March 3, 20251 yr Hi all. I've been puttering along flying mostly airliners with an i9 10900 with an RTX 3080 GPU I purchased early in 2021 in 3440 x 1400. At that time my system was nearly cutting edge and it served me well through the First Age of MSFS 2020 (base game plus FBW A320, CRJ), decently through the Second Age (PMDG, other third party airliners, early bespoke scenery and airports), but it's clearly not up to the Third Age of MSFS (iFly Max, Ini airliners, most airports being third party, 2024, and especially traffic injection and third party ATC). Sure, a combination of Frame Gen mod and especially the heaven-sent AutoFPS are hacks that can keep the game mostly flyable at medium settings, but DLSS (for me) is unusable given the glass cockpit blurring and I feel like I spend as much time tweaking settings as I do flying. Sooooo, my plan was early 2025 to finally break down and buy a new system, but the current 50 series launch has proven disappointing and nothing is available anywhere anyway. Looking at my options and some comparison videos (referenced below), I've come to the conclusion that, first, I'm unwilling to spend on a 5090 and, second, there seems to be no decisive advantage to the 5080 over the two year old AMD 7900 XTX (null to a measly 3-9% better for the 5080, even with Ray Tracing), and the 7900 XTX is already in stock in pre-builts and out there for hundreds less than the eventual 5080 pre-builts will go for. Plus, the 7900 XTX also has a higher VRAM, which is increasingly important with traffic injection and ever more complex airliner and airport models. So, in early 2025, is there any reason not to buy an AMD 7900 XTX paired with a 9800 X3D? I know a hypothetical 5080 Ti or Super with hypothetically more VRAM might come in late '25 or early '26, but I'm unwilling to wait that long at this point. Thoughts? Thanks! Videos reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnpmEPry18I&t=295s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1y4hNkQ4D4&t=570s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4x9yJg45JA
March 3, 20251 yr I am on the fence as well. but considering 7900 XTX is nearly a 2 year old card, with 9070 xt with RDNA 4 coming this month, i would consider a newer card. Yes, for raw power, 7900 XTX is not bad when comparing it to 4080. But you cannot get new 4080 these days. I am also considering 5070 Ti because I wanted to switch back to Nvidia due to my usage with VR as well. I am currently using 6750 XT and it is not good enough for VR. So yeah, its either 9070 XT or 5070Ti for me.
March 3, 20251 yr Author It's an interesting dilemma. Especially considering: In some direct comparisons, the 5080 seems to be 18-20% faster for MSFS 2024 than the 5070 Ti (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPpiBVhWY68&t=543s) In another direct comparison, the 7900 XTX is about 22% faster for MSFS 2024 than the 5070 Ti (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQxJ9B_Hbs&t=589s) Of course, right now, in any pre-built, neither the 5070 Ti or 5080 are currently available at all As you point out, except used (where they're being gouged), the 40 series also isn't available at all This is what's leading me towards the 7900 XTX....
March 3, 20251 yr If you are not at all interested in the best (9070xt) being released in 3 days (March 6th), a 7900 is a fine choice. I will be looking closely at the 9070xt myself.
March 3, 20251 yr Author Good point. The 9070 XT is going to slot a smidge under the 5070 Ti (per AMD's own stats), so it too will probably be about 15-20% down in performance from the 7900 XTX and 5080. What bothers me there is its 16 GB of VRAM, which is the same as the amount I'm not impressed by with the 5070 Ti and 5080. As we're all seeing, that might be the new MSFS floor for VRAM. Overall, though, It will be interesting to see how close this card gets to the 7900 XTX for MSFS 2024 (the only title I really care about) and what its availability looks like at launch. Edited March 3, 20251 yr by Iiari
March 3, 20251 yr Honestly though, there is a reason they are putting 16GB for these mid to mid-high range cards to keep cost down and product differentiations, so that it doesn't cannibalizes the high end ones...but not like anyone can afford a 5090 these days...but 7900XTX is attainable. I can see 20GB would be something interesting to consider. If the game is nicely optimized, then 16GB is sufficient, remember, windows will also allocates ram in case that VRAM is max out on the budget. So you have both shared and dedicated VRAM working together.
March 3, 20251 yr I recently had the chance to run a borrowed Sapphire Pulse 7900 XTX for a couple of months on my overclocked 13900KF system. That GPU is strong, even today more than 2 years after its release. MSFS 2020 is my secondary sim; Prepar3Dv5.3HF2 is my primary, and the card runs both sims very well. Today I would caution against believing much of the claims we're being fed about how "good" the coming AMD offerings will be. The reality is this... the 7900 XTX has more of everything (VRAM, Bandwidth, OC headroom, Texture and Pixel Fill Rates, etc.) than either the 5070Ti (and arguably the 5080) or the upcoming AMD 9000 series. After the recent "paper" Nvidia launch I concluded that AMD's 2 year old brute was the best choice for me. Primary reason was the 24GB of VRAM: for me 16GB just isn't enough with any sim using the DirectX 12 API (I'll be adding MSFS 2024 in a few weeks). Also, after running the 7900XTX for a few weeks I came to appreciate its ability to power thru clouds using its SSAA. The picture I see on the same monitor is sharper with the 7900 XTX than my 3080 12GB. That's without using any Sharpening on the 7900 XTX! And it's stupid simple to overclock... 15% using stock power settings is easy-peasy if you've got the cooling. An area where the 7900 XTX comes up short is comparing it with nVidia's "Fake Frame" features. RDNA4 is supposed to be better than AMD's current offerings, and that will no doubt have some truth to it. I fiddled with AMD's Super Resolution and AFMF 2 (Frame Gen) during the weeks I flew with the 7900 XTX but in the end I reverted to the same solution I use on my nVidia card... no upscaling and LosslessScaling for frame gen. Works better than the 7900 XTX's fake frames and draws less power as well. The greatest weakness of the 7900 XTX (and all AMD cards) as I see it is Adrenaline. Like nVidia's APP, Adrenaline is an advertising, marketing, data collection software that also happens to offer (limited) driver tweaking functionality. Sadly, while we have other choices with nVidia cards (their Control Panel + nvidiaProfileInspector is what I use) not so much for tweaking AMD drivers.☹️ Good luck with your GPU choice and computer build! Greg
March 3, 20251 yr Author 49 minutes ago, lownslo said: I recently had the chance to run a borrowed Sapphire Pulse 7900 XTX for a couple of months on my overclocked 13900KF system. That GPU is strong, even today more than 2 years after its release.... Good luck with your GPU choice and computer build! Great post. Thank you for the information!
March 4, 20251 yr 21 hours ago, avistudent said: I am on the fence as well. but considering 7900 XTX is nearly a 2 year old card, with 9070 xt with RDNA 4 coming this month, i would consider a newer card. Yes, for raw power, 7900 XTX is not bad when comparing it to 4080. But you cannot get new 4080 these days. I am also considering 5070 Ti because I wanted to switch back to Nvidia due to my usage with VR as well. I am currently using 6750 XT and it is not good enough for VR. So yeah, its either 9070 XT or 5070Ti for me. The 5070 ti super has more Ram than the 1070Ti. 16 vs. 12. 5800X3D, RTX4070, 600 Watt, one or two 1440p 32" screens, 64 GB RAM, 4 TB PCle 3 NVMe, Warthog throttle, VKB NXT EVO stick, Honeycomb Alpha yoke, CH quad, 3 Logitech panels, 2 StreamDecks, Desktop Aviator Trim Panel. Crystal Light VR.
March 5, 20251 yr Author So, interesting, on the first Youtube channel I've seen testing the 9070 XT with MSFS 2024 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_a-FhQCqCE&t=1s) the performance in 1440p (which I use) is identical to the 5080 test they did earlier on that card (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C7bv2mpDvs), with better lowest 1% FPS as well. In 4K, the 5080 has only 6% better FPS. Very interesting... Edited March 5, 20251 yr by Iiari
March 5, 20251 yr This is a definite high-mid range card winner! Only thing now is the cost and if one can actually acquire one hassle free. All the reviews here. Some youtube btw. https://videocardz.com/198465/amd-radeon-rx-9070-xt-rdna4-graphics-cards-review-roundup Edited March 5, 20251 yr by VeryBumpy
March 5, 20251 yr Author @VeryBumpyThanks for the link. Other than the one I posted above, no MSFS 2024 benchmarks on the card I've seen yet...
March 7, 20251 yr Author So, as far as I can see, there have been three benchmarks online at this point that show the 9070 XT to perform at or near equally as well as the 7900 XTX and the 5080 with MSFS 2024, which is the only title I care about (it's perhaps a tad slower on some other titles, a bit better on others), so I went with a 9800X3D and 9070 XT combo for about $2150. Happy with this decision at the moment. We'll see how things go. It arrives in 2 weeks....
March 7, 20251 yr For 4K, you will still have the issue of 16GB VRAM for both the 5080 and the 9070(XT). It is simply not enough for a complex addon plane, airport scenery and AI traffic. I do have to use DLSS, AutoFPS with TLOD 50 plus some VRAM heavy settings on «high» instead of «ultra» to avoid the 16GB VRAM of my 4080 being flooded. With otherwise absolutely reasonable FPS using FG. Still really disappointed that the 5080 did not come with 24GB VRAM or an AMD variant with 24GB. It is a huge miss if you ask me and as such, I would still rather recommend the 7900XTX for MSFS2024 4K. Greetings, Chris AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 2x32GB DDR5 6000MT/s RAM, MSI RTX 4090 Ventus 3X, Windows 11 Home, MSFS2024
March 7, 20251 yr https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amds-9000-series-gpus-sell-for-up-to-usd2-000-as-opportunistic-scalpers-take-control Raymond Fry.
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