In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 10 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 48 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the RX 7700 XT Pulse do? Well, first we should understand that AMD is targeting this card for 1440p, just like the 7800 XT. So my expectations for 4K performance were low but it does have 10 out of the 16 results sitting up over 60 FPS which isn’t bad at all. One of those is also up over 120 FPS, then there were 6 results in the 30-60 FPS range which is still playable but not ideal. At 1440p all of the results for the RX 7700 XT Pulse were over 60 FPS but at 11 a majority were over 120 FPS and one (CS:GO) was over 240 FPS as well. Then at 1080p, everything was once again up over 60 FPS, no surprise there but only one result was in the 60-119 FPS range with the rest up over 120 FPS, and 3 of those were even up over 240 FPS.

Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. But to help digest everything I also have averaged out all of the results except for the CS:GO results at all three resolutions for the RX 7700 XT Pulse and a list of cards in that same range. The 1080p results aren’t really useful at all with a lot of those running into CPU-limited issues. But at 1440p and 4K the picture is really clear. The RX 7700 XT Pulse sits in between the RTX 4070 and the RTX 3070 Ti when it comes to gaming performance though at 4K it does drop down closer to the 3070 Ti. With the RTX 4060 Ti, I don’t have a 16GB card for direct comparison which with Nvidia’s price drop has that 16GB card priced to compete with the RX 7700 XT, but with the 8GB version at least it isn’t even close in performance. The main graphs mostly just show that same picture but there are a few games like Ghost Recon where the RX 7700 XT Pulse performs above its weight class, outperforming the RTX 4070.

	1080p	1440p	4K
XFX MERC 319 RX 6800 XT	197.1	162.3	92.4
XFX Merc 319 7800 XT Black	194.0	161.0	93.3
Radeon RX 7800 XT	190.7	156.3	89.3
Nvidia RTX 4070 FE	190.6	147.6	83.5
Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pulse	178.1	137.5	74.7
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti FE	165.8	125.7	72.9
Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6750 XT	165.2	119.4	64.5
Nvidia RTX 3070 FE	160.9	118.8	67.2
Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti 8GB FE	160.1	115.3	62.0
Zotac RTX 4060 Twin Edge OC	135.7	94.5	50.1