Full disclosure, this review is late. Like six and a half months late. AMD announced this card somewhere in October or November 2022 and it released worldwide in December that year. Although to be fair, the card's only really started reaching our shores towards the end of January 2023 in limited numbers. However, the 7000 series cards have shown that AMD can compete with Nvidia at almost every level and that includes price.

When I first opened up the box for the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XT, I was blown away and not in a good way. This card is massive. I though the RTX4090 was the biggest four - sorry, three and a half, slot card in existence, but this card comes damn close. Like with my 4090 I cannot use my second PCI-E slot for anything or install my discreet soundcard. This card dominates my Corsair 4000D case. When you look in through the tempered glass side all you see is the card. Measuring in at 353mm long by 158mm wide by 73mm high, it is going to struggle to fit into many cases. Do not just assume it will fit, check out the many compatibility guides online before purchasing to make sure your existing case can accommodate this beast.




Size aside, the design of the card is suitably TUF. Black with a little gold and silver accents, it is beautifully understated. No extraneous RGB. The TUF branding denotes understated aesthetics, not over the top gamer looks, but also a design philosophy meant to mean that the card conforms to some sort of military specification for durability. I wouldn’t go dropping the card too test that theory, but it certainly looks durable.

The looks of the RX 7900 XT make sense, as does the size, when you factor in the gigantic heatsink and three fans. This card stays cool under pressure. Even with Cyberpunk 2077 at ultra-settings 4K, I was seeing max temps under sustained loads at below 80 degrees centigrade.

4K gaming stressed the card a bit more but maintained a respectable average of 95FPS in almost all the games in the test suite.

This neatly leads us to the gaming performance. Having tested Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman 3, The Division 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 5 and more recently Diablo IV, this card hardly broke a sweat. At 1080p I never saw an average framerate below 120FPS. 1440p gaming saw a slight drop in FPS but again it averaged consistently over 100FPS. 4K gaming stressed the card a bit more but maintained a respectable average of 95FPS in almost all the games in the test suite.



AMD has come a long way in Ray Tracing support, but is still a fair bit behind Nvidia with their more mature RT technology. Having said that, RT is much better than it was just a few months back and you will definitely notice it when you look for it. Maybe being the go-to chip supplier for consoles has helped AMD along? Be that as it may, you will be sacrificing some performance for those sweet, sweet rays and even with my 4090 I tend to switch it off because after a few minutes of game time, you won’t notice the effects much.

I tend not to review games looking at FSR and DLSS and the reason is simple: FSR, like ray tracing, is not as mature as Nvidia’s DLSS, but also not all games support the technologies and given recent suspicions in the computer gaming community that AMD may (I emphasise the “may”) be preventing developers from supporting DLSS in games that they sponsor, the comparisons are just not useful. I will say this however: FSR 2.1 is a vast improvement in a short period of time over the first attempts and it does help squeeze out a few extra frames in games.

Currently stock of the card is in short supply and at a cost of around R20,000, it isn’t exactly a cheap card.

Given that we are living in South Africa and that most of us face load shedding daily and even if we have an invertor or solar panels, having frugal power usage is crucial to our gaming lives. Unfortunately, the RX 7900 XT does come with a recommendation for at least a 750W PSU. Now that is better than the RTX 4070Ti or RTX 4080 which both carry the same recommended PSU from Nvidia but most technical experts recommend 800 to 1000W PSUs, but it still is a hefty requirement.



Because of my system's setup (Ryzen 9 5900X and an RTX4090) my system exceeded the recommended PSU and thus I didn’t experience any potential system instability due the PSU being unable to provide a steady flow. Having said that, this is something to consider of you are just upgrading your GPU as you may need to buy another PSU as well as the possible impact to your monthly electricity bill.

The twin elephants in the room are the price and availability. Currently stock of the card is in short supply and at a cost of around R20,000, it isn’t exactly a cheap card, but it is cheaper than competing 4080s averaging around R25,000.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XT is a card worthy of your attention and consideration as it shows that AMD has worked as hard here as they did with their CPUs to not only catch up to Nvidia, but to start going toe-to-toe with the Big Green. In rasterization the 7900 XT will not just compete but can surpass the competitor’s 4070Ti and face off against the 4080. There is some work to be done on FSR as well as ray tracing, but I wouldn’t bet against AMD catching up there too.