It's a bit strange: PCGH tested the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (= Golden Rabbit Edition) in August 2023, and in February 2024 the “insider tip” set out to be available for purchase in regular retail stores – and not just via detours. The 7900 GRE remains an exciting card in the second spring and starts at retail from 580 euros. While we go into all aspects in detail in the RX 7900 GRE test, including GPU architecture, benchmarks, loudness, power consumption, efficiency and price-performance ratio, we would like to focus here on the FPS advantages when upgrading.
Optimally upgrade: comments in advance
First of all, it should be said that PCGH relies on the strongest possible processors when testing graphics cards. The goal of every PCGH GPU test system is to utilize even the fastest graphics cards as best as possible – and that's exactly what we achieve with the Z790 system, which is optimized down to the last subtiming and based on a Core i9-13900KS with 5.7 GHz via OC. You should take this restriction into account in the following benchmarks, i.e. the absolute frame rates will certainly be different on weaker CPUs. Specials in which as many GPUs and CPUs as possible are combined with each other will be available at PCGH in the coming weeks.
In general, we consider a performance increase of 50 percent or more to be really noticeable. Fps improvements between 30 and 50 percent are still okay, but perhaps performance alone should not be the main reason for upgrading – but other factors such as loudness etc. Anything below 30 percent should be carefully considered and definitely others Take factors into account – including the price.
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Games without ray tracing (rasterizing)
PCGH checks 20 games in the GPU index for rasterizing games without ray tracing effects. Details can be found in the relevant section in the PCGH test. Included are Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, but also Jagged Alliance 3 and Sons of the Forest. The overall value is known as the PCGH performance index and offsets the four test resolutions at 25 percent each; There is no weighting – but there is a prior normalization of the FPS values so that large numbers have the same weight as small ones.
In the benchmarks, we highlighted the potential object of upgrade desire, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. It doesn't reach 100 percent in the index (that's the RTX 4090, which we're hiding here for clarity), but it's also about selecting your own graphics card with the mouse cursor and seeing the increase through an RX 7900 GRE determine. We have also preselected and highlighted two popular GPUs in the forum, namely the RX 6800 XT and the RTX 2080 Ti, representing the RTX 2000 group. You can also move the mouse over any other GPU and define it as the basis for the percentage calculation when upgrading.
Raster Performance Chart 2024 (Upgrade to 7900 GRE)
PCGH GPU Benchmarks 2024: Overall, Full HD – WQHD – UWQHD – Ultra HD
Game/Version
20 Games in FHD/WQHD/UWQHD/UHD, PCGH-Benchmarks 2024
Details
Max. Rasterizing Details with TAA (no Upsampling) — rBAR/SAM enabled
Software/Drivers
Windows 11 x64 – Reference Spec Cards only!
Geforce RTX 3080 10GB
~1,88 GHz, 19 GT/s, 10 GiB
Geforce RTX 3050 8GB
~1,88 GHz, 14 GT/s, 8 GiB
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10
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30
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Name
Index OVERALL (Relative Performance)
Index Full HD (Relative Performance)
Index WQHD (Relative Performance)
Index UWQHD (Relative Performance)
Index Ultra HD (Relative Performance)
In the rasterizing overall index, the RX 7900 GRE is 12 percent faster than a 6800 XT and 51 percent faster than an RTX 2080 Ti. If you now select Full HD in the benchmark, the scenario changes slightly. The RX 7900 GRE is 11 percent faster than the 6800 XT and 52 percent faster than an RTX 2080 Ti. The Ultra HD counter-example, on the other hand, hardly changes anything: 11 percent is up for a 6800 XT, 47 percent for an RTX 2080 Ti. WQHD and UWQHD are in between. Compared to older and slower GPUs, the distances are correspondingly higher.
Play with ray tracing
PCGH checks 10 games in the GPU index for ray tracing games. Details can be found in the relevant section in the PCGH test. Included are Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, but also Hogwarts Legacy and The Witcher 3 Next-Gen. Analogous to rasterizing games, the overall value is known as the PCGH performance index and offsets the four test resolutions at 25 percent each; There is no weighting – but there is a prior normalization of the FPS values so that large numbers have the same weight as small ones.
Raytracing Performance Index 2024 (Upgrade to 7900 GRE)
PCGH GPU Benchmarks 2024: Overall, Full HD – WQHD – UWQHD – Ultra HD
Game/Version
10 Games in FHD/WQHD/UWQHD/UHD, PCGH-Benchmarks 2024
Details
MAX. Raytracing Details + Quality Upsampling (2 Games: TAA) — rBAR/SAM enabled
Software/Drivers
Windows 11 x64 – Reference Spec Cards only!
Geforce RTX 3080 10GB
~1,89 GHz, 19 GT/s, 10 GiB
Geforce RTX 3050 8GB
~1,89 GHz, 14 GT/s, 8 GiB
Geforce RTX 3050 6GB
~1,69 GHz, 14 GT/s, 6 GiB
Radeon RX 6500 XT 8GB
~2,86 GHz, 18 GT/s, 8 GiB
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Name
Index OVERALL (Relative Performance)
Index Full HD (Relative Performance)
Index WQHD (Relative Performance)
Index UWQHD (Relative Performance)
Index Ultra HD (Relative Performance)
In the overall RT index, the RX 7900 GRE is 17 percent faster than a 6800 XT and 18 percent faster than an RTX 2080 Ti. If you now select Full HD in the benchmark, the scenario changes. The RX 7900 GRE is now 17 percent faster than the 6800 XT and 17 percent faster than an RTX 2080 Ti. The counter-example Ultra HD changes the distances to the RX 7900 GRE: 14 percent is up for a 6800 XT, 22 percent for an RTX 2080 Ti. WQHD and UWQHD are in between. Compared to older and slower GPUs, the distances are significantly higher, which is due to the heavy graphics load caused by ray tracing.
Play without ray tracingRX 6800 XT on 7900 GRE2080 Ti on 7900 GREFull HD+11%+52%WQHD+13%+53%UWQHD+14%+54%Ultra HD+10%+47% Play with ray tracingRX 6800 XT on 7900 GRE2080 Ti on 7900 GREFull HD+17%+17%WQHD+18%+17%UWQHD+18%+20%Ultra HD+14%+22%
Conclusion on GRE upgrade
Overall, it can be said: If you add up the around 250 measurements per graphics card, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE almost achieves a perfect landing “on” the Geforce RTX 4070 Super. Both graphics cards can outperform the Geforce RTX 4070 by 16 percent and the Radeon RX 7800 XT by around eight percent. The RX 7900 GRE and RTX 4070S therefore represent a decent upgrade for users of the Geforce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6750 XT performance class – a 50 percent increase in performance, at least in traditional grid games, is realistic. However, if you still use a Geforce GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 2070 Super or Radeon RX 5700 XT, you can expect a factor of 2. The XXL ranking with 56 GPUs since 2014 provides further clues.
If you compare the reference cards, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE does almost everything better than the Radeon RX 7800 XT. Not only is it nine percent faster, but it is also more efficient with slightly higher power consumption. AMD achieves this with a slimmed-down, low-clocking Navi 31 package, while the Radeon RX 7800 XT uses the Navi 32, which is equipped with fewer computing units. The alternative from Nvidia is called Geforce RTX 4070 Super and scores particularly well in terms of ray tracing and energy efficiency.
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