Question RTX 4080 vs 7900 XTX Future Proof

[fixfireleo]

Hello everyone, I upgraded my PC last spring (except the GPU) and I think I need a new GPU. I'm having issues with Star Wars Jedi Survivor. I will list my current system below. I understand the differences between the RTX 4080 and the 7900 XTX but I want to get a card that will last me the longest into the future. The 7900 XTX has 24 GB GDDR6 but is bad at ray tracing while the 4080 is good at ray tracing but has only has 16 GB G6X. Is ray tracing a hardware or software thing? If it's software then I would go with the card that has the higher memory since an update may fix ray tracing. But if it's hardware, then do I go with a card that has enough memory to last for many new games to come but the ray tracing sucks? What do you think? Thank you!! (I usually play single player games like Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, Baldurs Gate, etc)

Processor 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13600KF 3.50 GHz
Installed RAM 64.0 GB (63.9 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Mag B660 Tomahawk DDR4 Motherboard
Windows 11 Home
Connected via Ethernet
NVIDIA RTX 2060 (current)

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Have a look at this. It’s a couple of months old but they go through a pretty wide gambit of games testing upscaling and ray tracing as well.

View: https://youtu.be/YbKhxjw8EUE?feature=shared


Personally I’d consider the 7900xtx. If you are planning for this to be a long term card like 5 years or more, you might find that as new products release that features like ray tracing become less important and that rasterization becomes what you are more interested in. The extra vram may help it stay relevant longer.

Personally I have an rx 6800xt. Got it on sale but to put it in perspective that card can basically run with a brand new rtx 4070 except in encoding and ray tracing. But performance wise is still close despite the 6800xt being 3 years old now and less money. I can say one of my friends who owned an rtx 3090 bought a 7900xtx and is happy with it.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

7900xtx only because it doesn't use the dingus 12VHPWR connector, otherwise would have said 4080 because you can use DLSS3, FSR3 and Intels FG.

 

[fixfireleo]

Have a look at this. It’s a couple of months old but they go through a pretty wide gambit of games testing upscaling and ray tracing as well.

View: https://youtu.be/YbKhxjw8EUE?feature=shared


Personally I’d consider the 7900xtx. If you are planning for this to be a long term card like 5 years or more, you might find that as new products release that features like ray tracing become less important and that rasterization becomes what you are more interested in. The extra vram may help it stay relevant longer.

Personally I have an rx 6800xt. Got it on sale but to put it in perspective that card can basically run with a brand new rtx 4070 except in encoding and ray tracing. But performance wise is still close despite the 6800xt being 3 years old now and less money. I can say one of my friends who owned an rtx 3090 bought a 7900xtx and is happy with it.

Thank you for responding and I was leaning the same way. I'll see if anyone has anything different to consider but considering the 7900 XTX is cheaper, I'll probably go that route.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I actually bought my RX 7900 XTX specifically for future-proofing because I foresee another GPU shortage caused by companies dedicating more of their fab allocations to AI chips. That will cause prices to skyrocket. I'm not sure that it'll be as bad as a mining craze but it'll still be pretty bad. I'm hoping that the 24GB of VRAM will allow me to "ride out the storm" so to speak. I wasn't in bad shape to begin with since the card I upgraded from (which is now my backup card) is an RX 6800 XT. I didn't have much confidence that 16GB would last for the next 6 years but I'm (of course) a lot more confident that 24GB will. Since I can't get more than 24GB on a card no matter what I buy, I think that the XTX was the right choice.

 

[fixfireleo]

I actually bought my RX 7900 XTX specifically for future-proofing because I foresee another GPU shortage caused by companies dedicating more of their fab allocations to AI chips. That will cause prices to skyrocket. I'm not sure that it'll be as bad as a mining craze but it'll still be pretty bad. I'm hoping that the 24GB of VRAM will allow me to "ride out the storm" so to speak. I wasn't in bad shape to begin with since the card I upgraded from (which is now my backup card) is an RX 6800 XT. I didn't have much confidence that 16GB would last for the next 6 years but I'm (of course) a lot more confident that 24GB will. Since I can't get more than 24GB on a card no matter what I buy, I think that the XTX was the right choice.

Well, thank you. I pulled the plug and got it. It's disappointing....this morning I had one in my cart on Amazon for $799 but I went to the restroom before I hit the button to think if I needed anything else and by the time I got back out, it was out of my cart and not available for less than $969. I dont know if that was a pricing error or they sold out at that price but it was like 2 minutes.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Just bought a 6800xt myself though I wouldn’t mind the other card.

 

[COLGeek]

Just dropping this into the conversation, but you can purchase GPUs directly from AMD:

https://shop-us-en.amd.com/graphics-cards/

I have used several times over the years. Never had a bad experience with them.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well, thank you. I pulled the plug and got it. It's disappointing....this morning I had one in my cart on Amazon for $799 but I went to the restroom before I hit the button to think if I needed anything else and by the time I got back out, it was out of my cart and not available for less than $969. I dont know if that was a pricing error or they sold out at that price but it was like 2 minutes.

It might have been an open-box special like mine was ($850 at Newegg) and yeah, you can't dawdle for even a moment if you want to secure one of those.

Not that it matters but... what model did you get?

 

[Avro Arrow]

Just dropping this into the conversation, but you can purchase GPUs directly from AMD:

https://shop-us-en.amd.com/graphics-cards/

I have used several times over the years. Never had a bad experience with them.

Yep, they're a fine place to buy cards and are especially good for people without big cases because the reference models tend to be a good deal smaller than the AIB versions.