Nvidia RTX 5080 vs AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: Which is the better gaming GPU?

The Nvidia RTX 5080 is the latest flagship-grade graphics card in the market. It replaces the 4080 Super with strong improvements to ray tracing and AI-based DLSS performance. How does it compare to the best from AMD — the Radeon RX 7900 XTX? Team Red has made a name for delivering a bang for the buck across all price ranges, including the premium segment. Hence, this comparison will be rather interesting.

In this article, we dissect the two GPUs in detail, delving into their specs and performance. Let's find out which is the better buy.

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Nvidia RTX 5080 vs AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: Both GPUs are designed for high-end 4K gaming

The Nvidia RTX 5080 is a powerful 4K gaming GPU (Image via Nvidia)

Both the RTX 5080 and AMD RX 7900 XTX are designed for flagship-grade 4K gaming performance. They are filled to the brim with rendering hardware, enabling them to deliver sky-high framerates without major issues. Let's look at the on-paper specs of the video cards.

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Specs comparison

Both GPUs pack cutting-edge rendering tech. The 5080, being the latest kid on the block, is powered by the Blackwell architecture, the latest 4th-gen Ray Tracing and 5th-gen Tensor cores. A major feature of the latest video card is its AI capability, with the 5080 promising 1801 AI TOPS.

The RX 7900 XTX, on the other hand, is a gamer-focused flagship-grade GPU. The card is powered by the RDNA 3 technology and was launched to compete against the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super. While it's almost a generation old now, the card's mix of high rasterization capabilities, support for FSR upscaling, and decent ray tracing keeps it on the radar of many.

While the 5080 and the 7900 XTX share the same MSRP of $999, the AMD GPU has been discounted and can be easily picked up for $899 or lower if you are patient. Most variants of the Nvidia card, however, could cost you much more than $999.

Here are the detailed specs of the two GPUs:

Specification	Nvidia RTX 5080	AMD RX 7900 XTX
Architecture	Blackwell	RDNA 3
CUDA Cores / Shading Units	10,752 CUDA cores	6,144 shading units
VRAM	16GB GDDR7	24GB GDDR6
Memory Bus	256-bit	384-bit
Clock Speed (Boost)	2.6 GHz+	~2.5 GHz
Ray Tracing Cores	84	Ray Accelerators (weaker performance)
AI Features	DLSS 4, multi-frame generation	FSR (weaker AI upscaling)
TDP (Power Consumption)	360W	355W
Performance (Rasterization)	56.28 TFLOPS	61.39 TFLOPS
Performance (Ray Tracing)	Superior due to dedicated RT cores	Lags behind Nvidia in RT-heavy games
Upscaling Technology	DLSS 4 (Transformer-driven multi-frame generation)	FSR (open-source, less efficient)
Price (Expected/Current)	$999	$999

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Performance comparison

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX continues to be a flagship-grade gaming card (Image via AMD)

For high-end gaming, performance is the main criterion. At resolutions like 4K, players have to squeeze the maximum out of the underlying hardware even to maintain a playable framerate. Looking at the exact metrics logged by the Nvidia and AMD GPU would give us insight into how their underlying hardware translates to video game performance.

Here are the detailed framerates achieved by both GPUs in some of the latest titles. We sourced these numbers from the YouTube channel Testing Games.

	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX	Nvidia RTX 5080
Horizon Forbidden West	78 FPS	81 FPS
Ghost of Tsushima	66 FPS	64 FPS
Cyberpunk 2077	72 FPS	80 FPS
Cyberpunk 2077 RT	30 FPS	63 FPS
Black Myth: Wukong	35 FPS	43 FPS
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024	59 FPS	59 FPS
Silent Hill 2	50 FPS	76 FPS
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2	58 FPS	72 FPS
Star Wars Outlaws	41 FPS	67 FPS
Starfield	65 FPS	69 FPS
Forza Horizon 5	114 FPS	126 FPS

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Nvidia RTX 5080 vs AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: Final verdict

The RTX 5080 and the RX 7900 XTX are two of the most powerful GPUs ever made. While both are capable of 4K gaming, the difference between them doesn't seem large enough to justify an extra $200-300 investment.

However, given Nvidia's exclusive technologies and the 5080's AI capabilities, the RTX 5080 would be a no-brainer if bought at the launch MSRP of $999. As a package, it has more to offer than both the 4080 Super and the RX 7900 XTX. However, you need to have specific use cases to justify the choice. For gamers who don't care about ray tracing or are willing to crank down the resolution to 1440p, the AMD card remains a capable alternative.