It’s rare that reviewers universally hate a graphics card, but most wouldn’t put AMD’s RX 7700 XT among the best graphics cards you can buy. As you can read in my own combo review of the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, the latter GPU just didn’t make sense when it launched more than a year ago. Time has marched on, however, and the RX 7700 XT doesn’t get the respect it deserves today.
You probably have a negative assumption about this graphics card, and I wouldn’t blame you. Tom’s Hardware said the GPU got stuck “between a proverbial rock and hard place,” while TechSpot was even more harsh: “Purchasing the Radeon 7700 XT at $450 is ill-advised when the 7800 XT is available, leaving us questioning AMD’s rationale behind this launch.” User reactions were harsher still.
That’s the power of pricing. The RX 7700 XT, when it launched, was $450 — just $50 less than AMD’s much more powerful RX 7800 XT. As the months have gone on, that price has slowly slipped, and today, the RX 7700 XT is much more impressive than it was just a year ago.
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The pricing situation
Before getting into performance, it’s important to talk about pricing. That way, I can establish what GPUs the RX 7700 XT should be reasonably compared to given what you can buy the graphics card for today. You should expect to spend around $400 for a new model, and closer to $350 if you can score an open-box deal. As usual, some models are more expensive — a few are still selling for that original $450 list price — but there are plenty of models available for closer to $400.
For instance, the XFX Speedster QICK319 model is . Similarly, the ASRock Steel Legend version is . Neither of these models are on sale, however, and the RX 7700 XT is prime for deep discounts when sales roll around.
If you look at pricing history for Amazon on CamelCamelCamel, you can see some models drop even lower than $400. Just last month, for example, the PowerColor Hellhound RX 7700 XT was listed for just $370. And at Newegg, open-box models have dropped to as little as $350.
The secondhand market is even more generous. Looking at listings sold on eBay, you can see several models that have sold between $300 and $350. A few listings still creep up toward $400 but rarely surpass that mark. Regardless of if you buy secondhand, new, or score an RX 7700 XT on sale, you shouldn’t expect to spend more than $400. In many cases, you’ll spend closer to $350.
At that price, the RX 7700 XT is squarely competing with the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, and depending on sales, maybe even the $300 RTX 4060. That was the same comparison as when the RX 7700 XT launched, but the circumstances are different now. Instead of justifying its price premium over the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, the RX 7700 XT is almost universally the same price, and often cheaper. And given the performance the GPU offers, that’s mighty attractive.
How about performance?
The pricing is better, and it adds new context to the performance of the RX 7700 XT. As you can clearly see in the chart above, the RX 7700 XT is simply faster than its new price competitor. The RTX 4060 Ti 8GB may have issues with its low amount of VRAM, but the performance here isn’t due simply to memory. The RX 7700 XT is a faster, more capable card, and it comes with more video memory for those VRAM-limited games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
I’m looking at 1440p performance here, which is the most comfortable resolution for the RX 7700 XT. You’re getting at least 60 frames per second (fps) in all but the most demanding titles like Black Myth: Wukong, and with some small settings adjustments or upscaling, you can easily reach triple digits. More importantly, the RX 7700 XT simply beats the RTX 4060 Ti at the same price.
There’s really only one game where Nvidia claims a lead, and it’s a relatively small lead that you can see in Forza Motorsport. Meanwhile, the RX 7700 XT shows big uplifts across games. There are titles like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 that favor AMD GPUs, but most of the games here don’t. In games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Returnal, and Cyberpunk 2077, the RX 7700 XT just has more gaming grunt.
All of these tests were run with the highest graphics preset, minus ray tracing. Ray tracing is increasingly important to modern PC games, and it’s one of the main reasons to choose Nvidia over AMD — Nvidia simply offers better ray tracing performance. That sentiment holds true in the dynamic between the RTX 4060 Ti and the RX 7700 XT, but the margins are closer than you might suspect.
The RX 7700 XT and RTX 4060 Ti 8GB are very close when it comes to ray tracing performance. In games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Returnal, it’d be hard to spot a difference between them. At this point, the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB really only makes sense for much more demanding forms of ray tracing, such as the path tracing available in Black Myth: Wukong.
The value champion
It’s really hard arguing with the RX 7700 XT, especially if you can score one for under $400. In this past generation, the midrange 1440p gamer really got the short end of the stick, with strange pricing strategies from both AMD and Nvidia with cards like the RTX 4060 Ti and RX 7700 XT. A year on from that, though, only one of the two has seen price drops — AMD’s RX 7700 XT. At its current price, it delivers a fantastic value for 1440p gamers, which has been absent for a good chunk of this generation.
The RX 7700 XT isn’t a perfect GPU. Nvidia still holds the crown with demanding ray tracing, and the DLSS 3 package is very attractive. AMD’s alternatives are getting better by the day, though. The driver-based AFMF 2 is fantastic, and FSR 3 adoption has ramped up significantly in recent months. Between the two, you get frame generation in basically any game. Considering the price and performance, the RX 7700 XT is a slam dunk, even this late in the generation, and regardless of what reviewers thought at launch.
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