• 

  Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition

  Better performance and features

  The RTX 4080 is the second-fastest card in the RTX 40 series. It may not offer great value, but it remains one amazing video card for playing all your favorite games with ray tracing enabled.

  Pros

  • Modest performance advantage in gaming
  • Arguably better features
  • More power efficient

  Cons

  • 4GB less VRAM
  • Much more expensive
  • DLSS and ray tracing only in select titles

  $1200 at Best Buy

• 

  AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

  Best bang for buck

  The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is one of the best GPUs released by AMD this year. It's well suited for 1440p and 4K gaming with ample performance at a more reasonable price.

  Pros

  • Performance is almost as good as the 4080 while costing hundreds less
  • More VRAM
  • FSR to be available in many more games than DLSS

  Cons

  • Worse power efficiency
  • FSR's image quality isn't as good as DLSS's
  • Ray tracing performance can be significantly worse than the 4080's

  $780 at Amazon

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT have similar specifications and performance but are priced in completely different segments. The former officially costs $1,200, and the latter $900 (though, in reality, both GPUs can be found for less). You can also comfortably play games at 4K with ray tracing enabled on both cards. This guide will show you how to choose between the 7900 XT and the 4080.

Nvidia's RTX 4080 is the company's second flagship, sitting below the unreachable $1,600 RTX 4090. It packs enough of a punch to handle ray tracing gameplay at 1440p and 4K and is going head-to-head with the new RX 7900 series from AMD. Comparing it against the Radeon RX 7900 XT, there's a clear winner here, depending on how much you value money.

If money is no concern, the RTX 4080 is the more powerful GPU, but if you want to get more for your money, the 7900 XT is the better value. Both GPUs are overpriced compared to what we used to pay for such flagship models; however, Nvidia's pricing is outer-worldly, and AMD is undercutting the competition considerably. Still, there is more to it than just pure price and performance.

Price, availability, and specs

Ever since the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT launched in December 2022, its availability has been quite good, and its price has fallen to $800 on several models. While the official MSRP continues to be $900, the 7900 XT is now $800, and it's not going out of stock any time soon. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 is in a similar situation, as it's never really run out of stock, and a few models are closer to $1,100 than the $1,200 MSRP. However, the 4080 is generally still selling at the MSRP, and you don't have too many options among those cheaper models.

• 	Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
  Interface	PCIe 4.0	PCIe 4.0
  Memory	16GB GDDR6X	20GB GDDR6
  Power	320W	315W
  CUDA Cores	9,728	5,376
  Architecture	Ada Lovelace	RDNA 3
  Process	TSMC 4nm	TSMC 5nm (GCD), TSMC 6nm (MCDs)
  Base clock speed	2,205 MHz	2,000 MHz
  Boost clock speed	2,505 MHz	2,394 MHz
  Memory bus width	256-bit	320-bit
  Cache	64MB L2	6MB L2 + 80MB L3
  Memory Bandwidth	716.8GB/s	800GB/s
  MSRP	$1,200	$900

Architecture

Looking at the specifications, it's unclear which card is better. AMD's card has more VRAM with higher bandwidth, but the RTX 4080 has almost double the graphics computing cores (though these are completely different from AMD's). The same goes for the architecture, with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT being based on RDNA 3 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 using Ada Lovelace. Ultimately, a spec sheet won't tell you much about the performance between two completely different GPUs.

Both support ray tracing to some degree; however, Nvidia's implementation has had more time to mature and make good use of AI-assisted calculations. Paired with DLSS, you can enjoy smoother gameplay with all these heavy features enabled. AMD has similar technologies as Nvidia, but the company is playing catch-up, which shows in the performance test results below. Its ray tracing capabilities just don't cut it compared to Nvidia, and while FSR is good, it's just not quite as good as DLSS (though it will probably be in many more games in the near future).

When it comes to drivers, Nvidia's are usually sound at launch, whereas AMD's can take longer to mature but may end up vastly improving performance over the card's lifespan, though you might look at this as AMD fixing its product rather than making it better. These two cards will trade blows with one another all day long, so let's take a look at actual in-game performance.

Performance

The two GPUs are similar in performance on average, though the RTX 4080 comes out on top almost across the board by a modest margin. If you can't afford $1,000 for the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the Radeon RX 7900 XT offers better value than the RTX 4080 when looking at performance per dollar.

Overall, the RTX 4080 is the faster card in games compared to the RX 7900 XT, especially when it comes to ray tracing. While the 7900 XT's cores are clearly much faster individually than those on the 4080, the 4080 has so many that the 7900 XT just can't keep up.

You'll be paying just shy of 30% more for the RTX 4080 than the RX 7900, but the performance increase is inconsistent, with some games seeing as little as no increase (Far Cry 6) and others seeing considerable jumps, especially at 4K. Ray tracing, as expected, is a different story. Nvidia's GPUs handle it better across the board, making it the safer bet if you're interested in turning ray tracing on.

For value, the RX 7900 XT is the better deal here by far. However, if you're spending $800 or more on a GPU, you might not care much about value. But if you still care about bang for your buck at this price point, you'll definitely appreciate the 7900 XT's new de facto cost at $800 since, at launch, the 7900 XTX cost just $100 more and had much better performance. Now, the 7900 XT is much more appealing even though it's not a performance winner against the 4080.

Which GPU is best?

The RTX 4080 is a solid GPU and the best graphics card for ray tracing performance in this comparison, but it's priced far too high. With AMD being able to launch the RX 7900 series from $900 (and it's dropping to $800), it's even more obvious how much Nvidia is charging just for extra features and ray tracing performance. Despite this, the 4080 hasn't really come down in price, with just a few models hitting $1,100 at the lowest.

Then there's also the RX 7900 XTX, which is roughly $1,000 and cleanly beats the 4080 in pretty much every regard except ray tracing performance and features. If you wanted what is basically a faster 7900 XT for $150 to $200 more, then the 7900 XTX is for you. While the 4080 is a good GPU, it's pretty clear it's just too expensive to be the best value.

While the 7900 XT pales in comparison to the 4080 when it comes to upscaling and ray tracing, those features are still not widely available across PC games, and you could safely ignore their existence depending on the games you play. In that case, the 7900 XT is almost a cheaper 4080 with more VRAM, and it's definitely better value even in games where it's somewhat slower.