Monday, October 31st 2022
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX RDNA3 Prototype Leaked, Confirms Reference Cooler Design
Here's what is possibly the very first picture of an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX RDNA3 graphics card. AMD engineering samples and prototypes tend to use red color PCBs, which is what this card is. It reveals what could be the final design of the reference cooling solution for the card, and it seems to match the teasers the company put out in its Ryzen 7000-series launch event.
The RX 7900 XTX cooling solution design builds on that of its predecessor. The card itself has 3 slots thick, but slightly longer than the RX 6900 XT. The aluminium fin-stack heatsink is bulkier than the one on the RX 6900 XT cooler, and appears to be bursting out of the vents. It stretches out to the edges of the cooler shroud. The bulge toward the tail-end could be housing the tips of the heat-pipes. The prototype card has two 8-pin PCIe power inputs. There's no backplate, because the PCB has several headers in place for diagnostics and developmental use by AIBs and OEMs.
Source:
HXL (Twitter)
The RX 7900 XTX cooling solution design builds on that of its predecessor. The card itself has 3 slots thick, but slightly longer than the RX 6900 XT. The aluminium fin-stack heatsink is bulkier than the one on the RX 6900 XT cooler, and appears to be bursting out of the vents. It stretches out to the edges of the cooler shroud. The bulge toward the tail-end could be housing the tips of the heat-pipes. The prototype card has two 8-pin PCIe power inputs. There's no backplate, because the PCB has several headers in place for diagnostics and developmental use by AIBs and OEMs.
75 Comments on AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX RDNA3 Prototype Leaked, Confirms Reference Cooler Design
New design is ugly AF.
Well done AMD!
However, AMD is slightly behind nvidia in terms of fab process this gen, and MCM will have at least a small performance penalty compared to monolithic, I simply don't see the winning on pure efficiency this gen.
I like how the triangles on the fanhub visually connect the fins, plays with my eyes a bit, its of no consequences, but its the sorta thing I would do myself
Nvidia's GPUs are more complex than AMD's meaning they also include Tensor cores. AMD split it's gaming and server design, so yes, it can be more efficient in gaming. But probably it will still get butchered in AI and pro applications.
I don't think so. Most people will be happy with 95% performance for 100W less power & heat.
But the actual capability of those things can go up to 360W per connector if using HCS rated components.
These days, transistors size only really decrease between transistors technology. We will see smaller transistors when they switch to one of the gate all round tech. But before that all of those are just tech to pack a similar size transistors as tight as possible.
There is still many benefits of that, the main is the circuits became shorter while doing it meaning less energy spend propagating signal and since electron have less to travel, it's easier to clock thing higher. But in the end you need about the same power to make the transistors switch.
The mains reasons why AMD might be so efficient this gen is 1, they still probably don't have anything like the tensor cores that are dark silicon if you don't use DLSS and 2, they cleanup as much dark silicon from the past. Their new chip will be very lean.
They won't be able to redo that trick a second time and at some point, they will need tensor cores or something equivalent. But right now, they will be able to produce a much smaller chip that will be easier to power and cheaper to produce.
Scythe used to have this monstrous 5-heatpipe gpu block that was 2 slots tall with a slim 120x12 fan, but you could put a 25mm one there (making it 2.5 slot tall). It made the card silent and have significantly better temps than the crap they put even on modern cards. It was only 200W though, but it was also single fan...
Btw @Wizzard could you include in your upcomming test if thermalpads on the back plate is needed like on the reference 6900/6950XT and how thick it need to bee.