Do AMD’s new Ryzen chips beat Intel and Nvidia’s? Sam Lewis finds out

IT’S NO SECRET that Nvidia’s lineup of graphic cards dominates the current GPU market. With excellent performance year in and year out, these are the go-to components when you want to ramp up your gaming experience.

However, AMD’s Radeon RX cards have been hot on the heels of the GeForce RTX cards from Nvidia for some time now. That has been especially true recently, with the extortionately steep prices of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 GPUs making the cheaper Radeon RX 7900XT and 7900XTX offerings look even more appealing. These cards also offer additional features, such as DisplayPort 2.1 support, that the RTX 40 series cards don’t currently have.

So in this month’s build, we are putting this system up against the RTX 4080 machine we built in our February 2023 issue. This machine hosts AMD’s current rival, the Radeon RX 7900XT. Specifically, we have the Asus TUF Gaming 20GB model to put through its paces. Competitively priced, it should make for an interesting head-to-head contest between team Nvidia and team AMD.

Additionally, we have an array of Asus components, including an AIO liquid cooler, a mighty TUF motherboard, and a collaboration between TeamGroup’s T-Force sub-brand and Asus’s TUF Gaming Alliance for our RAM. For our SSD, we have Solidigm’s P44 Pro PCIe 4.0 drive—and all of this will be housed within a brand new NZXT H9 Flow chassis. Although this case is a mid-tower form factor, there’s plenty of room inside and it should make for a slick machine with lots of power and even a splash of RGB coming from the AIO fans, RAM, and GPU to add to the visual appeal.

With this system, we will hopefully achieve similar, if not better results than the RTX 4080 machine as we also have a crazy fast AMD CPU to use, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X. That’s rather than the Ryzen 7 7700X we used in that previous build, but still at a similar price point. Not only will this hopefully outperform the latter, but the overall design should also be better— not least because we are big fans of the glass corner look of this NZXT H9 Flow.

So, with that out of the way, it’s game on!

WHAT’S IN THE BOX

CPU $550, www.amd.com

AMD RYZEN 9 7900X

The other 7000 Series AMD chip we tested in a build, the Ryzen 7 7000, impressed us both with its performance and efficiency, especially at its price point. This time around, though, we are taking things up a notch to the Ryzen 9 lineup.

The Ryzen 9 7900X has a total of 12 Zen 4 cores, 24 threads, and a max boost clock of up to 5.6GHz. That should offer some shockingly fast performance and make using this machine effortless. As if that’s not enough for you, with AMD’s EXPO technology at hand, overclocking this CPU is certainly an easy option too, for even more out-of-the-box speed.

GPU $1,100, www.asus.com

ASUS RADEON RX 7900XT TUF GAMING OC 20GB

We can finally add one of AMD’s latest GPUs into one of our builds. Sure, it’s not the top-end 7900XTX card, but this 7900XT from Asus is not to be sniffed at. Built on AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture, it can deliver stable 4K gaming with efficiency in mind. This TUF Gaming OC card boasts 20GB of GDDR6 memory, a clock speed of up to 2,535MHz in OC mode, a digital max resolution of up to 7680x4320, three DisplayPort 2.1 ports, and an HDMI 2.1 port. For less than the price of an RTX 4080, it’s a strong competitor and doesn’t require such a large PSU, although, as you’ll soon find out, we have brought one along anyway.

Motherboard $330, www.asus.com

ASUS TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WI-FI

With all these powerful components, we had to choose a dependable board with plenty of compatibility and connectivity. Not only have we achieved both aims with this motherboard, but we’ve also gone for the most powerful AM5 chipset to accommodate the Ryzen 9 7900X, the X670E. This supports AMD EXPO, dual-channel DDR5 memory, and PCIe 5.0. This is all to help get the most out of our zippy processor and GPU. The board also features four M.2 Slots, BIOS flashback functionality, large heatsinks for great cooling, and plenty of overclocking support, such as Dynamic OC Switcher and AI overclocking in the BIOS. It’s safe to say this mobo has been future-proofed.

RAM $130, www.teamgroupinc.com

32GB (2X 16GB) TEAM GROUP T-FORCE DELTA TUF GAMING ALLIANCE RGB DDR5-4800MHZ

Sticking with the TUF Gaming gear, we have a collaboration between Asus and TeamGroup for our DDR5 memory— specifically, 32GBs of T-Force Delta RGB RAM running at speeds of up to 5,200MHz. This is the first DDR5 RGB OC gaming memory certified by TUF Gaming Alliance and it also features 120° ultra-wide lighting to ensure an even glow from whatever angle. As it’s a collaboration with Asus, it works seamlessly with Aura Sync too. It has an impressive cooling system with professional thermal conductive silicone and reinforced PMIC cooling for stable performance.