What about compared to the 16 GB options? 12 GB vs 16 GB is also not desirable.
The RX 6800 16GB is a better buy because of the VRAM longevity, future proofing and fine wine.
12 GB is also garbage. Especially that there are 24GB, 20GB and 16GB options.
12 GB is 50% of 24 GB, so today having a card with 12 GB is like it was with having a 4 GB card when the 8 GB cards were top notch.
That's not how VRAM works.
8GB of VRAM is insufficient for modern games. We have seen multiple games in which 8GB cards have severe stuttering issues, failure to load textures, and other major issues that do not affect 16, 12, or even 10GB cards.
Consoles play a major factor in this. The xbox series X is the baseline, with 10GB of high speed RAM. This will largely be used for graphics, where the smaller 6GB "slow" ram will be used more for system processes, audio, ECE. This is why the 10GB 3080s are still working pretty well. Until the series X is replaced, the 12GB cards of today will be sufficient. The same way 512MB cards were fine with games at 720p, and 1GB cards were plentiful for 1080p, until the PS4/xbone came out. The only time 10GB cards have shown to be insufficient was at 4k, which is a higher rez then consoles run at.
Buying 16GB over 12GB, for 1080p/1440p is rather pointless today, as 12GB cards are not running out of VRAM and wont for this console generation. And before you go "but muh series S" yes, that only has 8GB, and games on that console typically run like total trash compared to series X, with sub 1080p resolution with dithering, poor framerates, and muddy textures.
So yeah. 12GB is fine. And the 7700xt is a 6700xt replacement, which was a 12GB card.
IMO we shouldn't be using MSRPs to compare anything these days; Their relevance went out of the window back in 2017 with the first ETH mining boom. There have been different EXTERNAL factors to the GPU market that impacted price wildly since 2017, and unlike the relative stability of GPU pricing for the two decades before that, the last 6 years have seen three major events that have caused price swings of insane magnitude. It was normal (I didn't say it was a good idea) to buy and sell RX 5700 cards for over $1000 for the best part of a year in 2020. That had a 2019 MSRP of $349. Same deal for 3080 and 3090 cards - their MSRP was meaninglessly low, and then briefly made sense in comparison to the actual selling prices earlier this year - two years too late for the MSRP to mean anything.
An MSRP is only valid as a snapshot of the market pricing at that point in time. A 6800 at $580 ETH-boom pricing today is a rip-off, nobody would touch it, and it would get left on shelves, making its launch MSRP invalid in the current market.
The current sale price of a brand new 6800 is $430 because that is what people are willing to pay for them. At $470 this 7700XT is just 6% cheaper than several decent 7800XT cards, which are 15-20% faster and have better performance/Watt. 6% isn't enough of a discount to make anyone even blink, If they can afford the $20 premium over the 7700XT base model, they can definitely afford to just get a 7800XT in the first place!
That's a load of semantics that is totally pointless. The 6800 could jump up in price tomorrow and make the whole conversation moot. Which is why MSRPs are used for comparison.
