All eyes are on AMD to see how it will react now that NVIDIA has launched the most recent wave of video cards with the tremendously potent RTX 4090. The company unveiled today the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, two GPUs with muddled names that run on its brand-new RDNA 3 architecture. AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su asserted on stage at its launch event in Las Vegas that the new technology offers a 54 per cent improvement in performance per watt over the prior GPUs. In an apparent dig at NVIDIA’s power-guzzling (and PSU cable-melting) RTX 4090, she also underlined that AMD is focusing on offering complicated performance with appropriate power utilisation.
Additionally, AMD is attempting to undercut the prices of its primary rival, as is customary for the company. While the RX 7900 XT will cost $899, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX will cost $999. On December 13th, both cards will go on sale. That is far more affordable than the $1,599 RTX 4090 and $1,199 RTX 4080.
These cards do more than merely increase specs. According to Su, RDNA 3 is the first chiplet-based GPU in the world, providing it with a modular design that can be easily modified in the future. These chiplets currently have a GPU compute die made in 5nm and a memory cache die made in 6nm. It has 58 billion transistors and can handle up to 24GB of GDDR6 RAM in addition to up to 61 teraflops of computing capability (up from a maximum of 23 TFLOPs in RDNA 2).
Naturally, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the company’s top model, comes with 24GB of RAM, while the 7900 XT will only have 20GB. Both cards resemble AMD’s previous generation of hardware, despite having larger fans and a more streamlined heatsink. You won’t need any new power cables for these cards, AMD SVP Sam Naffziger said in jest; you should be able to drop them into your current setup simply.
Ray tracing has always been one of AMD’s weak spots, but the new cards, according to the manufacturer, contain a next-generation accelerator with 50% better performance per compute unit. They will provide new, focused teaching, 1.5 times as many rays in flight, and improved ray box sorting. Hopefully, this indicates that ray tracing parity with NVIDIA’s cards will be closer. With support for 480Hz 4K gaming and 165Hz 8K performance, AMD’s new Radiance Display Engine is another highlight of the Radeon 7000 GPUs. (And sure, we agree that the latter is a stretch.)
So how do these cards seem when printed? The RX 7900 XTX has 96 compute units that each consumes 355 watts of power and run at speeds of up to 2.3GHz in addition to its enormous 24GB of GDDR6 RAM. The 7900 XT, on the other hand, has 20GB of GDDR6 memory coupled with 84 CUs, a 2GHz clock speed, and a 300-watt power draw. Along with Samsung, AMD has collaborated on a DisplayPort 2.1 monitor that could debut early in the upcoming year. Unexpectedly, Samsung provided a delicious nugget: its new Odyssey Neo G9 monitor will feature an 8K ultrawide resolution. (A better issue would be whether anyone should even be striving for 8K gaming.)
According to AMD, the RX 7900 XTX can play Valorant at up to 704 frames per second and Apex Legends at up to 295 frames per second. Given that DisplayPort 1.4’s maximum refresh rate is 240Hz, that is a significant amount of performance that current monitors won’t even notice. Additionally, AMD claims that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla with Fidelity FX Super Resolution runs up to 96 frames per second on its GPUs (FSR).
Of course, any comparison to NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 is conspicuously absent. It’ll be interesting to see how competitive the RDNA 3 GPUs will be; perhaps AMD simply didn’t have time to benchmark that card.
