AMD is squaring up against the RTX 4080 – and might win

The RTX 4090 is the most significant generational leap we’ve seen from Nvidia, crushing the RTX 3090 and the RTX 3090 Ti with a price tag to match. Before the launch most of us expected AMD to topple this jump, but it won’t. Instead, the new RX 7900 series will compete directly with the RTX 4080. 

Frank Azor, the Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions and Marketing at AMD confirmed this during the RDNA 3 reveal in Las Vegas. Frank said the new Radeon RX 7900 XTX is designed to compete with the RTX 4080 and the “primary reason” there weren’t any Nvidia GeForce RTX series GPUs at all in the charts for comparison is because they didn’t have any RTX 4080 benchmark numbers. 

To bring you up to speed, the GeForce RTX 4080 will come with 16GB of GDDR6X memory and start at $1,199 (around £1,042 or AU$1850) which is $400 less than the RTX 4090. But! AMD will be offering more VRAM on the $899 Radeon RX 7900 XT (20GB GDDR6) and the same VRAM as the RTX 4090 with the $999 (about £870 or AU$1540) Radeon RX 7900 XTX (which will have 24GB GDDR6). 

Analysis: AMD’s pricing is what the GPU market needs right now

If we look back at the launch prices for the RTX 3090 and the RX 6950 XT we can see a steady climb with one team and not the other. At launch, the Nvidia RTX 3090 was $1,499 and the RX 6950 XT started at $1,099 which is a staggering difference between the two of $400.

Right now, the cheapest RTX 3090 on Newegg.com is listed at $1,200 – meanwhile, the cheapest RX 6950 XT we could find was just $800. Considering the average performance difference between the two graphics cards is only around 20% in favor of the Nvidia card, AMD’s current flagship is decidedly better value for money.

While we don’t yet know exactly how well the next-gen RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XTX will perform, it’s a good sign that AMD is intentionally targeting the 4080 as its flagship GPU’s competition. However, it’s already $200 cheaper, putting AMD in a very good position if Team Red can match (or at least nearly match) the RTX 4080’s performance.