The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is not an RTX 4090 killer
Last night AMD presented the first two graphics cards of the Radeon RX-7000 series for 13 December. The new flagship is supposed to be up to 70 percent faster than that of the previous generation.
At the outset: AMD's new cards cannot compete with Nvidia's RTX 4090, according to the manufacturer itself. The RX 7900 XTX should be between the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 in terms of performance .
These are the cards
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT come with the new Navi-31 GPU, which is based on the RDNA-3 architecture, which is also new. The large card has all 12,288 stream processors enabled, while the smaller one has 10,752. Here's an overview of the specs.
| Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Radeon RX 7900 XT | |
|---|---|---|
| Architektur | 5nm RDNA 3 | 5nm RDNA 3 |
| GPU | Navi 31 XTX | Navi 31 XT |
| Compute Einheiten | 96 | 84 |
| FP32-ALUs | 12288 | 10752 |
| Basis-Takt | 1.9 GHz | 1.5 GHz |
| Game-Takt | 2.3 GHz | 2.0 GHz |
| Boost-Takt | 2.5 GHz | 2.4 GHz |
| Speicher | 24 GB G6 | 20 GB G6 |
| Speicher-Bus | 384 Bit | 320 Bit |
| Speichergeschwindigkeit | 20 Gbps | 20 Gbps |
| Speicherbandbreite | 960 GB/s | 800 GB/s |
| Cache | 96 MB | 80 MB |
| PCIe Interface | Gen4x16 | Gen4x16 |
| TDP | 355 Watt | 300 Watt |
In Rasterizer games, the RX 7900 XTX is said to offer between 50 and 70 per cent more speed than the Radeon RX 6950 XT. In ray tracing performance, AMD says it is between 50 and 85 per cent more than the previous generation. Thus, the RX 7900 XTX should be slightly better than the RTX 3090 Ti in ray-tracing games. Whether it will match the RTX 4080 is questionable.
The performance per watt increases by 54 per cent with RDNA 3 compared to RDNA 2, according to AMD.
The maximum TDP of the new cards is 355 watts, well below the RTX 4090's 450 watts. The cards are connected to the power supply with two 8-pin connectors. AMD bypasses the RTX 4090's 12VHPWR connector, which is not beyond reproach.
Chiplets and other features
Navi 31 are AMD's first gaming GPUs based on chiplets. Chiplets are multiple dies on a multi-chip module. AMD uses the same principle with its Zen processors. The RX 7900 XTX consists of seven chiplets. One large Graphics Compute Die (GCD) surrounded by six Memory Cache Dies (MCD). The GCD is manufactured in the N5 process, the MCDs in the N6 process.
Further, RDNA 3 has two AI units per compute unit that can speed up certain processes. Radeon RX 7000 supports DisplayPort 2.1, enabling 2160p resolution at 480 Hz, among other things.
Price and availability
In terms of price, the cards are below the Nvidia RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 for the time being. In the US, they are to cost $999 for the 7900 XTX and $899 for the 7900 XT - as usual without tax. What this means for Switzerland is still unclear for the time being. Based on the current situation, I would estimate between 1100 and 1400 francs - for the reference models, of course. In the EU, it should be between 1100 and 1400 euros. The custom models will probably be a little more expensive. However, this information is without guarantee.
The cards should be available from 13 December. This applies to the reference design from AMD as well as to the custom designs from the manufacturers.
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