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.
In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora we are testing at 1440p with the “Ultra” preset, and the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE is right on the border of being playable at 61FPS. It is 7% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070, and 9% slower than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. Overclocking improves performance by about 5%.
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, at the High Quality Preset the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE provides a very playable and smooth gameplay experience at 1440p with 77FPS. This puts it at 22% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 and even 7% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. Overclocking improves performance by 4%, and it is only second to the Radeon RX 7900 XT in this game.
With LOW Ray Tracing enabled, however, the PowerColor Radeon RX 7900 GRE is not playable, it will need upscaling to make RT playable. The RT performance isn’t terrible though, it’s actually 16% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 and on par with the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER RT performance.
We also wanted to test HIGH-Quality Ray Tracing, which now enables Path Tracing. This does make the game completely unplayable, but we can see the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 SUPER are faster at Path Tracing, but both are also unplayable.
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.
Assassins’s Creed Mirage is very playable on the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 1440p, at 120FPS it allows high refresh rate gaming at the highest image quality. It is 5% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070, and 6% slower than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. Overclocking improves performance by 3%.
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 the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE is very playable at 1440p at near 80FPS. It is 23% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 and 8% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. Overclocking doesn’t affect performance to any noticeable degree. The performance level is only second to the Radeon RX 7900 XT.
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.
Dying Light 2 is very playable at 1440p on the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 93FPS. This puts it 3% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 but 15% slower than the RTX 4070 SUPER in this game. Overclocking improves performance by 3%.
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.
Cyberpunk 2077 is very playable on the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 1440p at over 100FPS. This makes it a whopping 44% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 and 14% faster than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. It again, is only second to the Radeon RX 7900 XT. Overclocking improves performance by 5%.
When it comes to Ray Tracing, however, this game is not playable on any video card at “Ultra” RT. The PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900 GRE does do well, comparably, with the RTX cards however. It is only 15% slower than the RTX 4070 and 27% slower than the RTX 4070 SUPER. However, it is 21% faster than the Radeon RX 7800 XT.