Just two weeks ago, we've posted nine reviews of AMD's new Radeon RX 7700 XT/7800 XT lineup, followed shortly by the Sapphire Pure. Today we have our 11th review, the ASRock Radeon RX 7800 XT Steel Legend. This SKU sits in-between the company's baseline Challenger and the more-premium Phantom Gaming models. The Steel Legend features a factory overclock, triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution, RGB lighting and a stylish white color theme. Under the hood, RX 7800 XT (and RX 7700 XT) cards are based on the same Navi 32 graphics processor, which, just like Navi 31 uses the chiplet design approach that made Ryzen processors so successful. Instead of a single large monolithic die, the processor is made up from several smaller pieces, which are easier to build, with a much lower defect rate. The chiplet strategy on Navi 32 is identical to Navi 31. A central GCD die, which contains all the shaders engines, is surrounded by several MCD dies, which provide the memory interface and L3 cache. On the RX 7800 XT there's four MCDs, to build a 256-bit memory interface, whereas RX 7700 XT uses only three MCDs, resulting in a 192-bit interface. The fourth die is not "missing," but AMD has placed a non-functional dummy die here instead, to provide structural stability.

In terms of clock speeds you get a medium-sized OC to 2213 MHz game clock, or +89 MHz / +4.2%, above the AMD default of 2124 MHz. This roughly matches other cards like the PowerColor Hellhound and the ASUS TUF. Compared to the AMD reference design the performance gain is around 2%, not a lot, but that's how factory OCs work these days. While other cards might gain 3 or 4%, subjectively they are all the same with differences barely noticeable in the FPS counter.

Compared to other cards, the ASRock RX 7800 XT is able to beat NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 by 6%, and on top of that it is $30 cheaper at the same time. AMD's new card is also able to outperform GeForce RTX 3080, one of the most popular cards in the green team's previous generation. The gen-over-gen performance gain (without factory OC) compared to RX 6800 XT is pretty slim though with just 3%. If you're still on the older RX 5700 XT, AMD's flagship from a few years ago, the RX 7800 XT offers double the performance, pretty impressive. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is over 25% slower than the RX 7800 XT. With these performance numbers, the RX 7800 XT is a great card for 1440p gaming, it will easily reach over 60 FPS with maximized settings in all but the most demanding games. If you're willing to dial down details or use an upscaling technology, then 4K with decent framerates is a possibility, too.

As expected, ray tracing performance of RX 7800 XT is lower than its NVIDIA counterparts. With RT enabled, the RTX 4070 is able to beat the RX 7800 XT by around 15% on average, which is not nothing, but not "much slower" or "cannot do ray tracing." The factory overclock definitely helps gain a frame or two, but just like in rasterization it doesn't have that much of an impact. Depending on the game and how demanding its RT effects are, there's some quite big differences though. No doubt, if you're betting on ray tracing, then NVIDIA is the better choice. Responding to the AMD RX 7800 XT launch, they lowered the price of RTX 4070 from $600 to $550, which makes it a tempting offer, especially if RT performance is your main focus.

NVIDIA's biggest selling point for the GeForce 40 Series is support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation. At Gamescom AMD has confirmed that their own FSR 3 Frame Generation implementation is coming, too, finally, but we'll have to wait just a little bit longer. In DLSS 3, the Frame Generation algorithm takes two frames, measures how things have moved in those two frames and calculates an intermediate frame in which these things moved only half the distance. While this approach is definitely not problem-free, especially when pixel-peeping at stills or slowed down video, in real-time it's nearly impossible to notice any difference. As you run at higher FPS and resolution it becomes even more difficult, because the deltas between each frame are getting smaller and smaller. Being able to double your FPS is a huge capability, because it means you can enable ray tracing for free, or game at higher resolutions. Of course you are limited to games with DLSS 3 support, of which there are currently around 40, mostly AAA titles, but not every title will support it. AMD has announced 12 games for FSR 3 and I'm sure more are in the pipe. I'm still surprised that they are not releasing it yet, because it is an important selling point that greatly affects the RX 7800 XT value proposition. Outside of AMD nobody has seen FSR 3 in action, so we don't know how well it works, what it looks like, what's required in terms of game support etc. Still, it's good to see that Team Radeon is definitely hard at work to make up lost ground against NVIDIA. On the other hand, if you buy a GeForce 40 card today, you'll be able to use Frame Generation immediately and it works very well. NVIDIA recently announced DLSS 3.5, which promises to improve the look of denoising during RT rendering, no independent testing available yet either, we'll keep you updated.

NVIDIA hasn't exactly been generous with VRAM sizes on GeForce 40, AMD does a better job here. The RX 7800 XT comes with 16 GB VRAM and the RX 7700 XT has 12 GB. No doubt, these are clearly higher numbers than 12 GB on RTX 4070 and 8 GB on RTX 4060 Ti, but our testing for RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB has shown that VRAM size really doesn't make that much of a difference, especially not at 1440p. No doubt, you can always find edge cases where more VRAM will run better than less VRAM, but for the vast majority of your gaming experience it does not matter. To quote Franz Kafka "Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have," and if that's the case at similar or better pricing, like with the new Radeons, then it's clearly a selling point for AMD, even though I would not consider it an important one.

ASRock's RX 7800 XT Steel Legend includes some serious bling—all three fans have integrated RGB lighting. Cooling performance is a bit weaker compared to other custom designs, but it's still considerably more powerful than the thermal solution on the AMD RX 7800 XT reference. Temperatures are good with just 61°C. Noise levels are good too, reaching a quiet 30 dBA. Some competing models from other partners offer a much lower acoustic experience, but many of those also cost a bit more. Looking at the fan profile it seems ASRock wanted to match the Phantom temperatures, and allowed a bit higher noise levels. Unlike the Phantom, the Steel Legend runs at slightly lower clocks and power limit, which makes the cooler's job easier, because there is less heat to deal with. Just like all other recent graphics card releases, the ASRock RX 7800 XT will stop its fans in idle, desktop work, internet browsing and light gaming. I really like the dedicated RGB switch, because that allows you to quickly disable the RGB, without any software installation, and on any OS.

Power consumption of the RX 7800 XT is improved over the 6800 XT, by roughly 50 W. AMD's new card consumes around 250 W at full load, which is very manageable for any decent PSU today. ASRock's factory overclocked Steel Legend draws around 30 W on top of that, or a bit less than 15%, which is significant but not enough to affect anything. NVIDIA's RTX 4070 does run at lower power levels of just 200 W, but it also has only 12 GB VRAM, which consumes less power. While these power differences are real and can't be dismissed. I don't think they are serious enough to affect your buying decision, given current price points. If pricing was much closer it could become a deciding factor though. While usually it's worth thinking about power cost and cooling requirements, our cooler testing for RX 7800 XT shows that the coolers are actually better than on the RTX 4070, so the heat/noise argument doesn't apply in this case. It's actually quite easy to bring RX 7800 XT to the same efficiency levels as RTX 4070. Just take ten seconds and undervolt it a little bit, to 1.05 V, down from the 1.15 V default. You'll save 10 W and gain a few percent in additional performance, because AMD's clocking algorithm has more power headroom. No idea why AMD's default settings run at such a high voltage.

What could turn out to be a great selling point for the new Radeons is their overclocking potential. We've achieved a +12% real-life performance improvement, which is something that hasn't happened in a long time. While overclocking is fairly complicated (a step-by-step guide is on the OC page), the gains are pretty spectacular and you'll be able to get quite close to RTX 4070 Ti performance levels, especially on the custom designs.

AMD has confirmed a $500 price point for the RX 7800 XT, which feels a little bit uninspired, but looking at current market offerings, the price is actually pretty nice. ASRock wants $520 for the Phantom, which is lower than some other cards, but it still seems like a little bit too much, even though they are giving you a pretty big cooling improvement over the AMD reference card. PowerColor's Hellhound is only $500—no price increase—and it's faster, quieter and with lighting, too. The lighting on Hellhound is static tough, can just turn it on/off, while ASRock's Steel Legend gives you fully adjustable RGB lighting. If your main focus is to create a white build, then the Steel Legend is an excellent choice that's not too expensive compared to other options. NVIDIA dropped the GeForce RTX 4070's price to $550, which is 10% higher than the AMD MSRP, and it's 2% slower in raster, 16% faster in ray tracing, has 4 GB less VRAM and consumes 50 W less power. Its biggest selling point is support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation. I wouldn't have spent $100 for that, but at the new $550 price it's interesting. The $450 GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB has become even less sellable than before. It's 30% slower in raster, 10% slower in RT, and really brings nothing to the table other than DLSS 3—at a cost savings of just 10% over the RX 7800 XT. While RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB has only half the memory size of the 16 GB version, it costs only $390, which could be tempting if you want to save some money, at the cost of some performance. Radeon RX 6800 XT costs $510 currently and has nothing to offer over the RX 7800 XT, maybe if it was much closer to $450. AMD FSR, including FSR 3, works on all cards, including RX 6000 Series. GeForce RTX 3080 can be found for around $470, slightly lower raster performance, slightly higher RT perf, less VRAM, no DLSS 3, definitely not an optimal choice. The is true for RX 6900 XT, too, which goes for $580 and has roughly the same perf levels as RX 7800 XT. It'll be interesting to see whether NVIDIA will respond to the RX 7800 XT release with price cuts. What also works in favor of the RX 7800 XT is that AMD is bundling Starfield for free with their cards, which definitely helps with pricing.