In its newest knowledge dump regarding its mighty new Radeon RX 7900 collection graphics playing cards, AMD is upping the ante on its most well-liked comparability with Nvidia’s second-tier RTX 4080 GPUs. The RX 7900 boards, in line with AMD, are extra environment friendly, higher designed, extra dependable, cheaper, offer you extra graphics reminiscence, and are simply plain extra highly effective.
Nonetheless, with the NDA on the RTX 4080 nonetheless ticking when AMD launched the info, it stopped in need of publishing direct efficiency comparability knowledge between the RX 7900 XTX and Nvidia’s RTX 4080.
AMD confirmed off the design of the 7900 XT and XTX boards, highlighting that even the XTX is each shorter at 287mm and slimmer at 2.5 slots than the RTX 4080, which measures 304mm and takes up a beefy three full slots, identical to the monster RTX 4090 card. The AMD boards even have extra energy phases than the equal RTX 4080 playing cards and completely sidestep the 16-pin energy connectors which have confirmed so problematic for Nvidia.
AMD predictably took the chance to additionally remind the world and its PC-gaming canine that solely it may provide a graphics card with each DisplayPort 2.1 for optimum refresh charges and resolutions, and USB Kind-C.
And, in fact, you get extra graphics reminiscence from AMD—both 20GB with the 7900 XT or 24GB with the 7900 XTX. The RTX 4080 16GB has, effectively, 16GB.
After all, the backdrop to the entire above is pricing, with the XT and XTX pitched at $899 and $999 respectively, whereas the RTX 4080 16GB clocks in at $1,199. All of these numbers are, in fact, MSRPs fairly than essentially what you will pay in the actual world. However they’re definitely indicative that the AMD boards will probably be cheaper, nonetheless a lot you find yourself really paying.
RX 7900 XTX | RX 7900 XT | |
---|---|---|
Compute Items | 96 | 84 |
RDNA 3 cores | 6,144 | 5,376 |
Recreation clock (GHz) | 2.3 | 2 |
Reminiscence | 24GB GDDR6 | 20GB GDDR6 |
Reminiscence bus | 384-bit | 320-bit |
Infinity Cache | 96MB | 80MB |
Whole Board Energy (watt) | 355 | 300 |
Value (MSRP) | $999 | $899 |
If all of that makes for a pleasant narrative for AMD, arguably there are a few catches. First, even when these AMD costs are decrease than Nvidia’s, the RX 7900-series continues to be a tonne of cash. The scant $100 low cost for the XT over the XTX is especially disappointing.
The opposite situation is efficiency. As we stated, AMD has not but offered direct comparability knowledge between the RX 7900-series and Nvidia’s RTX 40-Sequence boards. However the newest slide deck did present extra knowledge factors evaluating the RX 7900 XT and XTX with AMD’s personal Radeon RX 6950 XT (opens in new tab) board. Allowing for AMD may have rigorously chosen the numbers to place the brand new GPUs in the absolute best gentle, the beneficial properties in efficiency aren’t precisely stellar.
AMD quotes a headline enhance in old-school raster efficiency of “as much as” 67 %. That determine, in fact, applies to the top-spec RX 7900 XTX. Look extra carefully, nonetheless, and you will find that the RX 7900 XT averages round 25 % sooner than the outdated RX 6950 within the 4 video games AMD quotes for normal raster efficiency: Resident Evil Village, Name of Responsibility: Trendy Warfare 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and Watch Canine: Legion.
The RX 7900 XT will not be the very high tier GPU, however it’s nonetheless $899 MSRP and prone to promote above that determine at the very least within the quick run. So, it may effectively find yourself costlier than a RX 6950 XT in the actual world in return for a comparatively puny efficiency uptick.
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The figures for ray tracing efficiency are higher, with AMD claiming as much as 82 extra efficiency than the RX 6950 XT. However right here once more, for the RX 7900 XT fairly than XTX, AMD’s personal numbers present a ray-tracing enhance of between simply 17 % 64 % over the 6950.
For sure, all of this solely serves to substantiate that, if you happen to’re contemplating the RX 7900 XT vs. RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab), then the extra highly effective XTX is clearly the higher worth choice. However the issue stays that any four-figure $ or £ GPU is hardly a real worth proposition. With a bit of luck, we’ll see pricing tumble on all these new GPUs from each AMD and Nvidia. However at present pricing, nearly as good as these new GPUs are, they are not practically thrilling as they might have been at extra accessible value factors.