AMD is going all out this year with two flagship-tier GPUs that will set gamers back $899. That's still cheap compared to Nvidia's RTX 4090 and 4080 options, so some gamers might be tempted to pick one up this holiday season. Unfortunately, there are some things that should be kept in mind when deciding between the 7900 xtx and 6900 xt.
First, we should look at the spec sheet to see how the cards perform. The 7900 xtx leapfrogs its direct predecessor by 103.7 % in gaming benchmarks, while it is a little slower than the Nvidia RTX 4090 in some cases. The 7900 xtx also comes with 16 GB of video memory, a significant upgrade over the RX 5700 XT's 8 GB of RAM.
In addition, the 7900 xtx has improved ray-tracing performance, although it's still behind Nvidia in some scenarios. In a 1080p resolution with the Medium Preset in Watch Dogs Legion, we were able to achieve over 46 fps on the RX 7900 xtx, while the 6900 xtx was about 43 fps faster. Similarly, in Cyberpunk 2077 with ray-tracing on and FSR balanced, the 7900 xtx managed to get over 50 fps while the 6900 xtx was only around 47 fps.
However, these performance metrics should be taken with a grain of salt as they were derived from controlled environments that may not be representative of a gamer's own rig. Additionally, the reviews for the 7900 xtx and 6900xt will provide more insight into thermal and power efficiency, metrics that will help draw clearer comparisons against the Nvidia RTX 40 series.