AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT vs. Nvidia RTX 4070: Which is the better mid-range GPU?

The newly launched AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is targeting the RTX 4070 in terms of overall performance. Team Red has promised top-tier gaming at high resolutions like 1440p and 4K. It has key advantages over the Nvidia GPU, like more VRAM (16 GB vs. 12 GB) and a much cheaper price tag.

AMD has gathered quite a few brownie points over the last generation with better price-to-performance and massive discounts. Their graphics cards have been coined the ideal alternative to Nvidia, which considers falling GPU prices to be a relic of the past.

However, should gamers opt for Team Red despite its poor track record of unstable drivers, relatively poor temporal upscaling, and slower ray tracing performance? Let's look at the two GPUs side-by-side and try to answer this question.

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Choosing between the AMD RX 7800 XT and the RTX 4070 can be difficult

Specs

The new AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT competes directly with the RTX 4070. Both the cards pack quite some punch with the latest graphics hardware for the best performance.

A side-by-side specs comparison of the two graphics cards, however, is inaccurate. This is because the GPUs are based on completely different architectures that have different modes of operation. But a quick glance at the specs reveals basic information like power efficiency, available VRAM, and other details about the GPUs.

Below is a list of the specs of the graphics cards:

	AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT	Nvidia RTX 4070
Graphics processor	Navi 32	AD104
Shading units/CUDA cores	3840	5888
TMUs	240	184
ROPs	96	64
Compute Units	60	N/A
Tensor cores	N/A	184
RT cores	60	46
Base clock	1295 MHz	1920 MHz
Boost clock	2430 MHz	2475 MHz
Memory size	16 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6X
TDP	263W	200W
Price	$500	$600

The AMD GPU is way less power efficient as compared to its Nvidia equivalent. It also features 4 GB extra VRAM that adds to the card's longevity. However, the RX 7800 XT seems like the better deal for $100 less than its Nvidia counterpart.

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Performance difference

The RX 7800 XT and the RTX 4070 primarily target 1440p gaming at the highest settings. Both GPUs pack sufficient horsepower to run the latest and most demanding titles with ray tracing applied at this resolution.

Below is a detailed list of framerates observed in multiple new AAA games:

	AMD RX 7800 XT	Nvidia RTX 4070
Spider-Man: Miles Morales	99	96
Spider-Man: Miles Morales with RT	50	56
Cyberpunk 2077Spider-Man: Miles Morales	79	59
Cyberpunk 2077 with RT	27	35
The Last of Us Part 1	77	72
Hogwarts Legacy with RT	33	53
Forza Horizon 5	131	127

The performance difference between the RX 7800 XT and the RTX 4070 is a mixed bag. While the AMD GPU delivers better performance than the Team Red offering in some cases, the trend reverses when ray tracing is turned on.

Ray tracing performance has been one of the major complaints with AMD GPUs since the last-gen RX 6000 series lineup where the feature was introduced. The new RDNA 3 GPUs, although a significant upgrade, can't catch up with Nvidia.

The RTX 4070, therefore, is the better option for playing the latest and most demanding video games with the highest settings. However, if you mainly want to play older titles and competitive games like Call of Duty: Warzone and PUBG, the newly launched AMD RX 7800 XT makes more sense.