AMD’s latest Radeon RX 7000-series is Team Red’s response to Nvidia’s RTX 40-series. For Nvidia, the current reigning leader of the pack is the RTX 4090, an expensive, but immensely powerful GPU. In the case of AMD, we have two cards sitting near the top — the RX 7900 XT and the RX 7900 XTX. How does AMD’s new headliner, the XTX, compete with Nvidia’s flagship?

If you’re wondering which GPU will reign as the best of the best, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve tested both cards extensively and we know the answer.

Pricing and availability

Nvidia’s flagships are known for a lot of things, but being cheap is not one of them. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 was released on October 12, 2022, and the basic Founders Edition model costs $1,599. Custom versions made by Nvidia’s partners, such as MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus, cost more, nearing the $2,000 mark in some cases.

The GPU sold out quickly at most retailers despite the eye-watering price tag. Scalpers are attempting to resell it, charging a fairly high markup, so you may not be able to score an RTX 4090 for the recommended price just yet. Hopefully, over time, the price will normalize.

AMD is usually slightly more reasonable than Nvidia when it comes to the pricing of its products, and this holds up when it comes to the new lineup. The RX 7900 XTX is certainly more agreeably priced. First announced on November 3, the GPU was released on December 13 and priced at $1,000. For reference, the not-quite-flagship RX 7900 XT was released on the same day with a $900 price tag.

This makes the new AMD flagship much, much more affordable, but there are still other things to factor into your consideration, such as the specifications and the performance of both the Nvidia and the AMD cards.

Specs

Both the RTX 4090 and the RX 7900 XTX introduce new technologies and architectures for their respective manufacturers. In the case of Nvidia, the RTX 4090 is the flagship, built on the new Ada Lovelace Architecture and TSMC’s N4 manufacturing process. For AMD, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is the king of the hill, somewhat closely followed by the RX 7900 XT.

The new AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX belongs to AMD’s latest RDNA 3 lineup, was built on a 5nm process, and houses a Navi 31 XT GPU die. AMD went with an interesting new approach, similar to that used in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and used a 5nm graphics compute die (GCD) as well as a 6nm memory cache die (MCD) in the same GPU, stacking them on top of each other. This lets the GPU pack more punch, assisted by the massive 96MB of Infinity Cache.

Unfortunately, although the RDNA 3 powers do give the 7900 XTX a considerable boost over its predecessor (the 6900 XT), it’s not a match for Nvidia’s behemoth of a GPU. The AMD flagship is positioned against Nvidia’s RTX 4080 instead.

Here’s how the two flagships compare in terms of specifications.