ASRock Radeon RX 7800 XT Phantom Gaming 16 GB Graphics Card Review – The Best $500 GPU!

After a long wait, AMD finally released its high-end Radeon RX 7000 GPU offerings which include the Radeon RX 7800 XT. The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT makes use of the latest Navi 32 GPU that is packing a chipset design and aims to secure the $500 US marketplace. With the new card, AMD is targeting the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 and replacing its own RX 6800 XT graphics cards.

For this review of the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card, ASRock sent us its flagship Phantom Gaming variant which comes with a factory overclock and retails for just $30 US more which is very decent considering the custom-cooler offers triple-fan cooling and a custom cooling design. But is the card itself worth the price against the competition, let's find out!

AMD Radeon RX 7000 RDNA 3 GPU Lineup:

Graphics Card	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT	AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE	AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT	AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT	AMD Radeon RX 7700 (NEW)	AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT	AMD Radeon RX 7600
GPU	Navi 31 XTX	Navi 31 XT	Navi 31 LE	Navi 32	Navi 32	Navi 32	Navi 32	Navi 33 XL
Process Node	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	6nm
Die Size	300mm2 (Only GCD) 522mm2 (with MCDs)	300mm2 (Only GCD) 522mm2 (with MCDs)	300mm2 (Only GCD) 522mm2 (with MCDs)	~200mm2(Only GCD) 150mm2(with MCDs)	~200mm2(Only GCD) 150mm2(with MCDs)	~200mm2(Only GCD) 150mm2(with MCDs)	204mm2	204mm2
Transistors	58 Billion	58 Billion	58 Billion	28.1 Billion	28.1 Billion	28.1 Billion	13.3 Billion	13.3 Billion
GPU WGPs	48	42	40	30	27	20	16	16
Stream Processors	6144	5376	5120	3840	3456	2560	2048	2048
TMUs/ROPs	384 / 192	384 / 192	320 / 160	240 / 96	216 / 96	160/64	128 / 32	128 / 32
Game Clock	2.3 GHz	2.0 GHz	1.9 GHz	2.2 GHz	2.1 GHz	2.0 GHz?	2.47	2.2 GHz
Boost Clock	2.5 GHz	2.4 GHz	2.2 GHz	2.5 GHz	2.4 GHz	2.45 GHz?	2.76	2.6 GHz
FP32 TFLOPs	61 TFLOPs	52 TFLOPs	46 TFLOPs	37 TFLOPs	35 TFLOPs	25 TFLOPS	23 TFLOPs	22 TFLOPs
Memory Size	24 GB GDDR6	20 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6
Infinity Cache	96 MB	80 MB	64 MB	64 MB	48 MB	40 MB	32 MB	32 MB
Memory Bus	384-bit	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Memory Clock	20 Gbps	20 Gbps	18 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	18 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	18 Gbps	18 Gbps
Bandwidth	960 GB/s	800 GB/s	576 GB/s	624 GB/s	432 GB/s	624 GB/s	288 GB/s	288 GB/s
Effective Bandwidth	3.5 TB/s	3.5 TB/s	2.2 TB/s	2.7 TB/s	2.0 TB/s	1.9 TB/s	476.9 GB/s	476.9 GB/s
TBP	355W	315W	260W	263W	245W	263W	190W	165W
PCIe Interface	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x8	PCIe 4.0 x8
Price	$999 US	$899 US	$549 US	$499 US	$419 US	TBD	$329 US	$269 US
Launch	Dec, 2022	Dec, 2022	July, 2023	September, 2023	September, 2023	September, 2025	January, 2024	May, 2023

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB Graphics Card

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is one of the two RDNA 3 GPUs launched earlier this month that comes with the Navi 32 GPU. This graphics card is aimed at Enthusiast-Class 1440P gaming and features all the goodies that you'd expect from the Radeon software suite.

In terms of specifications, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB graphics card features 60 Compute Units or 3840 stream processors. The graphics card reaches up to 2430 Hz boost clocks which can provide up to 37 TFLOPs of FP32 Compute horsepower. There are also 60 RT Accelerator cores, 120 AI accelerator units, and 96 ROPs for this specific Navi 32 SKU. The graphics chip features a TBP of 263W.

• RX 7800 XT - Navi 32 XT / 3840 Cores / 16 GB GDDR6 / 263W / $499
• RX 6800 XT - Navi 21 XT / 4608 Cores / 16 GB GDDR6 / 300W / $649

Memory specifications include 16 GB GDDR6 memory which operates at pin speeds of up to 19.5 Gbps across a 256-bit wide bus interface. This provides the card with 624 GB/s but there's also 64 MB of Infinity Cache which provides increased effective bandwidth. The graphics card features a brand-new dual-slot and dual-fan reference cooling solution along with custom variants.

In terms of official performance figures, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB graphics card is said to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB solution. It offers up to 23% better performance & 3.5% average performance bump over its competition. The card excels in standard rasterization performance but ends up slower when ray tracing is involved. The testing was done by AMD itself & the RT titles that were used are mostly favorable to RDNA 3 hardware with the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 & Hogwarts Legacy not shown with RT enabled.

Once again, AMD aims the Radeon RX 7800 XT as a graphics card that offers 60+ FPS on average across a range of AAA titles when running at 1440P (natively) and maxed settings. The card offers more VRAM and should tackle the RTX 4070 competitively but in terms of efficiency and features, NVIDIA might be a big step ahead, especially when it offers similar performance at -24% lower GPU power while supporting next-gen features such as DLSS 3.5.

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is available starting at $499 US and comes with a bundled copy of Starfield Premium Edition which is worth $100 US.

The ASRock Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "Phantom Gaming" brand logo along with the "ASRock" logo in the top left corner and the "OC Edition" badge in the lower left corner.

The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. ASRock lists down some key features of the card such as its Phantom Gaming 3X cooling system, the stylish metal backplate, Polychrome SYNC RGB, LED On/Off switch, 0DB Silent Cooling and a Super Alloy PCB design.

The packaging also focuses on the various features offered by the AMD RDNA 3 architecture such as Instant Replay, Noise Suppression, Radiance Display Engine, Smart Technology, FidelityFX, Radeon Super Resolution and the AMD Software Adrenalin Edition driver suite.

The sides of the box once again greet us with the large Radeon branding. There's also the mention of 16 GB GDDR6 (RX 7800 XT) memory available on the card. Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging.

The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card. After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself.

The ASRock Radeon RX 7800 XT Phantom Gaming OC is a massive graphics card and features very high-end cooling which you can notice as soon as you lay your eyes on this beast. The card is a 2.5-slot form factor design and measures 328x140x53mm. It also uses a very nice black & purple color scheme which we haven't seen used a lot on custom designs. In fact, the shroud is very similar to ASRock's 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming which uses a red and black color scheme.

The cooling shroud extends all the way to the back of the PCB. The back of the card features a metal backplate which also employs the same black and purple color scheme.

In terms of design, we are looking at an updated version of the Phantom Gaming cooler which comes with a new 3D Cooling system and a bigger heatsink surface area to cool down the RDNA GPUs.

The main changes include the shroud and heatsink design that features a neater shroud design on the front which features the claw-shaped pattern on the front and a hint of brushed/matte black on the surface.

Coming to the fans, the card actually features the latest fan designs based on the Striped-Ring technology. The middle fan operates in reverse spin to lower turbulence & enhance air output through the heatsink. Each fan is equipped with 13 fan blades featuring the stripe structure on inner layers, a ring surface around the sides, and a polishing surface on the flip side.

ASRock uses its own 0dB Silent Cooling technology across all three fans which provides optimal cooling based on workloads and temperatures. The fans won't spin if the temperature is below a certain threshold (60C) and will only operate as the temps go up in a gradual stance.

I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The matte-black and purple finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic. There are heat pads used under the backplate for further cooling and ASRock also says that the backplate prevents the card from bending.

Another major feature of the design is the reinforced metal frame on the sides which prevents the card from bending.

On the sides of the card, you can see a large Phantom Gaming acrylic plate which lits up with Polychrome RGB and looks great. It definitely is one of the premium-looking qualities of this graphics card.

The insides of the card make use of a very large heatsink that comes in two aluminum fin blocks with several heat pipes. The heatsink uses an air-deflecting fin design that guides the air to go through the heatsink quickly without any blockades. There are also V-shaped air vents on the back that throw hot air out of the heatsink.

The graphics card is composed of a total of five copper heat pipes that lay directly over the nickel-plated copper base. The base plate also makes contact with the 8 memory modules featured on the card.

The heatsink heavily uses a high-density metal welding process and tightly packs each aluminum fin together for maximum heat dissipation area.

I/O on the card a single HDMI 2.1 and 3 DisplayPort 2.1 connectors. The back also features a large exhaust vent.

Power is provided through a dual 8-pin connector with ASRock recommending an 800W PSU to boot this card.

Removing the cooler, we get to see the 11-phase PCB design that is controlled by the Monolithic Power Systems MP2857 IC and MP87997 DrMOS MOSFETS rated at 70A. There are also four more phases for the VRAM and the SOC.

ASRock Radeon RX 7800 XT Phantom Gaming RGB Gallery:

We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used by AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 11. All tested games were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

The Wccftech Test Bench

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K @ 5.0 GHz
Motherboard	MSI MEG Z790 ACE
Video Cards	ASRock Intel Arc B570 Challenger OC Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 OC 2X (GDDR6) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER FE MSI RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER ASRock Radeon RX 7800 XT Phantom Gaming ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti FE MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio GALAX GeForce RTX 4060 Ti EX Gamer PNY GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Dual MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming X MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming Z Trio MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio MSI Radeon RX 6650 XT Gaming X
Memory	G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 X 16GB) CL38 7200 Mbps
Storage	Teamgroup T-Force A440 Pro 2 TB Gen 4
Power Supply	MSI MEG Ai1300P 1300W PSU
OS	Windows 11 64-bit
Drivers	AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.2.1 NVIDIA GeForce 560.81 WHQL Intel Driver 6256

• All games were tested at 3840x2160 (4K) resolution.
• Image Quality and graphics configurations are provided with each game description.
• The "reference" cards are the stock configs except where mentioned otherwise.

Speed Way

Developed with input from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and other leading technology companies, Speed Way is an ideal benchmark for comparing the DirectX 12 Ultimate performance of the latest graphics cards. 3DMark Speed Way’s engine is assembled to demonstrate what the latest DirectX API brings to ray-traced gaming, using DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and real-time raytraced reflections, coupled with new performance optimizations like Mesh Shaders.

Firestrike

Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance. In this test, we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike which runs at 1440p and 4K and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.

Time Spy

Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.

Port Royal

Port Royal is another great tool in the 3DMark suite, but this one is 100% targeting Ray Tracing performance. It loads up ray-traced shadows, reflections, and global illumination to really tax the performance of the graphics cards that either have hardware-based or software-based ray-tracing support.

 

Crysis Remastered (DXVK RT)

Crysis is back with a vengeance to reclaim its title of the graphics crown. The remastered version of the game uses DX11 API but has Vulkan extensions on top which enable Vulkan Ray tracing. That's also something that the original game didn't offer. DXVK, along with improved textures and visual effects, leads to higher performance demand making us question once again "Can It Run Crysis?"

Doom Eternal

DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan-powered idTech 7.  We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most visually stunning open-world games I've played to date that is backed up by a rich story set around the protagonist, Arthur Morgan. The game is based on the RAGE engine which features an insane amount of graphics fidelity but also requires a lot of power to run maxed out. For the purpose of this test, we set the graphics settings to Ultra with AA turned disabled.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory, and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set during an alternate future where Nazis won the World War, the game shows that it can be fun and can be brutal to the player and to the enemy too. Powering the new title is, once again, id Tech 6 which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained its glorious FPS roots and is slaying with every new title.

Atomic Heart

Atomic Heart is set in an alternate universe where the Soviet Union achieved incredible technological breakthroughs thanks to a scientist named Dr. Sechenov, who invented a liquid programmable module called Polymer that links robots in a so-called Kollektiv network.

Battlefield V

Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best-looking Battlefields to date.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customizable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat. The game uses CD Projekt Red's in-house Red Engine which is one of the most visually breathtaking and also one of the most graphics-intensive engines designed to date.

Dead Space (Remake)

Remaking Dead Space was a bold choice but I would say that the team at EA Motive nailed every bit and piece of this horror classic. The remake makes the USG Ishimura twice as scarily beautiful. The gore, the endless corridors of terror, the void of space, all of it looks incredible while the game remains true to its core to the original Dead Space formula. Modern cards can run the game really well but it can also be really demanding if you crank the settings all the way to the max with ray tracing enabled.

Death Stranding

Sam Porter Bridges has delivered one of PS4's most anticipated games to the PC community and opened a whole new world of possibilities. This was the first game to feature the Decima Engine on PC and unarguably did it the best. Death Stranding may not feature ray tracing effects, but it does showcase that DLSS can be used effectively even when RT isn't around. We tested this one just like we did in our launch coverage with DLSS enabled.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12-powered entry is beautifully crafted, amazingly well executed, and a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Halo Infinite (DX12 Highest)

Next up, we have the latest entry in the Halo franchise, Halo: Infinite, which uses the brand new Slipspace engine (although there are rumors it will be ditched in the future for Unreal Engine) based on the DX12 API. The game rocks some incredible environments for Master Chief to visit on the Halo ring.

Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy, as the name suggests, is set in the world of Hogwarts and retains its landscape true to the books and the movies. The game looks visually stunning although it can be a total hog when running at the highest settings with all visual candy enabled.

Hitman III (DX12 Highest Settings)

Hitman III is the highly acclaimed sequel to the 2016 Hitman & 2018 Hitman II, which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47. The game runs on the IO Interactive Glacier 2 engine which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of DirectX 12 API.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider

The sequel to Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually enhanced with an updated Foundation Engine that delivers realistic facial animations and the most gorgeous environments ever seen in a Tomb Raider Game. The game is a technical marvel and really shows the power of its graphics engine in the latest title.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus continues Artyom's journey through Russia's nuclear wasteland and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.

Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village is the latest in the horror franchise that was wonderfully rekindled with RE7 and onto the RE2 Remake. But now the RE Engine is back and better than ever with Ray Traced Reflections and Lighting that makes the world just come to life, unironically. The game was tested in the center of the village itself with all graphical settings maxed out and with raytracing enabled.

Resident Evil IV Remake

The remake of the beloved and highly acclaimed Resident Evi IV is here, boasting the latest RE engine which adds stunning visuals and even better ray tracing effects, the game looks just as incredible as it plays.

Stray (That Cat Game)

Stray is a 2022 adventure game developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. The story follows a stray cat who falls into a walled city populated by robots, machines, and mutant bacteria, and sets out to return to the surface with the help of a drone companion, B-12. The game uses Unreal Engine 4, but DX12 Ray tracing can be enabled by adding the "-dx12" extension to the game.

No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. All RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards were tested with their default 'Performance' BIOS and the results are below:

I compiled the power consumption results by testing each card under idle and full stress when the card was running games. Each graphics card manufacturer sets a default TDP for the card which can vary from vendor to vendor depending on the extra clocks or board features they plugin on their custom cards. The default TDP for the Radeon RX 7800 XT is rated at 263W while the Phantom Gaming runs around 290W.

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card launches at a price point of $499 US which has already prompted NVIDIA and its partners to reconsider the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB and RTX 4070 prices. Both cards are now available for $50 US cheaper but that still isn't enough against the mighty graphics performance that the Navi 32 GPU has on display. It may not be the fastest card around but for its price, it's definitely the best-priced card of this gen from both camps. So let's start with the things I liked about this card.

Total Domination Over RTX 4070 In Rasterized Games

In all of the games that I tested, the Radeon RX 7800 XT was faster than the RTX 4070 with Crysis Remastered being the only exception. Even in a few ray tracing titles, the card was on par with an RTX 4070 or the 4060 Ti but that mostly depends on the game title and what sort of optimizations it has for a particular GPU architecture due to sponsored deals. We have seen sponsorships getting in the path of providing the competitor solutions with lesser optimizations than the other camp and that is just the sad state of PC gaming at the moment.

Regardless, the RX 7800 XT offers a 6% performance boost over the RTX 4070 on average at a $50 US lower price point so we are off to a great start.

ASRock Cooler's Is Worth The Premium!

ASRock's Phantom Gaming graphics card looks great but it also offers some great cooling and OC capabilities. We saw an average performance increase of 13% by overclocking the card with some voltage/power limit tweaks. Yes, you are paying $30 US more but for a triple-fan cooling solution & a custom PCB that doesn't hit temperatures above 65C on the GPU, I think it's well worth it.

FSR 3 & HYPR-RX Anti-Lag+ Is A Good Reason To Get RDNA 3

AMD's answer to NVIDIA's DLSS 3 and Reflex are coming in the form of FSR 3 and HYPR-RX (Anti-Lag+) technologies. The RDNA 3 architecture on the RX 7800 XT is support-ready for both and we will be getting a range of games soon that benefit from these features.

Now since AMD is a bit late to the party, NVIDIA's DLSS 3 just kills it when it comes to game adoption but with HYPR-RX, AMD is devising a way to bring fluid motion frame technology across all DX11 and DX12 games which is said to be available in early 2024. Furthermore, FSR 3 being open-source will allow game devs to quickly integrate the new technology within games that already use FSR 2. Even if you don't own a brand new RDNA 3 GPU like the 7800 XT, you can take advantage of the said features across older AMD GPUs and even GPUs from other vendors such as NVIDIA and AMD. We will have our own test and image comparison of FSR 3 versus DLSS 3 once it comes out.

16 GB That's Not Just For Showoff

The RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB from NVIDIA can be seen as a card that doesn't make any sense against the standard RTX 4060 Ti since it is eventually bottlenecked by its small 128-bit bus which even the larger L2 cache couldn't make up for. On the other side, it's great to see AMD offer the same 16 GB VRAM and 256-bit bus on the RX 7800 XT as its predecessor, the 6800 XT. The 7800 XT has faster GDDR6 dies operating at 19.5 Gbps and the wider bus interface means you will be able to be well ahead of the 4060 Ti and even the 4070 with their smaller bus interface.

The 16 GB memory size is also 4 GB extra VRAM over the 4070 which once again costs $50 US more. The card really does well in the memory department and the pricing has always been a strong side for AMD.

RDNA 3 Efficiency Has Been Overhyped

Now coming to power consumption, the RDNA 3 GPUs have not been the massively efficient architecture that AMD claimed they were going to be but they are a step forward, and the RX 7800 XT does manage to sip around 40-60W lower power than its predecessor while offering around 10 percent better performance. Meanwhile, the RTX 40 series cards are a league ahead in efficiency as the RTX 4070 only consumed 200W throughout our testing and even lower gaming benchmarks.

So NVIDIA wins in the overall efficiency testing but undervolting the card to 200W does offer very similar GPU performance which shows how power-dependent the whole architecture is.

A Great $500 US Option Which We Can Fully Recommend!

Compared to its predecessors, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT sits well above the 6800 XT and manages to outperform the 6950 XT in a few games. The RTX 4070 is no match for the standard rasterized benchmarks and with upcoming technologies such as FSR 3 and HYPR-RX, the Radeon RX 7800 XT is our contender for the best gaming graphics card of this generation. Don't forget to grab that free copy of Starfield Premium Edition worth $100 US as a bonus 😉

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