TechRadar Verdict
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC is one of the best options for midrange gaming for those who are really stretching their money since it offers compelling performance at a more accessible price, but those with a bit more cash are going to be much better served going for the RX 7800 XT instead.
Great 1440p performance
Triple-fan design
Overclocked
Big for a midrange card
Still too close in price to RX 7800 XT
Why you can trust TechRadarWe spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best.Find out more about how we test.
Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC: Two-minute review
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC is the best version of a difficult card to recommend generally, but it goes a good way towards ameliorating the biggest issue I had with theAMD Radeon RX 7700 XT: its price.
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC is available for $439.99 (about £360/AU$695), which is only $10 less thanAMD’s official MSRP for the RX 7700 XT, so it’s not the biggest savings here, but it does make this card at least somewhat more competitively priced with theNvidiaGeForce RTX 4060 Ti, which comes in at $399.99 (about £320/AU$630).
However, it’s not just a price cut off the reference MSRP from AMD that makes the Gigabyte RX 7700 XT card a good bargain. You also get some extra perks over AMD’s reference specs to make it more enticing as well, making it one of thebest graphics cardoptions for midrange gamers on a tighter budget.
Starting with the design, you get a triple-fan design that definitely helps thermal performance, which isn’t egregious on the RX 7700 XT to begin with. There is no reference card for the RX 7700 XT, mind you, but given that theAMD Radeon RX 7800 XTdoes have a reference card that sports a dual-fan design, you do get something over the higher-tier AMD card.
That’s not nothing, and the card itself isn’t so long that it can’t fit inside a typical midtowerPC case. The RX 7700 XT does require a good bit more power than the RTX 4060 Ti (245W to the 4060 Ti’s 160W), so it needs two 8-pin power connectors to run it. On the other hand, it doesn’t require a 16-pin power cable like the rest of Nvidia’s reference RTX 4000-series cards.
The Gigabyte card also lacks any real RGB lighting beyond the Gigabyte logo along the top edge of the card, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective, but it’s good to have options regardless. Non-RGB fans will appreciate the more subdued aesthetics of this GPU for sure.
In terms of ports, you have your standard 2 x HDMI 2.1 and 2 x DisplayPort 2.1 output on most AMD RX 7000-series cards, so you can hook it up to several of thebest gaming monitorsof your choosing.
Performance-wise, you can read more about the individual benchmarks in myRX 7700 XT review, and for the most part, the Gigabyte RX 7700 XT Gaming OC card performs a few percentage points better than the XFX Speedster QICK319 RX 7700 XT Black card given that it has about 100MHz higher game clock and a roughly 55MHz faster boost clock.
The difference is only going to be a few fps depending on the game you’re playing, but given the Gigabyte card is cheaper, you’re really getting extra FPS for less money, which is a fantastic deal no matter how you look at it.
In the end, then, the Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC makes a strong case for the RX 7700 XT, especially if spending north of $400 is really stretching your budget to the max. My original criticism that the RX 7700 XT is just too close in price to the AMD RX 7800 XT to make it thebest 1440p graphics cardto buy still applies to this card, but Gigabyte at least offers more than a non-OC card at a better price to make it a much more palatable purchase if you can’t go for the RX 7800 XT.
Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC: Price & availability
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC is available now for $439.99 (about £360/AU$695). This is cheaper even than the AMD reference spec’s MSRP of $449.99, and offers a better value by giving you some extra performance thanks to its factory overclocking.
It also brings you closer in price to the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti while generally outperforming it. All in all, this is still too expensive to be thebest cheap graphics cardon the market, but it’s definitely the best cheap midrange graphics card you’re going to find.
Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC: Specs
Should you buy the Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC?
Buy it if…
You want great 1440p performance on a tighter budgetThis card offers great 1440p performance for the price, especially if you can’t stretch your budget to the RX 7800 XT.
You want some extra overclocked performance for freeNormally, OC cards cost more than the reference card, but this one actually costs less than AMD’s official MSRP.
Don’t buy it if…
You can stretch your budget to get the AMD RX 7800 XTWith the AMD RX 7800 XT offering such incredible performance, if you can stretch your budget to get that card (especially the Gigabyte Radeon RX 7800 XT Gaming OC), you absolutely should.
You want better content creation performanceIf you’re a content creator working with 3D rendering or other GPU intensive creative workloads, chances are an Nvidia card is going to offer much better performance than anything AMD can offer.
Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC: Also consider
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 TiThe Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti isn’t the best 1440p graphics card out there, but it’s a decent enough mix of performance and price while offering some pretty decent features to make it worth considering if you really can’t go higher than its $400 price tag.
Read the fullNvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti review
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XTIf you’ve got a bit more room in your budget, definitely consider the RX 7800 XT, which is easily thebest graphics cardin the midrange.
Read the fullAMD Radeon RX 7800 XT review
How I tested the Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC
I spent about three weeks with the Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT Gaming OC, running my standard suite of benchmarks as well as assessing its general performance in real-world use cases.
I paid special attention to its gaming performance, since this is specifically targeting gamers, and paid less attention to its content creation performance since non-Radeon Pro cards are generally not marketed for those purposes.
I’ve been a computer hardware reviewer for years now and have tested all the latest graphics cards of the past several generations as well as having nearly a decade of computer science education, so I know my way around this kind of hardware. What’s more, as a lifelong gamer, I know what to expect from a graphics card at this price point in terms of gaming performance.
We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it’s on our radar.
Read more about how we test
First reviewed October 2023
John (He/Him) is the Components Editor here at TechRadar and he is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY.
Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.
You can find him online on Threads @johnloeffler.
Currently playing: Baldur’s Gate 3 (just like everyone else).
Intel Battlemage rumored for December – could new budget GPUs win over gamers neglected by Nvidia and save the Arc brand?
Nvidia RTX 5090 Ti suddenly pops up – and RTX 6000 GPUs are mentioned in trademark filings too – but don’t get excited
Stormforce Pro Creator 0601 workstation review
