Radeon RX 7900 XTX catches up to GeForce RTX 4090 in performance with 700W power consumption

A user on the Reddit forum overclocked the graphics processor of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card to a frequency of 3.5 GHz and also managed to achieve performance from the card at the level of the GeForce RTX 4090. For the experiment, ASUS Radeon RX was used the 7900 XTX TUF Gaming model, whose standard cooling system was replaced by the EK Quantum Vector water block. The latter was connected to a radiator with coolant, whose temperature was reduced to 10 °C.

Image source: Reddit/u/jedi95

Modification of the video card allowed to match the performance of the GeForce RTX 4090 in the synthetic test of the 3DMark package, where it managed to work stably at a more modest frequency of 3.33 GHz. True, the minus here is the power consumption of the accelerator, which reached almost 700 watts. That’s more than double the standard 335W for the RX 7900 XTX. For comparison, the power consumption of the GeForce RTX 4090 in the same tests is 400-500 watts declared by the manufacturer.

In the 3DMark Time Spy Extreme test, the overclocked Radeon RX 7900 XTX scored 18,335 points, which surpasses the result of some versions of the GeForce RTX 4090. For example, according to PCGamer, the GeForce RTX 4090 tested by them without additional overclocking managed to scoring just 16,654 points in the same test, which is 10% less than the result of an overclocked Radeon graphics card by a Reddit user.

The experiment shows that the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is capable of demonstrating a performance level similar to NVIDIA’s flagship, but at the cost of very high power consumption – at peak, the card consumed 696 watts. And, of course, the same 3DMark test does not reflect the full picture of the accelerator’s game performance, and the Reddit user did not conduct game tests of the overclocked Radeon graphics card.

In March, AMD said that it could release a direct competitor to the GeForce RTX 4090. This was not done due to the high level of power consumption and cost of such a solution. The experiment confirms AMD’s words.

«