WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.240 AMD has responded to NVIDIA's uber-expensive RTX 4000 series GPUs with their Radeon RX 7900 series. 00:00:08.240 --> 00:00:14.560 Don't get us wrong, you'll still pay a pretty penny for them as the 7900XT will cost 900 bucks 00:00:14.560 --> 00:00:21.440 while you'll pay a cool thousand for the top-end 7900XTX. I guess a hundred dollars for the extra X 00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:26.000 is a fair deal, especially when you consider NVIDIA's top two cards start at 1200. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:31.200 But are these cards of better value or is it another case of you get what you pay for? 00:00:31.200 --> 00:00:36.320 Well, AMD's strategy has always been to compete on value against the likes of NVIDIA, 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:40.880 but this time one of the reasons Team Red's offerings are cheaper clearly doesn't have to 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:47.440 do with lower performance. The RX 7000 series utilizes GPUs made up of chiplets, so instead of 00:00:47.440 --> 00:00:53.600 having a monolithic chip that's one solid piece like NVIDIA does, AMD instead is putting several 00:00:53.680 --> 00:00:59.680 smaller chiplets together to form one cohesive GPU. Now this saves AMD money because the chiplet 00:00:59.680 --> 00:01:05.040 approach improves yields, that is if one chiplet is defective they can throw out just that chiplet 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:09.680 instead of the entire GPU, which makes manufacturing cheaper. Additionally, the chiplets that are 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:16.080 dedicated to memory control and cache are made on a 6nm process, allowing AMD to cut costs where they 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:21.760 can while still giving gamers a high performance rendering chiplet on the 5nm process. As much 00:01:21.760 --> 00:01:27.360 as AMD has done a really good job with RX 7000 and its RDNA 3 architecture, there are a couple 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:32.320 aspects where the lower price point does track with what the cards offer. The big elephant in 00:01:32.320 --> 00:01:36.480 the room is ray tracing, which you might have predicted considering that we're now on the 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:41.360 third generation of cards where NVIDIA has really emphasized ray tracing as a strength of their 00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:45.760 products, which you can even see from their inclusion of dedicated ray tracing cores and even 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:51.280 in how they've named some of their GPUs. AMD on the other hand has cards that support ray tracing, 00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:56.640 but don't quite have the same chops for it as NVIDIA. But here's the thing, plenty of games 00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:02.080 still do not support ray tracing, and even if your favorite titles do, you may not find yourself 00:02:02.080 --> 00:02:07.920 caring all that much at all. For many gamers, more conventional visual enhancements such as higher 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:12.560 texture quality and more aggressive anti-aliasing makes a more noticeable difference than ray 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:18.800 traced light, and that doesn't even mean that the RX 7000 series is bad at ray tracing, it just 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:24.000 means that the team green options are better at it, at least for now. Now the other way in which 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:31.120 RX 7000 looks to lag a bit behind RTX 4000 is power consumption, possibly due to those six 00:02:31.120 --> 00:02:36.240 nanometer chiplets, which is a bit disappointing, as chiplets are traditionally thought of as being 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:43.040 more power efficient than monolithic designs. The 7900 XTX, which competes with the RTX 4080, 00:02:43.040 --> 00:02:48.160 tends to draw more power across titles and in synthetic benchmarks, so this could be a 00:02:48.160 --> 00:02:52.720 consideration if you're running up against limits with your power supply. However, the difference 00:02:52.720 --> 00:02:58.880 isn't obscene, and the 7900 XTX's superior performance in certain titles may be more than 00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:04.000 worth it for many of you. Which card wins in which game depends quite a bit on whether that 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:09.840 particular title is optimized for NVIDIA or AMD, and if you're considering the slightly cheaper 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:17.040 7900 XT, know that while it doesn't quite hit the heights of the RTX 4080, it's not terribly far 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:22.160 off and will save you an additional hundo. But be warned, that also means it's not nearly as good 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:27.280 of a value, which is actually kind of crazy to say. We also cannot ignore how well these cards 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:33.120 could end up maturing over time, not just with driver updates as we saw with the RX 6000 series, 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:38.800 but also with FSR 3, the next generation of AMD's upscaling technology that competes with NVIDIA's 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:45.600 DLSS. FSR 3 isn't out yet, but it should be sometime in 2023, and Team Red is promising 00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:51.120 significant framerate gains once it drops. However, it's an open technology that even 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:56.320 works on NVIDIA cards, so it's really unclear at this point as to whether RX 7000 will give you 00:03:56.320 --> 00:04:02.960 an advantage if you use FSR 3. And it also generally stinks to pay good money today on the promise 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:08.160 that the product might be worth the cost tomorrow. So what's the bottom line here? Right now, 00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:12.400 if you don't care about ray tracing, and can afford putting a few more watts of load on your 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:19.200 power supply, AMD's RX 7000 is probably a better buy. If ray tracing is a big deal to you, though, 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:24.320 you might want a spring for an NVIDIA RTX 4000 card. Whatever you do, be sure to read benchmark 00:04:24.320 --> 00:04:29.520 results to find out how the cards perform in the games you want to play before buying. 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:33.520 Let us know down in the comments which card you're going with, but please don't turn the 00:04:33.520 --> 00:04:39.360 discussion into a classic red versus green flame war. They're both doing us dirty these days. 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:45.360 Dislike both of them. But don't dislike this video unless you disliked it, then you can hit 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:49.120 the dislike button. 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