Gameplay Performance
Our graphs and comparison methods have been updated. In the graphs below, note that we are showing both “rasterized” and “ray tracing” performance on the graphs, for each card. RT in the graphs stands for Ray Tracing. The bar above the RT bar is standard rasterized performance. All of this is without upscaling. We will show FSR upscaling performance on the next page, separately.
For comparisons, we are using an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT to see where the Radeon RX 7900 GRE fits in. We are also including both the GeForce RTX 4070 and GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition video cards.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was released in December of 2023 and is based on an updated Snowdrop engine. This engine supports real-time ray tracing, and Avatar Frontiers of Pandora is unique in that it supports hardware ray tracing turned on by default, with no options to disable it. If a video card doesn’t support ray tracing, it falls back to a software ray tracing mode. With ray tracing baked in, all the results shown reflect the use of ray-traced global illumination, ray-traced reflections, and ray-traced shadows, these are always on. We utilize the graphics quality preset option of “Ultra.” We use the built-in benchmark.
With the use of ray tracing built-in by default, this game is very demanding on Ultra at 1440p. In fact, the RTX 4070 and 7800 XT struggle with performance, and therefore only the SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+, RTX 4070 SUPER, and RX 7900 XT are at playable levels without upscaling. The SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ is 17% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT, and 15% behind the 7900 XT. The 7900 GRE is 7% faster than the RTX 4070, and 9% behind the RTX 4070 SUPER. Overclocking adds about 5% to performance.
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 was launched on the PC in October of 2023 and is based on the Northlight Engine. The game supports detailed graphics and ray tracing with path tracing support. This game defaults to DLSS or FSR but does allow Native AA resolution settings with DLSS or FSR respectively. We utilize the graphics presets to set High quality, as well as the Ray Tracing presets to set Low or High quality. We use a manual run-through in the Initiation 5: Room 665 chapter.
In Alan Wake 2, we are testing at the High Quality Preset, and the RT bars are tested in LOW Quality Ray Tracing preset, which disables Path Tracing. Path Tracing kills AMD performance, so we first wanted to see performance without it. The bar on top of the RT bar is standard rasterized performance without RT.
The SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16GB NITRO+ video card is playable at 77FPS at 1440p. It is 15% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT, and 14% slower than the Radeon RX 7900 XT. It is also 7% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER and 22% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070. Overclocking it improves performance by 5%. Even with LOW RT, the game is not very playable, only the 7900 XT really feels playable with RT here, beating the RTX 4070 SUPER in performance. In fact, the 7900 GRE is on par with the RTX 4070 SUPER’s RT performance, producing the same performance, which is impressive.
We did want to turn on the HIGH Ray Tracing quality preset, which enables Path Tracing, just to see how things shape up. We sorted the graph above by RT performance. You can see that with Path Tracing, the RTX 4070 and 4070 SUPER is faster than the 7900 GRE. The 7900 XT is also slightly faster than the 7900 GRE with Ray Tracing. The 7900 GRE is about 20% faster than the 7800 XT though, in Ray Tracing performance. However, we wouldn’t call any of these cards playable at 1440p with RT at the High-Quality Preset, you will need upscaling for all of them to be playable with RT at 1440p.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Assassin’s Creed Mirage was released in October of 2023 and is based on the Ubisoft Anvil game engine. We are using the “Ultra High” graphics quality preset, and all adaptive framerate measures are disabled. We use the built-in benchmark.
In Assassin’s Creed Mirage, every video card is more than playable above 100FPS at 1440p. This game runs super smooth and enjoyable. The SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ is 6% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 14% behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT. It is 7% faster than the RTX 4070, but 5% behind the RTX 4070 SUPER. Overclocking adds about 3% to performance.
Starfield
Starfield was released on the PC in September of 2023 and is based on the Creation Engine 2. We are using the highest Ultra settings in the game for all testing, and upscaling is disabled for standard testing, with no dynamic resolution. We use a manual run-through in the New Atlantis area encompassing all areas.
In Starfield, all of these video cards are playable at 1440p with 60FPS performance. We can see that the new SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ is 14% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 14% slower than the Radeon RX 7900 XT. It is 7% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER and 22% faster than the RTX 4070. Overclocking doesn’t yield much improvement here, this game most likely benefits more from a memory overclock than core frequency.
Dying Light 2
Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC and uses Techland’s C-Engine. The game supports Ray Tracing, DLSS, and FSR2. We use the built-in preset to set “High Quality” which sets the highest game graphics, without Ray Tracing. We also use the High-Quality Ray Tracing preset for Ray Tracing. We use the built-in benchmark.
In Dying Light 2 we are running the High Quality Preset, and then for Ray Tracing we are running the High Quality Ray Tracing Preset. This game is playable on every video card in plain raster performance. The SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ is 12% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 11% slower than the Radeon RX 7900 XT. It is only 3% faster than the RTX 4070 though, both have very similar performance and in fact the RTX 4070 SUPER is the fastest card here beating the 7900 GRE by 18%. Overclocking adds about 3% to performance.
With Ray Tracing, the RTX video cards have a leg up on performance, except for the Radeon RX 7900 XT which seems to do very well at about the level of the RTX 4070. The RTX 4070 SUPER is the fastest at RT, and the only one that is really playable with RT without upscaling. The SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ is 22% faster than the 7800 XT in RT and just 10% behind the 7900 XT in RT. Overclocking with RT adds about 5% to performance.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 2.0 and utilize the built-in benchmark. We test using the Graphics Preset option to set graphics settings to “Ultra”. We utilize the highest quality upscaling.
In Cyberpunk 2077, we are running at 1440p with Ultra settings. Every video card is playable at Ultra here without upscaling. The SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO_ is doing very well, beating everything but the RX 7900 XT in Cyberpunk 2077 performance. It is 13% faster than the RX 7800 XT and 14% slower than the 7900 XT. It is 14% faster than the RTX 4070 SUPER and a massive 44% faster than the RTX 4070. Overclocking adds about 4% to performance.
When it comes to RT, every card struggles, and none are playable at 1440p without upscaling. The 7900 GRE is 20% faster than the 7800 XT with RT and 11% behind the 7900 XT. The 7900 GRE sits 15% behind the RTX 4070 in RT and 27% behind the RTX 4070 SUPER.