How Much Does it Cost?
The Gigabyte Gaming OC model will always cost a little more, and you’ll be expected to pay around $30-$50 more depending on the region and of course the retailer, but you are paying for a better quality product with years or R&D put into it and it shows. Also the sheer size of the card for something that is arguably a mid-tier GPU in the sense of the whole RDNA3 stack and I honestly think for that extra cost it could be worth it, but that does mean it draws closer to the 7800 XT reference MSRP and that makes it a tricky one.
Overview
Focussing purely on the Gaming OC element of the 7700 XT and not the rasterisation or Ray Tracing performance and I think it’s safe to say that it’s a solid product with a strong pedigree that we at eTeknix have been fans of for many years. I’ve always said with Gaming OC cards that it’s tried and tested and it doesn’t change much over the years, apart from seemingly getting bigger, which may cause issue with some users and their case configuration, but all cards are getting larger and I don’t see it as a bad thing.
Temperature-wise, the card kept things nice and cool, though the one downside is that the fans still ramp up quite dramatically and become audible, but as always, if you’re gaming, you’re unlikely to hear any noise anyway, so really that comes down to a subjective point that you as a consumer will have to make. It’s a trade-off, but for me, not a deal breaker.
The extra clock speed doesn’t make a huge world of difference, but that’s a bit of a given with all GPUs now that it’s more about cooling performance and power delivery than raw compute usage in terms of rasterisation or as mentioned, Ray Tracing.
I do think that the 7700 XT is a good card, but with the Gaming OC pushing closer to the base price of a 7800 XT, it does make it a slightly harder sell, as we could be talking about a few dollars but getting a far superior GPU, though you will miss out on the superior cooling performance, so again, trade-offs.
Should I Buy One?
For me, I love the Gaming OC cards but that price disparity of a 7700 XT Gaming OC and a reference spec MSRP-based 7800 XT is just too close, and I think some gamers will want the lesser GPU with a superior cooler, while others will want the better GPU with a lesser cooler, so I’ll leave you to make that decision for yourself. For me, the Gaming OC is still an extremely great card with a fantastic cooler. I just wish it was a little bit cheaper, closer to the level of MSRP, but at the end of the day, Gigabyte have to make some money, and I can’t take that away from an already great product on the market.
