How does AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX compare to Nvidia's RTX 4090? RDNA 3, specs, and more explained

The RX 7900 XTX is a part of AMD's all-new graphics card lineup, the RX 7000 series. The company announced the GPU last night at the "together we advance_gaming" event.

To begin with, two graphics cards will launch on December 13, 2022. These are the Radeon RX 7900 XT and the RX 7900 XTX. Both cards are high-end flagship entries in the lineup.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is the best-in-class offering from Team Red. The graphics card is a direct competitor to the RTX 4090 from Nvidia. It comes with much better power efficiency and almost equivalent performance levels while costing only a fraction of the Nvidia flagship.

With this new generation, AMD is also packing its cards with many new updates and features to eliminate the strategic disadvantages the RX 6000 series video cards had. Overall, this makes the RX 7900 XTX a very lucrative option for gamers looking to build a high-end system.

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The RX 7900 XTX has some key advantages over the RTX 4090

The RX 7900 XTX is a very powerful graphics card on paper. It packs 12,288 streaming processors, 384 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs), 192 Render Output Units (ROPs), 96 Ray Tracing (RT) cores, and 96 Compute Units (CUs). It also has 24 GB of GDDR6 memory based on a 384-bit bus.

The new graphics cards also come with a revised design for the reference card designs. Unlike Nvidia, AMD has altered the design language by a solid margin.

Metric	Geforce RTX 4090	Radeon RX 7900 XTX
GPU Name	AD102	Navi 31
CUDA Core (Nvidia) / Streaming Processor (AMD) Count	16,384	12,288
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs)	512	384
Render Output Units (ROPs)	176	192
Ray Tracing (RT) Core Count	128	84
Tensor Core Count	512	N/A
Compute Units	N/A	96
Video Memory Size	24 GB	24 GB
Video Memory Type	GDDR6X	GDDR6
Video Memory Bus Width	384 bit	384 bit
Base Clock Speed	2235 MHz	1900 MHz
Boost Clock Speed	2520 MHz	2505 MHz
Memory Clock Speed	1313 MHz	2500 MHz
MSRP	US$ 1,599	US$ 999

A side-by-side spec comparison of the RTX 4090 and the upcoming 7900 XTX will not give enough insight into the performance of these graphics cards. Both of these options are based on completely different architectures, with AMD relying on a chiplet design like its Ryzen processors.

However, comparing the number of TMUs, ROPs, RT cores, and CUDA cores/streaming processors can give some insight into what to expect. Thus, it is evident that the 7900 XTX will be weaker and slower than the RTX 4090. In fact, the graphics card is slower than the Nvidia flagship and faster than the RTX 4080.

The 7900 XTX has some key benefits over the RTX 4090. The graphics card is physically smaller than the RTX 4090. This ensures wider case compatibility.

The 7900 XTX is also much more power-efficient than the RTX 4090. It is rated for 355 W instead of the 4090's 450 W power rating. The Nvidia flagship can also draw up to 600 W while delivering peak performance.

In addition to this, the AMD video card is much cheaper than the 4090. While the latter is priced at a hefty premium of $1,599, the former will cost gamers $999.

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Conclusion

Considering the key benefits of the 7900 XTX, it is evident that AMD has a competitive advantage over Nvidia in this generation.

However, AMD cards also have some disadvantages that push the majority of gamers toward buying an Nvidia GPU. The list includes poor ray tracing and productivity performance, as well as a less efficient temporal upscaling software.

However, AMD has introduced a bunch of innovations, including FSR 3 and better ray tracing, for this generation. For now, gamers should hold upgrades and wait for the reviews of the new graphics cards before making their final decision.