Right, let's get straight to brass tacks: Three of our collective favorite AMD graphics cards here at PC Gamer are discounted to some pretty stellar prices right now. On Newegg, the Acer Nitro RX 7800 XT is currently listed at $460 (save $60) and the Acer Nitro RX 7900 GRE at $520 (save $20). And if you don't have $460 to spare, fear not because the Acer Nitro RX 7700 XT is also on offer, this time for $360 (save $60).
If I were building a new PC today, I'd personally opt for an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT or AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE, depending on whether I have more or less than $500 to spend on one of the best graphics cards. I'd do this without deals on either of them, so with these discounts it's a no-brainer if you're in the market for a new GPU for mainstream 1440p gaming.
These prices are some of the lowest we've seen for these particular GPUs, which just happen to be two of our favorites here in the PC Gamer hardware den. There's plenty to love about both GPUs. In fact, provided you're not too fussed about ray tracing, there's little downside for the price.
Let's start with the RX 7800 XT. When Dave reviewed it at launch late last year, he called it "probably the best upper mid-range graphics card you can buy today," and that was given its $499 MSRP. Well, slash another $40 off that price for today's deal, and we now have what might just be the best upper-mid-range-but-now-kinda-more-midrange-than-upper-mid-range graphics card on the market. This is even factoring in relevant GPUs that have launched since the 7800 XT, such as the RTX 4070 Super and RX 7900 GRE, given the 7800 XT's cheaper price tag.
What makes the 7800 XT so great is that you're getting RTX 3080-level frame rates for less money than any other current-gen GPU in the same price bracket, especially now that it's on offer for substantially less than $500. In practice, this means netting about 100 fps in most good-looking modern games set to Ultra settings at 1440p resolution with ray tracing disabled. Perhaps most importantly, given that it's 2024 and all, this thing has 16 GB of VRAM—none of that 12 GB malarkey.
If you can stretch to $520, and fork over another $60, though, the 7900 GRE offers a significant performance step-up in some titles. And for this, you're getting a GPU that battles it out not with the RTX 4070, but with the RTX 4070 Super, too, even starting to approach RTX 4070 Ti and RX 7900 XT performance in some titles.
The 7900 GRE, after all, features the same (but low-binned) Navi 31 chip as is found in the circa $700 RX 7900 XT. This graphics card, which was originally a China-only variant but is now available in the West, is probably the best value graphics card to offer consistently stellar frame rates for high refresh rate 1440p gaming. And even some 4K gaming, too. It's what I'd opt for personally.
Last but certainly not least, there's the RX 7700 XT. This card originally failed to impress because at $449 it was priced too close to the RX 7800 XT. But for $360? That changes things somewhat. For such a price that's decidedly far away from high-end, you're getting 12 GB of VRAM and enough raw rasterization power for 1440p gaming above 60 fps, not to mention high refresh rate 1080p gaming.
Whichever of the three AMD siblings you opt for, with these discounts to some already reasonable MSRPs (okay, excluding the RX 7700 XT's original MSRP), you're getting a good deal. Just remember you won't be getting DLSS or decent ray tracing capabilities. But if, like me, you're all about that raw raster power, you can't go wrong, here. Yeah, I'm pretty excited by these deals. Can you tell?
Nvidia says its surprisingly high $3.3B gaming revenue is expected to drop but 'not to worry' because next year will be fine *wink* RTX 50-series *wink*
AMD rumoured to be ditching future RDNA 5 graphics architecture in favour of 'unified' UDNA tech in a possible effort to bring AI smarts to gaming ASAP
