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 54 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 7900 XT Pulse do? Like with the reference 7900 XT, at 1080p there wasn’t a test that the 7900 XT Pulse struggled with. In fact, the addition of the 240+ FPS range here helps show that even more with 5 out of the 16 tests are up over 240 FPS and the other 11 were over 120 FPS making this a great card for those looking for 1080p high refresh rate gaming. The same goes for 1440p as well with everything up over 120 FPS once again and three results were over 240 FPS once again. It isn’t until we get into 4k testing that the 7900 XT Pulse shows anything under 120 FPS and even then everything was up over 60 FPS with 7 results in the 60-119 FPS range and 8 over 120 FPS. Of course, CS:GO was still up over 240 as well. In other words, everything tested is going to be smooth and it just depends on if you are aiming for higher refresh rates.

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. With the top end of the graph being CPU limited at 1080p and sometimes 1440p all of the results are sorted by 4K. The 7900 XT Pulse stayed out in front of the 4070 Ti, often by a good margin in 15 out of the 16 games tested. In fact, it was staying closer to the RTX 4080 and in a few games came out ahead there. At 4k I did also compare the performance between the reference 7900 XT and Sapphires 7900 XT Pulse. When including the CS:GO results which are always much higher and sometimes mess things up the Pulse averaged 131 FPS to the reference cards 128 which is a 2.3% improvement. Taking CS:GO out the Pulse averaged 118 to the reference cards 115 which was a 2.6% improvement, both being a great performance jump for such a small overclock.