AMD’s first RDNA 3 architecture GPU with MCM (Multi-Chip-Module, multi-chip module) technology: Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are officially released, and the Taiwan channel sells for NT$ 35,550 / 29,990. Come and take a look at it Can the performance hit the high-end market occupied by NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series!
AMD Radeon RX 7900 Series GPU Specifications
| product | Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Radeon RX 7900 XT |
| RDNA 3 computing unit | 96 | 84 |
| stream processor | 6144 | 5376 |
| game clock | 2.3 GHz | 2.0 GHz |
| Accelerate the clock | 2.5 GHz | 2.3 GHz |
| 2nd generation Infinity Cache | 96 MB | 80 MB |
| memory format | 24GB GDDR6 | 20GB GDDR6 |
| memory interface | 384-bit | 320-bit |
| memory speed | 20 Gbps | 20 Gbps |
| memory bandwidth | 960 GB/s | 800 GB/s |
| Single-precision floating-point (FP32) computing power | 61 TeraFLOPs | 52 TeraFLOPs |
| Full card power consumption | 355W | 315W |
public design
Both the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT use a 2.5-slot thick three-fan radiator. The core cooling element is a large-area vapor chamber with dense fins, and the periphery is covered with a sandblasted blackened thick aluminum frame. It looks low-key and steady. The 3 fins near the power contacts are specially decorated with red, which is quite a finishing touch.
In terms of power supply, the 12VHPWR power connector is not imported, and only 2 sets of PCIe 8 pin power terminals are used. The main difference is that the RX 7900 XTX has a total card consumption of 355 W, so the height of the radiator is a little higher than that of the RX 7900 XT.
It is worth mentioning that RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are the first GPUs on the market to introduce DisplayPort 2.1. Compared with the current DisplayPort 1.4, which can only transmit 4K 240 Hz and 8K 60 Hz video in DSC mode, DisplayPort 2.1 can provide up to 4K 240 Hz and 8K 165 Hz video.
test environment
For the next test, we used the former flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT priced at US$ 1099, and the rival NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080 Founder’s Edition priced at US$ 1199 as a comparison to see the performance of Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT Drop point.
| CPU | Intel Core i9-13900K (Re-size BAR On) |
| motherboard | ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero |
| Memory | Kingston FURY Beast DDR5-6000 16GBx2 |
| heat sink | ASUS ROG Strix LC II 360 ARGB White Edition |
| heat transfer medium | Thermalright TF8 |
| graphics card | MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition |
| store | Kingston FURY Renegade SSD 2TB Seagate FireCuda 530 NVMe SSD 2TB |
| power supply | FSP Hydro PTM PRO ATX 3.0 (PCIe 5.0) 1200W |
| working system | Windows 11 Professional 21H2 |
3DMark
Let’s first look at the indicative 3DMark running points.
In the Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme tests that simulate DirectX 12 games, the GPU scores of Radeon RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT increased by nearly 30% and nearly 13% compared to RX 6950 XT. If compared with GeForce RTX 4080, RX 7900 XTX is almost tied or wins by 1%, while RX 7900 XT is regarding 12% behind.
The Speed Way test simulating the DirectX 12 Ultimate game incorporates ray tracing, so the RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT has grown by 46% and 25% compared to the RX 6950 XT, but it will lag behind the RTX 4080 by 20% and 30%.
The Port Royal test is also a simulated ray tracing game. The RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT has grown by 43% and 23% compared to the RX 6950 XT, and is 11% and 24% behind the RTX 4080.
Finally, seeing the DXR test of purely calculating ray tracing performance, RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT has grown by 63% and 40% compared with RX 6950 XT, but still lags behind RTX 4080 by 44% and 52%.
legacy rasterized games
In the game environment without ray tracing, the performance of RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT is quite impressive, with a total average growth of 33% and 11% compared with RX 6950 XT.
It is very interesting to match the RTX 4080. Taking the 4K resolution with the largest GPU load as an example, RX 7900 XTX can lead by up to 20% in “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II” (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II), “F1 22” and “Border Forbidden 3” ( Borderlands 3) also leads by around 16%.
Other games are mutually beneficial. In the total of the 21 games tested, the RX 7900 XTX is only regarding 2% ahead of the RTX 4080, while the RX 7900 XT is regarding 15% behind on average.
Competitive first-person shooter
From the measured data, it feels that the RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT has not yet completed the optimization for competitive first-person shooter games, and some scores even lag behind the RX 6950 XT. It may have to wait for future driver update adjustments.
ray tracing games
The ray tracing ability of RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT has actually grown a lot. Compared with RX 6950 XT, the overall game performance has increased by 40% and 17%, respectively, but it is still significantly inferior to RTX 4080, lagging behind by 16% and 30% respectively.
FSR games
Compared with the DLSS super-resolution function of NVIDIA’s main AI technology, the AMD camp is to introduce the FSR of Temporal Upscaling timing amplification technology, and games with this function can also be opened to NVIDIA GPUs, allowing low-end GPUs to achieve this function. High resolution gaming environment.
In the heavy-duty 4K ray tracing game, RX 7900 XTX / RX 7900 XT can double the frame rate per second by turning on FSR at most. 50%+ FPS increase. In God of War without ray tracing, the FPS with FSR 2.0 also increased by 23% to 30%.
In addition, compared with DLSS, except “Cyberpunk 2077”, “F1 22”, “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales” (Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales) that have been imported into DLSS 3 because The FPS of frame generation is much higher, and the FPS performance of other FSRs and DLSS 2 is quite similar.
Power Consumption vs. Temperature
By connecting the power contacts and the PCIe slot to detect the actual power, the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT compared with the RX 6950 XT, the power consumption still drops following the performance growth, which shows that the energy efficiency has improved a lot. But they are still slightly higher than RTX 4080.
In addition, when the size of the radiator is smaller than that of the RTX 4080 original version, the temperature of the GPU chip during the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT burn-in is actually well controlled, but the memory temperature reaches 88°C and 86°C It is slightly higher.
However, the three fans of RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT have a full-load speed of more than 1700 rpm during burn-in, and the noise is indeed a little more obvious than that of the RTX 4080 Founding Edition, which has two fans with a speed of only 1300 rpm, but it is generally used The environment is usually covered by the system case fans, so don’t worry too much regarding it.
Summarize
In the face of NVIDIA’s offensive, AMD chose to avoid the most powerful GeForce RTX 4090, Rdeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT with a price of US$ 999 / 899, and besieged the GeForce RTX 4080 priced at US$ 1199, which is quite clever.
RX 7900 XTX is only regarding 2% better than RTX 4080 when ray tracing is not turned on. Although it feels good, it is US$ 200 cheaper than RTX 4080. And in specific games, the RX 7900 XTX can even lead the RTX 4080 by 15% to 20%. If the games you often play are among them, the RX 7900 XTX actually has a pretty good price/performance ratio.
Furthermore, if the power connector is not replaced with 12VHPWR, using the RX 7900 series does not need to consider a dedicated power cable or purchase a new ATX 3.0 power supply. The upgrade threshold is much smaller than that of RTX 4080 / RTX 4090 .
But looking back at the RX 7900 XT is a bit of a pity. After all, you only need to spend 11% more of your starting budget to buy the RX 7900 XTX, and you can have an extra 20% performance. We recommend spending more on the RX 7900 XT if permitted. Bar!
Ray tracing is still AMD’s weak point, and if you’re a fan of crazy lighting chase games, then the RX 7900 series is not for you.
It can be expected that AMD will introduce two new technologies in the first half of 2023.
The first is FSR 3, which will introduce Fluid Motion Frames similar to NVIDIA DLSS 3 frame generation, and amplify the overall FPS by interpolating frames, and the performance can reach twice that of FSR 2. Then there is HYPR-RX, which is similar to NVIDIA Reflex technology, which adjusts the rendering queue of the game through the driver to achieve the effect of reducing latency.
The combination of the above two technologies is expected to bring significant performance improvements to Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs, so let’s wait and see!
