lag, FSR 2/3).
Although the RX 9070 XT supports FSR 4, AI frame building, and newer Adrenalin tools, driver maturity can take months.