While many gamers are currently getting great discounts on AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards, the next generation is already here. The Radeon RX 7000 series comes with two graphics cards to start with: the RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT. It’s a powerful upgrade that will make it even more competitive against competing Nvidia GeForce cards.
Here’s everything we know about AMD’s new flagships, including our own benchmarks that compare them to Nvidia’s RTX 4080 and RTX 4090.
Release date
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
AMD launched the new RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT on December 13, 2022. The rest of the lineup has yet to be officially announced, but is expected to arrive in the first half of 2023 to compete with Nvidia’s rumored RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 .
AMD had a busy 2022. In addition to new graphics cards, it also launched the next generation of Ryzen processors, called the AMD Ryzen 7000. In 2023, we expect the rest of the RDNA 3 line as well as the 3D V-Cache version of the Zen 4 processor and some of the low-end CPU- and from that line, so AMD is preparing for another year full of new product releases.
Prices
AMD
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which is currently the flagship RDNA 3, is priced at $1,000, while the RX 7900 XT costs $100 less at $900. Unfortunately, being only $100 cheaper, but also significantly slower, the RX 7900 XT may be doomed to always be second fiddle and never become a fan favorite. There’s simply no reason to choose it over the 7900 XTX — it’ll always be worth spending that extra $100 whenever you can.
If and when AMD releases a more powerful graphics card this generation, we expect it to be priced similarly to the last-gen RX 6950 XT, which came in at $1,100, but could also go up.
For now, the two cards AMD offers are reasonably priced. Since both are set to rival Nvidia’s RTX 4080, they have a distinct price advantage over the 4080, which has a suggested retail price (MSRP) of $1,200. However, these prices may not be accurate in the first weeks or even months after launch.
Depending on initial supply and demand, there may be periods when the price is significantly higher than it should be. However, with the GPU shortage behind us, prices will likely normalize over time.
It’s also worth remembering that cards launched by AMD’s add-on board (AIB) partners can be more expensive than the reference models. Overclocked models typically cost $50 to $100 more than retail.
Glasses
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
The RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT are pretty close in terms of specs, price and performance. However, the 7900 XTX reigns supreme, and right now that card is the best GPU AMD has to offer. Here’s how they stack up against each other.
| AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX | AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT | |
| GPU | Navi 31 | Navi 31 |
| Process node | TSMC 5nm (GCD), TSMC 6nm (MCD) | TSMC 5nm (GCD), TSMC 6nm (MCD) |
| Cores | 6,144 | 5,376 |
| Calculate the units | 96 | 84 |
| Ray Tracing Accelerators | 96 | 84 |
| AI accelerators | 192 | 168 |
| Game clock | 2300MHz (game clock) / 2500MHz (boost clock) | 2.520 MHz |
| Memory size | 24 GB GDDR6 | 20 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus width | 384-bit | 320-bit |
| TBP | 355 W | 315 W |
Architecture
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While AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 was based on the company’s 7nm RDNA 2 microarchitecture — a design also found in the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X — the new Radeon RX 7000 switches to an RDNA 3 design based on a mix of 5nm and 6nm processes.
Gamers more colloquially called the previous generation RDNA 2 Big Navi, and AMD executives call Navi 2x, RDNA 3 Navi 3x. The most commonly mentioned chips include the Navi 33, Navi 32 and Navi 31, with the 31 found in the flagship models.
In this generation, AMD uses a new chiplet design borrowed from the architecture used on its Ryzen processors. It’s a similar approach, but not exactly the same. The GPU has multiple dies, called memory caches (MCDs), each equipped with a single GDDR6 memory controller as well as 16MB of AMD’s Infinity Cache memory. This adds a massive 96MB cache to the flagship 7900 XTX model. There is also one matrix in which all GPU cores are located, which is called graphics computing matrix (GCD).
There is a big difference between MCDs and GCDs, and it’s not just their purpose. AMD used a different processor node in each; GCDs are made on a 5nm node, which has a much higher transistor density compared to the previous generation, while MCDs are based on TSMC’s 6nm node. This likely allows AMD to produce cards at a lower cost, since the 6nm process is cheaper to buy than 5nm, which will hopefully lead to better availability.
The compute units (CUs) in the GCD contain cores, which AMD calls Stream processors. Each CU also comes with two ray tracing accelerators as well as one AI accelerator. It’s not clear what use these AI accelerators are right now, outside of GPU-based machine learning. In the future, they might have implications for AMD’s FSR 3 size increase, but that’s not clear yet.
Performance
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
We had the opportunity to extensively test both the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. We then compared these results to our previous testing of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. Thanks to this, we have an accurate view of the real performance of AMD’s new flagships.
AMD has never tried to market new GPUs as rivals to Nvidia’s flagship RTX 4090, and through our testing it’s easy to see why. While both cards can trade blows with the RTX 4080 (although the 7900 XTX is clearly much better), the 4090 is miles ahead and there’s no way AMD can catch up right now.
In 4K gaming tests with ray tracing enabled, the RX 7900 XTX averaged 76.4 frames per second (fps), followed by the RX 7900 XT’s 69.1 fps. This puts the RX 7900 XTX within 6% of Nvidia’s RTX 4080, while the RX 7900 XT is about 15% behind the Team Green card.
Comparing the GPU to the previous generation reveals an advantage, but it’s not as big as we’d hoped. Nvidia introduced a major generation gap when it launched the RTX 4090. AMD, however, kept things much more conservative in terms of both price and performance. On average, in 4K games, the RX 7900 XT is about 14% faster than the last generation RX 6950 XT, while the RX 7900 XTX registers a 26% advantage over the previous flagship.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
Ray tracing plays a big part in why GPUs haven’t yet succeeded in terms of performance, and when we turn off ray tracing, the results go up significantly. However, Nvidia’s lead remains. Historically, AMD has lagged behind Nvidia while trying to keep up in ray tracing performance. In this generation, the gap has narrowed, but not as much as we would like.
During our testing, it’s clear that AMD can compete with Nvidia’s RTX 4080, but it still lacks better ray tracing as well as access to Nvidia’s latest technology, DLSS 3. In terms of pure gaming, it’s close enough to RTX. 4080 to provide good value considering the price difference between the two.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn