After a surprisingpre - announcement teaseandthe official reveal consequence on November 3rd , AMD ’s long - look RDNA 3 , Radeon RX 7900 serial publication GPUs are here … go tomorrow . While you might not be able-bodied to press a bargain release today , we have our full review ready to share with you , including our results for thermal performance , power draw , and benchmark .
AMD RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX GPUs
AMD ’s in style generation of GPUs plug above their price square bracket to provide prominent performance and power cognizance .
Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
What is it ?
AMD ’s RDNA 3 ground GPUs – the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 crosstalk
cost
Since its initial announcement, AMD has updated the Total Board Power of the RX 7900 XT from 300W to 315W.Graphic: AMD
$ 899 ( Radeon RX 7900 XT ) and $ 999 ( Radeon RX 7900 XTX )
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AMD delivers gamey frame rate at reasonable great power , Size and weight unit are accomplishable for mid tugboat case , AMD ’s ray delineate performance has also improved
Since its initial announcement, AMD has updated the Total Board Power of the RX 7900 XT from 300W to 315W.Graphic: AMD
Dislike
FidelityFX is improving , but not quite the same experience as DLSS .
The Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX both have a tall task ahead of them – specially in light of the raw might we saw fromNVIDIA ’s monoli - thicc RTX 4090 . AMD , however , does not seem to be phase by this . The companionship ’s goals with the RX 7900 Series are clear : to provide “ tremendous performance , but at a reasonable magnate , ” all while keeping costs under $ 1000 USD .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Did AMD come after in achieving these goals ? If so , which GPU is good for you – the RX 7900 XT or XTX ?
have ’s recover out .
Under the RDNA 3 Hood: A Ryzen-Like GPU
When it came to design RDNA 3 , AMD leveraged what it learned from its Ryzen and EPYC C.P.U. over the years , then applied that knowledge to Radeon graphics . Using a chiplet - style designlike we saw with Ryzen , AMD has severalize the principal Graphics Compute Die ( GCD ) and Memory Cache Die ( MCD ) .
This separation allowed AMD to do a few things differently , including multi - even processing . The GCD utilizes a 5 nm process technology , while the smaller MCD kick the bucket utilize a examine - and - true 6 nm for handling the GDDR6 memory interfaces . harmonise to AMD , this allows the GPU to optimize where it routes power to , enable both mellow performance and an upthrust in performance - per - W .
But that is n’t the only welfare to this redesign . participate AMD ’s 2nd Generation Infinity Cache . This applied science serves as a “ fast lane ” for retentivity bandwidth , expanding data access code to the GPU by provide an additional story of cache . This enables warm access to assets , which translates to an increase in frames - per - sec . With 2nd Generation Infinity Cache , AMD has fine - tune up the L0 , L1 , and L2 caches as well as exposit the charabanc bandwidth , allowing RDNA 3 to do more with less .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
For context , the Radeon RX 6950 XT has 128 MB of 1st Generation Infinity Cache on a 256 - bit computer memory bus with 18Gbps GDDR6 retention . This setup ply a memory bandwidth up to 1793.g GB / s. Not too tatty , but it come better with the RX 7900 Series .
The 7900 XT has 80 MB of 2nd Generation Infinity Cache , but hump up the memory bus to 320 - bit and ever - so - slightly faster ( 20Gbps ) GDD6 , give it a memory bandwidth of 2912 GB / s. That ’s over 1 gigabit / southward quicker , but it catch even in effect .
The 7900 XTX stacks on 16 MB of 2nd Generation Infinity Cache for a sum of 96 megabit , zigzag the memory motorbus up to 384 - bit with GDDR6 corresponding to the 7900 XT , and gets amphetamine of up to 3494.4 GB / s of bandwidth .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
When we put all of this together , the “ real globe ” effect of a faster Infinity Cache is that the GPUs are better able to expeditiously store and call back recently process datum , rather than having to go back and reprocess it every time they need it . It ’s much like being able to keep internet browser tab loose for quick memory access to , say , a plot guidebook – the information is there , quick when you need it . This quicker admission allow the GPU to move on to other tasks .
But wait , there ’s more .
AMD has been watching the ways that users have been leveraging their engineering science in multitasking situations , such as gaming and streaming from the same equipment . So , with RDNA 3 , the company built in a new dual media engine to handle coincident operations without bogging down the user . This will allow for hardware - accelerated encryption and decipher for AVC and HEVC streaming loads , as well as extra financial backing for AV1 encoding up to 8K60 – fantastic news for streamers !
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Additionally , RDNA 3 introduce AMD ’s Radiance Display Engine , which total support for DisplayPort 2.1 . With this fresh engineering , the RX 7900 Series has ironware for showing up to 8 K with refresh rates of 165 Hz . While this engineering is not wide useable just yet and the range toward 8 K gambling is ambitious , it is exonerated that AMD ’s destination to offer “ fantastic performance ” reaches far beyond framerates .
Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX Specs:
Now that we have a clear picture of what ’s novel with RDNA 3 , it ’s time to take a peek under the hoods of the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX .
Those are some bounteous telephone number , but what does this all mean when you put them all together ?
To put it simply , compute units are like CPU cores , handle operation send to the GPU while flow processor handle the more complex math . As for Clock speeds and Boost Clock , they determine how tight the data can be processed . Memory swear out as a resource to the GPU , while the computer memory bandwidth influence the speeds of access to those resources . When you put all of these together , every firearm of the system impacts your overall experience , which ensue most notably in pixel and pixel timber .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
verbalise of delivery , it is deserving noting that AMD did not transition the RDNA 3 platform to a unexampled or unlike major power connector like NVIDIA . AMD has been very percipient that it did not want user to have to replace existing cabling or need to swap out power supplies so as to upgrade to a mod GPU .
When it comes to physical dimensions , the RX 7900 XT measures in at 10.86 inches long ( 276 mm ) with a height of 4.44 inch ( 113 mm ) , weigh in at 3.33 lbs ( 1.51 kilo ) . The 7900 XTX is a bit chonkier at 3.97 lbs ( 1.80 kilo ) , run a snatch longer than the XT at 11.29 in long ( 287 mm ) with a altitude of 4.84 inches ( 123 mm ) . Both GPUs are label as 2.5 time slot cards , but they do n’t muscle their way far beyond the second slot .
This is great news program if you need way for other PCIe cards ! utter of dimensions , it is worth noting that the denotation RX 7900 Series GPUs from AMD do n’t dominate the case they ’re in . I was a small concerned about the sizing until I tried it out in one ofmy favorite smaller mid tug case .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
For context and comparing , the RTX 4080 is a three - expansion slot card , roughly 11.96 inches long ( 304 mm ) with a top of 5.39 column inch ( 137 mm ) . Now , these dimension are the reference or Founders Edition GPUs , so the size of add - in - board ( AIB ) partner posting ( ASUS , Gigabyte , ASRock , etc . ) will vary significantly .
As for connectivity , both RX 7900 Series GPUs have two DisplayPort 2.1 port , a exclusive HDMI 2.1a port , and a USB - century with DisplayPort 2.1 connectedness .
All of this looks great on newspaper , but how does it work ?
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Big Numbers: RDNA 3 Performance And Power
I get laid what you ’re here for ; you want to love what variety of numbers these affair put out . Before we can deliver our determination , let me share a peep behind the curtains to give you some context for the numbers you ’re about to see .
To collect our data from the Radeon RX 7900 Series , we utilized a trial run bench with the espouse element : aRyzen 9 7950X CPU , X670E AORUS Master motherboard , 32 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 - 6000 RAM , 1 TB WD_Black SN770 M.2 NVMe SSD , NZXT C1000 Gold 1000W PSU , NZXT Kraken Z73 360 mm all - in - one liquid state cooler with three 120 mm fans , and an NZXT H7 elect mid - tower personal computer guinea pig equip with four 140 millimeter sports fan .
For our testing , we take five form of address that utilize a variety of modern computer graphic engineering , including light beam tracing and AMD ’s FidelityFX Super Resolution ( FSR ) . In each title , we recorded data across multiple passes of the benchmarks at 1080p , 1440p , and 4 K , collecting results across each resolving with ray trace on and off and with FSR enabled and disabled . When enable , we used FSR ’s Quality or Ultra Quality options .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
As we go through this data , we will be talking about rasterization first and then travel on to ray tracing .
It is also deserving note that we did not have NVIDIA ’s RTX 4080 on hired hand for comparison , so we recorded datum from a close damage competitor to the RX 7900 Series , the RTX 3090 . Spec - wise , it shares a number of similarities to the RX 7900 XTX – 384 - bit computer memory interface , 24 GB of GDDR ( though , the 3090 has an advantage with GDDR6X ) , and a power evaluation of 350W. It ’s not an precise equal , but it ’s close enough where the comparison is relevant .
Here is what we found :
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
We ran each mental testing at Ultra preferences and the RX 7900 Series met each labor with a pretty strong exhibit overall . The one exclusion to that statement would be Metro Exodus at 4K. While we have seen this test take even the inviolable of GPUs to task at its most extreme place setting , the rest of the data show a promising picture .
At 4 potassium , the RX 7900 XT systematically put out form rates over 60 FPS in most form of address . Aside from Metro Exodus , Cyberpunk 2077 did ride that line in consummate rasterization , but this is at the high preferences without the aid of FSR . With FSR enable at its Quality stage setting , the 7900 XTX crossed that brink and moderate averages above 60 shape per second . However , if 4 KB is n’t the goal , but 1440p is , the 7900 XT pushed consistently beyond 100 FPS in most cases , including Cyberpunk 2077 .
When we take care at the RX 7900 XTX , we see an 18 % increase in performance over the RX 7900 XT in Cyberpunk 2077 , 20 % in Borderlands 3 , ~18 % in Far Cry 6 , and 13 % in Forza Horizon 5 – and this is before FSR . When enable , we see a performance conflict of 13 % in Cyberpunk 2077 , 12.5 % in Far Cry 6 , and , again , ~13 % in Forza Horizon 5 .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
When we bulge out looking at the numbers compared to the RTX 3090 , in vestal rasterization we see the RX 7900 XT leap forward of the 3090 by nearly 21 % in Borderlands , ~18 % in Cyberpunk 2077 , and 17.5 % in Forza – with Metro Exodus dead even across all cards at 4K. That gap gets wide once we start introducing the RX 7900 XTX into the flick . For our run , we see an average performance gain of around 35 % from the RTX 3090 to the RX 7900 XTX .
Not tough , Team Red , but can it consort Crysis … I entail , can it irradiate trace ?
The answer is a qualified yes .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
In the claim we tested , the RX 7900 Series GPUs were capable to put up strong number in beam trace software . However , at 4 K , we saw a few cases where they lagged behind the ray tracing capabilities of the RTX 3090 . While Metro Exodus served as the balance in rasterization , Cyberpunk 2077 takes the title of “ Most Punishing Ray Tracing Benchmark . ”
Without any assistance from FSR , the 7900 XTX struggle to hit an norm of 20 frames per second at Cyberpunk ’s gamy ray decipher preferences . While it is only a 2 - frame dispute , the uplift with FSR still has both GPUs average lower than 60 frames per second . Now , to be fair , the RTX 3090 is n’t far ahead ; even with DLSS enable , it only contribute the 7900 XTX by 3 frames per secondly .
We did see the RX 7900 XT lag behind the RTX 3090 in Far Cry 6 by ~6 % at 4 K and Metro Exodus by ~5 % at 1440p and ~11 % at 4 K , but otherwise the RX 7900 Series GPUs moderate their ground and posted telling frame rates at 1080p , 1440p , and 4 K with ray tracing features enabled . When FSR is enable , however , that change the story .
Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Productivity Performance:
When it fall to productivity tests , we ran into some interesting obstruction for direct comparison , peculiarly when using depict tests like Blender . With its 3.0 handout , Blender removed the OpenCL choice for GPU interpretation , leaving NVIDIA ’s CUDA and Optix as the only GPU - bind options for render . However , AMD has been helping to rewrite CUDA code to HIP ( or Heterogeneous Interface for Portability ) to interlock with Radeon GPU technology .
Within Blender , an image of everyone ’s favourite glossy red BMW rendered at a windy 14 seconds on the RX 7900 XT and 12 second gear on the RX 7900 XTX . It was telling , but NVIDIA did plane a bit off of the RX 7900 XTX ’s prison term by utilizing CUDA , and then it halve the 7900 XT ’s time with Optix . This is n’t needfully regretful news for Team Red – they ’re all unspoiled numbers , but NVIDIA does have a little ramification up here .
The chronicle is exchangeable to OpenCL performance metric in Geekbench 5 . The RX 7900 Series falls slimly short of the RTX 3090 , but takes an telling lead in Vulkan performance measurements . In other wrangle , the RX 7900 Series excels at gambling and does well enough for itself in computational tasks .
Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Energy Efficiency and Thermal Performance
With all of the lecture about speed and power , we have to depend back at AMD ’s end with RDNA 3 : fantastic performance at a sane baron and monetary value . We have seen some fantastic performance datum from both RX 7900 GPUs , but what about power consumption and heat ?
While we were running our benchmarks , we kept a nigh center on the RX 7900 Series to keep AMD good in its claims . After all , we saw Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs hit some somewhat high numbers , so we want to verify that the “ high execution - per - W ” claims did n’t just have in mind that RDNA 3 was going to consume a large amount of electrical power .
So , we measured the business leader consumption and heat energy during our 4 K tests . This would ensure that the tasks were utilizing as much of the GPU ’s power as potential . What we found was surprising .
In both average powerfulness delivery and at their peak , the ability consumption of both RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX stayed considerably low than the RTX 3090 . When you part to look at the amount of great power take in versus form charge per unit output , you may start to see that AMD is n’t play around with gage and mirrors ; its card are providing telling outcome in gaming environments while give chase the contender by about a 50W margin across mogul delivery averages . Trailing is a good affair in this consideration .
When it comes to thermal performance , the comparing get a little less clear . We are dealing with two very different cool types between the RTX 3090 Founders Edition and AMD ’s retail editions of RX 7900 Series .
That ’s not to say that the numbers are bad ; the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX maintain top temperature under 70 degree Celsius during the heaviest loads , with averages on the GPU itself bulk large in the mid- to upper 60s . Now , there is one match to these telephone number that is not reflected in the chart :
While recording thermic information , we noticed that the temperature interpretation on the GPU itself stayed relatively coolheaded , but the memory thermal junction was a unlike story entirely . in good order now , with minimum execution consignment on the GPU , the computer memory thermal colligation temperature is hovering around 85 degrees Celsius .
We see something similar with the latest Ryzen C.P.U. , and this is by design . According to AMD , these junction can handle temperature up to 110 degrees Celsius . Hot junctions for that hot and sweaty performance !
This may be a result of the chiplet aim . Afterall , the GCD is surrounded by the MCDs ; heat from the GCD ( where we were recording our data from ) could be bleeding over into those adjunction . That is purely my speculation .
The Big Question : Is RDNA 3 Right For You ?
While AMD specifically stated that it is not punching at RTX 4090 territory , the pricing , performance , and power draw play of the RX 7900 Series certainly take some heavy swinging in that instruction , especially on vestal gaming performance . Those lick , however , will be far more effective if these RDNA 3 GPUs can hold to the last part of AMD ’s pursuit : “ a reasonable cost . ”
Now , GPU Price around $ 1,000 are already unmanageable to abide , but AMD has understandably propose at the enthusiast food market with this exit . For me , the RX 7900 Series represents a proof - of - concept . That concept ? That AMD can give birth killer in high spirits end GPUs that can cling on the mellow priming at a fraction of the price … with a grant or two .
Generation over contemporaries , AMD has made some exceptional strides when it comes to ray trace , but NVIDIA still has a leg up on the house of Su . FidelityFX Super Resolution is a promising technology and the acceptance rate is increase . While public presentation pick up overall catch DLSS , DLSS produces a prettier picture and fluent experience . Then , there is access to affair like CUDA and Optix .
The real question is this : if you are in the market for a new GPU , do you demand those matter ? If you do n’t and you just want gamy build rates on a ( slightly ) lower budget , then the RX 7900 Series might be right for you . Both GPUs offer exceptional accession to gambling performance with some added contiguous futureproofing features like AV1 ironware speedup and DisplayPort 2.1 . RDNA 3 also makes a strong case to build a Team Red system with AMD Smart Technology .
If that sounds like you and you call for to establish now , pair off the Radeon RX 7900 XT with theRyzen 7 7700X. This combining provide access to modernistic technologies while providing a promising climb platform for age to come . commemorate though , this is still an forecast $ 899 USD for the GPU alone .
That ’s not for anyone but might hounds , but give the RTX 4090 ’s $ 1,599 toll , even the most discerning of gamers could do unsound . I can tell you this : mate the Radeon RX 7900 XTX with the Ryzen 9 7950X is an exquisite experience . At 4 KB and below , the frame rates are brilliant .
However , if you ’re still on the fence and all of this is too rich for you , the expert newsworthiness is that this is only the get-go of RDNA 3 . With this strong of a showing at the top level , it will be really exciting to see competition in the mid - tier heat up !
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