Prime Day is the perfect time to ditch Nvidia for AMD

By Jacob Roach Published October 8, 2024

There’s no doubt that Nvidia makes some of the best graphics cards you can buy, but if you’re shopping Prime Day deals, you’ll want to take a careful look at Team Red. There’s barely an Nvidia GPU in sight that’s on sale, and even among those that are discounted, the prices aren’t very good. On the other hand, AMD has cards marked down from already reduced prices, making Prime Day the perfect time to score a deal on a GPU.

By far, the best deal I’ve found is the XFX Speedster QICK319 RX 7800 XT. You can read more about the card in my RX 7800 XT review, but in short, it trades blows and sometimes even beats Nvidia’s $600 RTX 4070 Super. The price right now is insane, too. This model normally sells for $520, but it’s 18% off for Prime Day, bringing the price down to $427.

I hear you — who cares about an 18% discount? That’s actually a pretty significant cut in this case. The RX 7800 XT almost immediately shot up to $600 after it was released because of how competitive it was with Nvidia’s offerings at the same price. The card has hovered around that price for months, but it’s been slowly trickling down to a lower price. Now, you’re not only getting a lower list price, but also nearly 20% off on top of it.

As you can see from my benchmarks above, the card massively outpaces the RTX 4070 at 1440p. Even more impressive, it manages to beat the RTX 4060 Ti — Nvidia’s offering at $400 — by 44%. I’ll spend an extra $27 for a 44% performance improvement any day of the week. You’re getting nearly 120 frames per second (fps) on average at 1440p, meaning the RX 7800 XT can fully saturate a high refresh rate monitor without the assistance of upscaling or frame generation.

Now, going with the RX 7800 XT has a caveat — ray tracing.  AMD falls behind Nvidia when it comes to ray tracing, and the RX 7800 XT is no exception. As you can see from my results above, the RTX 4070 captures first place. However, the RX 7800 XT still manages to beat the $400 RTX 4060 Ti by a significant margin. And with this Prime Day deal, you’re getting that level of performance for basically the same price.

If the RX 7800 XT isn’t enough power for you, XFX also has its Speedster MERC310 RX 7900 XT on sale for 21% off, bringing the price down to $631. That’s the lowest price this card has ever sold for. It’s even more impressive considering how expensive this GPU used to be. As you can read in my RX 7900 XT review, the card originally launched for $900. It, too, has seen price drops over the past few months, culminating in the Prime Day deal you can find now. Compared to list price, you’re saving nearly $300.

It’s a fantastic price for the performance the RX 7900 XT offers. Nvidia has the MSI Ventus 3X RTX 4070 Ti Super on sale for $750 during Prime Day, and as you can see from the results above, the RX 7900 XT offers identical performance. The only difference on Prime Day is saving around $120.

These results include ray tracing, too. If you look at games without ray tracing, the RX 7900 XT overwhelmingly beats the RTX 4070 Ti Super. In Cyberpunk 2077, for example, the RX 7900 XT is 26% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

Nvidia still has an edge with its DLSS 3.5 tech, but with the Prime Day deals available on AMD graphics cards, it’s worth considering a switch to Team Red. The RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 XT outclass the competition, even when they’re available for less money. Plus, AMD has slowly been adding its FSR 3 frame generation to games, and you can enjoy the AI-driven AFMF 2 frame generation in nearly any game through AMD’s drivers.