Verdict: Buy the RTX 4070 Super for ray tracing and AI workloads; buy the RX 7800 XT for raw raster value and 16 GB VRAM headroom.
| Spec | RTX 4070 Super | RX 7800 XT |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 12 GB GDDR6X | 16 GB GDDR6 |
| TBP | 220 W | 263 W |
| MSRP | $599 | $499 |
| Ray-tracing tier | 3rd-gen RT cores (strong) | 2nd-gen RA accelerators (moderate) |
| Upscaling | DLSS 3.5 + Ray Reconstruction | FSR 3.1 + driver-level FMF |
| 1440p raster (avg fps, 15-game suite) | ~111 fps | ~114 fps |
| 1440p path tracing | Playable with DLSS+FG | Not playable |
| Verdict | RT, AI, frame gen | Raster value, VRAM headroom |
The short answer
Buy the RTX 4070 Super if you play a lot of single-player AAA games with ray tracing, value DLSS frame generation, or ever do Stable Diffusion / local LLMs. Buy the RX 7800 XT if you mostly play competitive games without RT, want 16GB of VRAM for modding and 4K texture packs, or prefer AMD's driver overlay to NVIDIA's Control Panel. Both are excellent 1440p cards. Neither is a mistake.
Raster performance: basically tied
Across the 15-game 1440p ultra raster suite (no ray tracing, no upscaling), the 7800 XT wins on average by 2-4%. That's margin-of-error territory in any individual game — Call of Duty favours the 4070 Super, Starfield favours the 7800 XT, and Counter-Strike 2 pegs the 1% low at the refresh rate of whatever monitor you're testing on. If you bought either and ran it for a year you wouldn't feel a difference in frame rates in non-RT games.
Ray tracing: not tied
In ray-tracing-heavy titles (Cyberpunk Path Tracing, Alan Wake 2, Black Myth Wukong), the RTX 4070 Super is 40-60% faster. AMD has closed the gap in lightweight RT (reflections and shadows), but full path tracing still runs roughly half speed on RDNA 3. If you're building for future AAA games where path tracing becomes standard, the NVIDIA card is the safer future-proof pick.
Upscaling: DLSS 3.5 vs FSR 3.1
DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction is the current image-quality leader — Quality preset at 1440p is genuinely hard to tell apart from native rendering, even in motion. FSR 3.1 has closed the gap (it's clearly better than FSR 2), but in motion you can still see shimmering on hair, foliage, and chain-link fences in direct A/B comparisons.
Frame generation is a bigger feature-list differentiator. DLSS FG is available in ~100 games; AMD's FMF (driver-level FG) now works in any DX11/12 game whether the dev adds it or not, which is a genuinely killer feature. FSR 3's in-game FG has latency comparable to DLSS FG when both are present.
VRAM: 12GB vs 16GB
This is the one spec that might actually dictate your choice. 12GB on the 4070 Super is enough for every shipping 2026 game at 1440p ultra. It is not enough for Cyberpunk with 4K texture mods, The Witcher 3 Next-Gen with HD Rework, or heavily modded Skyrim. The 7800 XT's 16GB has meaningful headroom there.
If you don't mod games and you upgrade GPUs every 3-4 years, 12GB is fine. If you keep cards for 5+ years or you install every texture overhaul mod that ships, the extra 4GB matters.
Power and thermals
4070 Super: 220W TBP, quiet dual-fan partner cards are common, single 12VHPWR connector. 7800 XT: 263W, requires triple-fan coolers on most partner cards to stay quiet, dual 8-pin connectors. Both run cool on a decent case — neither requires exotic cooling.
Drivers and software
Historically AMD was the "driver crash" brand and NVIDIA was the stable one. That's not true in 2026 — both have very stable drivers. NVIDIA's advantage is the breadth of feature exposure (DLSS in every new game day-one, CUDA for productivity/AI, better Linux out of the box via NVIDIA Open). AMD's advantage is the driver overlay (Adrenalin) which bundles FPS monitoring, streaming, Radeon Chill, and per-game settings in one clean UI that NVIDIA still does not match.
Price
As of this writing, the RTX 4070 Super is $599 MSRP (street $570-620 depending on partner). The RX 7800 XT is $499 MSRP (street $440-490). That $100-140 price gap is the single strongest argument for the 7800 XT — you can bank the savings toward a better monitor, a bigger SSD, or a 16GB RAM upgrade.
Final call
The RTX 4070 Super earns the recommendation — DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, stable path tracing, and the AI workflow utility tip the scales even though it's $100 more. But the RX 7800 XT is a smarter buy for a lot of gamers: better raster per dollar, 4GB more VRAM, cleaner driver software. You would not be wrong either way. You would only be wrong buying an 8GB card at this price tier.