AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT 12GB Graphics Card Review Featuring XFX QICK 319

Ray Tracing & DLSS

Now, rasterisation is just one element of a GPU and as we know, NVIDIA have put a big focus onto Ray Tracing and upscaling technology, and typically, AMD have generally been behind in those departments, though what we do see here is a strong performance gain of 40% when moving up from RDNA 2, and this further puts the 7700 XT ahead of NVIDIA’s 4060 Ti, though admittedly we didn’t have the 16GB to test, though performance in this title should be similar to what’s seen from the 8GB card. What’s more interesting though is how the 7800 XT comes out much stronger, and closer to that of the RTX 4070, and is only $50 more expensive than the 7700 XT.

In Cyberpunk, the 7700 XT isn’t a card that you’d be running with Ray Tracing turned on without any form of upscaling. Luckily turning upscaling on does see a sizeable improvement that almost hits 60 FPS and again, with a few tweaks here and there, you could see that further increase in sacrifice for some of those fancy visuals, though the lesser cost 4060 Ti does outperform it slightly, and with the ability of turning on DLSS 3, the RDNA3 based GPU didn’t really stand much of a chance.

In Spider-Man, the 7700 XT shows less of an increase in performance compared to the 6700 XT as it sits just 8% ahead with Ray Tracing turned on, and while upscaling does help push the numbers up, it’s only by 6% and isn’t enough to fend off NVIDIA who clearly have the upper hand, even without frame generation, which just further propels them forward, though with AMD’s frame gen technology coming soon, it will be interesting to see how that matures over time.

Watch Dogs: Legion was frankly unplayable with Ray Tracing turned on on the 6700 XT, and while it’s still within that same remit, a 52% increase on the 7700 XT is very much welcomed and with some settings being lowered, it’s definitely more within reach now and not that far away from the performance of the RTX 4070. A GPU that is massively more expensive in comparison.

Taking a look at the overall averages for Ray Tracing and it’s clear to see that the 35% uplift from RDNA2 to RDNA 3 has made a big difference as the 7700 XT now comes in 10% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti, which considering NVIDIA have held such a monopoly on Ray Tracing for so long, it’s definitely becoming more of a level playing field, though it’s very hard to ignore the more powerful 7800 XT which draws closer to the even more expensive RTX 4070 and sits above 60 FPS in the overall average.