After a long time, AMD finally revealed its mid-range graphics cards in the RDNA 3 lineup and called the completion of the Radeon RX 7000 lineup. While we have already talked about the 7800 XT in several videos, the 7700 XT is something that has come under the spotlight for the first time.
When we talk about the specs of these GPUs, the 7800 XT will come with a full Navi 32 die and 60 compute units while the 7700 XT will bring a slightly cut-down version with 54 compute units.
The 7700 XT brings cut-down specs in almost every area except for the boost clock speed which sits above 2.5GHz. As previously rumored, it will come with 12GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus and that’s the most important stuff we need to know about it.
As for the pricing, AMD has priced the 7800 XT for $499 which is definitely better than previously thought.
Now moving on to the RX 7700 XT, it is priced at $449 which is looking just fine, neither too good nor too bad but this is a pretty controversial pricing if you consider all the factors in today’s GPU market.
Unlike the normal competition between the two GPU manufacturers, this time AMD is not only going against Nvidia but also against itself. First, if we compare the 7700 XT to the 4060 Ti, it falls between the 8GB and 16GB models of the Nvidia cards both specs and pricing-wise.
Here according to AMD’s own benchmarks, the RX 7700 XT is around 12% faster than the 4060 Ti across 19 titles that include both rasterization and RT performance. This definitely makes the 7700 XT a better choice over both 4060 Ti editions especially the 8 gigabyte one which faces troubles in some titles due to lower VRAM.
Keep in mind that these are first party benchmarks which can come out to be a little different to the third party results.
Now the problem comes in when we compare the 7700 XT against its own predecessor which is the RX 6700 XT. Now even though the 7700 XT brings better specifications and of course, better performance over the 6700 XT, the RX 6700 XT can be bought for $100 less at the moment and it’s unlikely that the $100 higher price of the 7700 XT will bring justice to the performance gap.
Yes, there are some benefits like AV1 encoding and better Ray Tracing performance if you go with the 7700 XT but until the 6700 XT goes totally out of stock from the market, it’s hard to justify the pricing of the 7700 XT. If AMD priced it at around $400, it would be a great deal but $450 is a little controversial right now.
Still, it is a little better launch price than the 6700 XT which was launched for $480. I believe that the RX 7700 XT still has the potential to be a good GPU but the 7800 XT looks more appealing now as its true pricing has been revealed.
That said, AMD has planned to launch both the cards on the 6th of September which is also the release date of AMD-sponsored Starfield. Users who buy any of these cards will get the game for free which is a plus point because currently Starfield is not only one of the most expensive titles out there but it is also the most expensive one to make and according to some reports, it took $200 million to produce this game.
