We all like free games, right? Especially ones that normally have big price tags that have been squished right down to zero. Well, AMD has done precisely that by offering up to two complimentary games, when you buy a Radeon RX 7800 XT or Radeon RX 7700 XT from one of the quality retailers.
Okay, so spending several hundred dollars, pounds, or dollarydoos on a new graphics card is kind of stretching the realms of what 'free' actually means, but the choice of games on offer is well worth it. If you buy one of the aforementioned graphics cards from a qualifying retailer (check the list here), you can choose two from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Starfield, Lies of P, and Company of Heroes 3.
That first one is a rather typical Ubisoft open-world affair but it's a graphics tour de force and a perfect way to show off your new GPU's capabilities. Starfield can look very pretty at times, too, but only if you like staring at the stark cold of space. Lies of P is pretty much Bloodborne-on-PC but that's no bad thing if you enjoy Souls-like games.
I like WWII-based RTS games, so Company of Heroes 3 would be my first choice, though it's not the best game in that classic series. But enough about the games, the really important question to ask is which graphics card is worth buying.
Well, since the Radeon RX 7800 XT is by far the best $500 graphics card you can buy right now, it would seem to be the obvious choice. With 60 Compute Units, 16GB of VRAM, and 624 GB/s of memory bandwidth, it's a bit of a devil at 1440p gaming—just check out some of the benchmark figures for it below.
On average, across those tests, the RX 7800 XT is 6% faster than its predecessor, the RX 6800 XT, and a healthy 16% faster than the RX 7700 XT. In some games, the gaps are much bigger, especially when the dual ALU shaders in RDNA 3 get to shine, like in Metro Exodus.
However, at the moment, the RX 7800 XT is around $100 more expensive than the RX 7700 XT. You're shelling out 26% more money for only 16% more performance, on average, which dims the appeal of the RX 7800 XT somewhat.
Most PC gamers buying a new graphics card will expect it to last for many years and the larger amount of VRAM on the RX 7800 XT does mean that it should cope better than the RX 7700 XT in graphically-demanding games of the future.
You also have to consider what resolution you normally game at. If it's 1080p, then the RX 7700 XT is perfectly adequate, unless you're aiming to max out your frame rates for competitive shooters. But once you increase the pixel load, the RX 7800 XT takes the additional workload in its stride, and if you use AMD's FSR 3 upscaler and frame generation system, it'll even manage a spot of 4K gaming too.
AMD's Game Bundle deal will run until July 20 and you have until August 17 to redeem the coupon code. Alas, if you live in Japan, you can only claim one of those games for...umm...reasons, but everyone else can grab two of them. Just be sure to buy that RX 7800 XT or RX 7700 XT from one of the qualifying retailers, though.
