Early numbers indicate AMD's 7800 XT GPU is a hit. The 7700 XT not so much

Early sales figures for AMD's new Radeon RX 7800 XT indicate that it's a hit with gamers. Numbers from German retailer Mindfactory make the 7800 XT the second most successful day one seller this year with around 400 units.

Only Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti has edged it, with an estimate 400 to 450 units sold on day one. However, Mindfactory managed to shift just 40 examples of the 7700 XT on day one. That's one tenth the volume. Yikes.

These figures tally with other obvious indications of demand for the new GPUs. On Newegg, all variants of the 7800 XT sold out on day one. Happily, restocking has been taking place and as we write these words two days after launch, there are three 7800 XT variants available on Newegg, one of which is offered at the 7800 XT's $499 MSRP.

By contrast, the 7700 XT has only seen one or two variants sell out and at the time of writing, all but one is showing availability.

Beyond that, AMD seems to be channeling more cards to certain territories. While the US and Germany seem to have had widespread availability, including bricks and mortar outlets like Microcenter, the cards are reportedly harder to secure in some European countries including Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Availability at the big UK retailers, including Overclockers and Scan, has been conspicuously thin, too. Whether that reflects supply side issues, cards selling out fast or retailers nervous of stocking up at a time when GPU sales have been in the toilet isn't clear.

However, what does seem pretty apparent and isn't remotely surprising is that the 7700 XT isn't selling as well as the 7800 XT. Frankly, the mere $50 price gap to the 7800 XT simply isn't sustainable. 10% more money for 20 to 25% more performance makes the 7800 XT a no-brainer.

The choice between the 7800 XT and Nvidia's RTX 4070 is tougher. The 7800 XT is fundamentally the faster GPU. However, Nvidia's superior ray tracing performance and overall feature set with DLSS and Frame Generation compensates for the 4070's weaker raster performance lower VRAM provisioning and bandwidth limitations.

In the end, it's a very finely balanced judgement call, not a slam dunk for either GPU. That's not something you can say for Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti. It always looked a bad deal, even in 8GB format. Now the 8GB card looks rather irrelevant and the 16GB board a bit of a joke.