I still have a soft spot for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX in 2026, but does this last-gen flagship hold its own against Nvidia's younger DLSS-obsessed rivals?

AMD chose not to dish out a "flagship" Radeon offering that would compete with Nvidia's RTX 5090 for its most recent generation of graphics cards. Sure, the RX 9070 XT is pretty much the stand-in, and sure, there are conversations to be had about what being a "flagship" PC component even means in this day and age. But, like it or not, the best graphics card from AMD this generation isn't trying to pick a fight with Nvidia's top dog.

In an era of civil unrest at the state of modern graphics cards that are too reliant on AI upscaling, though, I started asking myself something.

How does AMD's last-gen flagship square up against the modern suite of current-gen offerings? Years ago now, I reviewed the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. It was one of the first PC components I got to test out in my time here at GamesRadar+, and it blew my socks off. Amidst a pricing apocalypse, scalping, and Nvidia taking DLSS all the way to the bank, here was an alternative that offered massive 4K native performance with very few compromises.

On paper, this GPU is an absolute monster that stacks up against the 24GB of VRAM found inside the RTX 4090, a card that was honestly designed more for mining crypto than it was for your everyday gamer. In terms of native performance, this thing is still hard for any graphics card to match and, especially with the RTX 50 series relying so heavily on AI upscaling, I wondered if it would still be able to put modern rivals to shame.

Is a last-gen graphics card really going to be worth buying when newer alternatives with ongoing support exist? The RX 7900 XTX isn't part of AMD's current 90 Series lineup, so it doesn't have access to Redstone, the brand's latest iteration of frame generation. But with as much power as it has, does it really need that? My curiosity was piqued, and I wanted to find out how things compared.

Somewhere, somehow, AMD was able to hook me up with an XFX Merc310 Radeon RX 7900 XTX, so I got to work.

Turns out, off-paper, this thing is also a monster. It barely fits inside my Micro-ATX gaming PC. This particular model comes with its own Z-shaped bracket in the box because it really is that bulky. My case and fans combo doesn't even have room for that, but I made things work by using a smaller GPU bracket.

Once I managed to squeeze it into my NZXT H3 Flow case, I got to work. Was nostalgia for a review I did in the early days of this job getting the better of me, or is this graphics card still worth buying in today's PC market?

Performance

Seeing as it's the graphics card I had in my PC before running this experiment, I've made some direct comparisons to the Asus GeForce RTX 5070, but I'm aware there need to be some caveats mentioned here. In some ways, this isn't exactly a fair fight because the 5070 has 12GB of GDDR7 VRAM as opposed to the 7900 XTX's 21GB of GDDR6. In fact, all over the tale of the tape, the RTX 5070 is a much weaker card in terms of native 4K gaming performance, but that might not be such a big problem.

In some ways, the RTX 5070 is the epitome of the current slate of GPU competition from Nvidia. It was originally billed as an RTX 4090 successor (albeit with heavy, heavy influence on AI upscaling power to make that claim valid). But hey, if Nvidia wants that card to be known as a sequel to the RTX 4090, surely it should be able to beat AMD's last-gen 4090 rival?

My first test was more of a personal one, and less of a strict, technical benchmark. As someone with 2,600 hours in Hunt: Showdown, I wanted to see how this 7900 XTX would improve my quality of life in one of the games I play most regularly. With the 5070, playing at 4K, I had to use exclusively low settings and DLSS on balanced or performance to get a stable ~130fps.

I thought maybe a GPU with as much organic power as the 7900 XTX would be able to beat the RTX 5070 with medium settings, but I didn't realise just how big the performance gap was going to be. Using the same "low" settings without any use of AI upscaling through FSR, the 7900 XTX was already maxing out my monitor's 144Hz refresh rate.

In the end, I was able to put settings up to high, and with FSR working on Quality, I'm able to get roughly the same kinds of 143fps frame rates and graphical fidelity I've seen with the NZXT Player Three, which uses an RTX 5080. That's damn impressive for a multiplayer game that's doing a lot of technically demanding stuff through CryEngine.

But onto more formal benchmarks I went. Starting with 3DMark, I saw pretty sizeable leaps in scores from the RTX 5070 I had in my build previously.

In gaming benchmarks, I was surprised by just how sizeable performance boosts were over the RTX 5070 when multiframe generation wasn't in play. In all but one benchmark scenario I carried out across Cyberpunk and Black Myth Wukong, the 7900 XTX handily beat the 5070, and that was without using any frame gen tricks.

Don't get me wrong, MFG is a massive boon in the RTX 5070's favour, and probably something to consider in this day and age when buying a graphics card. But I feel the latency and ghosting that comes from cranking a weaker GPU's frame generation up in demanding games. For that reason, I'd prefer not to need it when playing a demanding game. With a native performing tank like the 7900 XTX, you're not going to subject yourself to that as much.

Seeing as Cyberpunk has essentially been developed for Nvidia cards, I still expected to see some victory for the RTX 5070. That wasn't the case, even with Ray Tracing switched on, which really goes to show how off-base Nvidia was to try to claim the 5070 was an RTX 4090 rival.

If you're on the fence about the specs mismatch between the RTX 5070 and the 7900 XTX, I hear you. While I can't give you benchmark comparisons from my own rig, I can tell you how the 7900XTX squares off against other current-gen GPUs that we've tested in other machines. These won't be quite so reliable as comparisons go, but they'll give you a ballpark.

Against the RTX 5080 (paired with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D) in the NZXT Player Three, scores in 3DMark aren't as bad as I thought they'd be. That rig scored 27,348 in Time Spy, 55,985 in Fire Strike, and 78.13 in Steel Nomad. Fire Strike comparisons there might seem more detached, but Time Spy in particular is a closer race than some might expect.

Where you'd lose out against the RTX 5080 is its higher ceiling with DLSS and multi-frame generation, but then again, that might not be a huge issue if you're not looking to crank up ray tracing for everything you play. On balance, the 7900 XTX's ray tracing benchmark scores in Cyberpunk aren't quite up to the 5080's standards. Again, tested in a different machine, the 5080 achieved 35 fps with Ray Tracing on and no DLSS assistance. But without Ray Tracing, just using 4K, maxed settings, the 7900 XTX was less than one frame per second off the 5080's score of 44 - that's not bad for native 4K performance that's two years behind, architecturally speaking.

I haven't been able to go hands-on with an RX 9070 XT yet, but we do have some benchmarks in our CyberPowerPC Ultra XT3D review. In Time Spy, the 7900 XTX actually outperformed the 9070 XT's score of 25,579. In the other two 3DMark tests, the 9070 XT was just able to sneak past with 51,234 in Fire Strike and 6961 in Steel Nomad.

And in Cyberpunk, results are surprisingly close, which goes to show just how powerful the 9070 XT is despite being a competitor to the RTX 5070 Ti. AMD's newer GPU scored 60fps with 4K, max settings. The 7900 XTX was only 14 frames shy of its younger rival when they were both using FSR (although now with Redstone frame generation, the 9070 will likely have a larger boost). Interestingly, with Ray Tracing and FSR switched on, the 7900 XTX still outperformed the 9070 XT by a matter of 10 frames per second. There's definitely still validity to the 7900 XTX in 2026 compared to its newer competition, but price is where things get tricky.

Price

One thing to note, beyond the raw performance numbers, is something that still wows me to this day.

A graphics card this powerful launched to the tune of $999 / £999. That was in 2022, when these components were still seeing inflated prices thanks to crypto mining and a supply chain shortage. While Nvidia was happy to squeeze the concept of an MSRP into some sort of optical illusion, AMD was still out here offering ridiculous native performance for a price that, while expensive, wasn't as obscene as Nvidia's "suggested" prices at the time.

Granted, getting a hold of an RX 7900XTX today is a bit trickier. There are a few brands that still have stock of this card, and prices for it, if you don't go refurbished or pre-owned, have gotten higher. In any case, things will only get worse from here on out.

From a quick glance at Newegg, US shoppers can get a refurbished Sapphire Pulse 7900 XTX for under MSRP, at $839 if you're willing to go refurbished. If not, I can see the Asus TUF model for $1,260 at Newegg - not bad during a RAMpocalypse where higher VRAM options that are still being manufactured are going to come under fire. A graphics card that's already manufactured, however, might not be so hard to come by at a reasonable price.

7900 XTXs from ASRock, MSI, and Gigabyte are still available at Newegg, but they tend to be above and beyond the price I'd be comfortable recommending at this point in time. I wouldn't pay more for this card than you would for an RTX 5080, which means the cut-off point is likely going to be the $1,350-$1400 mark.

For me, the easy solution if you're not seeing a price you like is to go pre-owned, open box, or refurbished. Pre-owned graphics cards are a lot more viable than pre-owned CPUs or even RAM and storage. Again, the spanner in the works is that the RX 9070 XT might be the more futureproofed option, even if the last-gen beast still wins out in a few places. The 9070 XT will have access to Redstone and future FSR updates, whereas the RX 7900 XTX likely won't get the same love.

It's certainly more difficult to recommend the RTX 5070 off the back of all this testing, especially if you're like me and would much rather have a native performer for 4K gaming as opposed to something that's reliant on DLSS to hit the same kinds of numbers. If you don't mind that so much, you can get an RTX 5070 slightly cheaper for between $600-$700 new. Again, while I would still recommend the 7900 XTX in 2026, I would maybe draw a line when you start to see a 9070 XT for cheaper.

Summing up

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is every bit the native 4K beast it was when it launched. I'm certainly nostalgic for this graphics card, but I've been pleasantly surprised to see just how it's holding up in 2026. In fact, it makes me yearn for a generation of GPUs we never got. One that didn't rely so much on AI upscaling, and a field of competitors that had native performance at its heart. While I think DLSS and FSR are great tools, I do think reliance on them is spoiling optimization in games today.

Even if buying an RX 7900 XTX in 2026 is only going to be advisable between the pricing nooks and crannies of newer graphics cards, I still think this little case study shows that this GPU deserves some love, not to fade into obscurity as maybe the last AMD flagship we'll see for a while.

We didn't get a true 7900 XTX follow-up this generation, but I hope the 7900 XTX can continue to light the way for the future. It definitely seems as though the approach of native performance per dollar with the 7900 XTX informed the direction of the brand's stand-in flagship, the RX 9070 XT. With high demand and increased sales in the midst of the fake frames controversy, that approach, that legacy from the 7900 XTX, seems like it's paid off.

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