Friday, August 25th 2023
AMD Unveils Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT Graphics Cards
AMD today at Gamescom unveiled the Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7700 XT performance-segment graphics cards. Designed for maxed out gaming at 1440p with ray tracing, the two are designed to square off against NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 series, offering competitive performance and pricing. The two are based on AMD's latest RDNA3 graphics architecture, and use the 5 nm foundry process where it matters. Both cards claim to offer not just superior performance to the specific NVIDIA RTX 40-series SKUs they're designed to compete with, but also better future-proofing, with more video memory on offer.
At the heart of the two is the new "Navi 32" GPU, AMD's second largest chip from this generation. It is a chiplet GPU, just like the "Navi 31" that powers the RX 7900 series, albeit slightly scaled down. The graphics compute die (GCD), the die with the main graphics rendering and compute machinery, is built on the 5 nm EUV foundry node. It is flanked by four memory cache dies (MCDs), each built on the 6 nm foundry node. These are the same MCDs found in the "Navi 31," but four in number instead of six, which gives the "Navi 32" a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface.
The Radeon RX 7800 XT maxes out the "Navi 32," enabling all 60 compute units (CU) physically present, which works out to 3,840 stream processors, 120 AI accelerators, 60 Ray accelerators, 64 MB of Infinity Cache, and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across the chip's full 256-bit memory interface. The GPU ticks at 2124 MHz Game clocks, and 2430 MHz boost; while its memory runs at 19.5 Gbps, resulting in 624 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The card is configured with 263 W of total board power, and its reference design comes with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.
The Radeon RX 7700 XT is cut down from the same "Navi 32" silicon as the RX 7800 XT, and uses the same reference board design. The biggest change here, is that the memory size is reduced to 12 GB, the Infinity Cache to 48 MB, and the memory bus width to 192-bit. One of the four MCDs on the "Navi 32" silicon is disabled. Over on the GCD, the RX 7700 XT is configured with 54 CU, which works out to 3,456 stream processors, 108 AI accelerators, 54 Ray accelerators, and 180 TMUs. The GPU runs at higher clock speeds than the RX 7800 XT, with 2171 MHz Game clocks, and 2544 MHz boost. The memory speed, however, is lower, at 18 Gbps, which over the 192-bit memory interface, puts out 432 GB/s of bandwidth. The RX 7700 XT is configured with 245 W of total board power, and has the same dual 8-pin power input setup as the RX 7800 XT.
In terms of performance, AMD claims that the Radeon RX 7800 XT offers anywhere between 2% to 23% performance gains over the GeForce RTX 4070 in 13 of the 19 games they tested. Testing was done at 1440p with max settings for each game. AMD also claims that the extra 4 GB of memory should give you better future-proofing. The Radeon RX 7700 XT, on the other hand, is shown scoring anywhere between 1% and 31% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, in 16 out of 19 games that the two cards were compared in.
The reason AMD chose the RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB for comparisons, is because it intends to price the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT competitively to them. The Radeon RX 7800 XT is priced at USD $499, while the RX 7700 XT is priced at $449. Both cards go on sale from September 6, 2023.
At the heart of the two is the new "Navi 32" GPU, AMD's second largest chip from this generation. It is a chiplet GPU, just like the "Navi 31" that powers the RX 7900 series, albeit slightly scaled down. The graphics compute die (GCD), the die with the main graphics rendering and compute machinery, is built on the 5 nm EUV foundry node. It is flanked by four memory cache dies (MCDs), each built on the 6 nm foundry node. These are the same MCDs found in the "Navi 31," but four in number instead of six, which gives the "Navi 32" a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface.
The reason AMD chose the RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB for comparisons, is because it intends to price the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT competitively to them. The Radeon RX 7800 XT is priced at USD $499, while the RX 7700 XT is priced at $449. Both cards go on sale from September 6, 2023.
104 Comments on AMD Unveils Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT Graphics Cards
There is one scenario reviewers should consider, if you plan to keep a gpu for a very long time, like those people who still use a gtx 1060 or rx 580, how realistic is you would still be able to enable ray tracing in games from 2025 or later and still have a reasonable playable experience, is it possible rtx 4060's and 4070's will mostly be used in raster mode and ray tracing will be reserved to future rtx 5090....etc. ?
Do you really think a 4090 will work on a full path ray traced game in the Cyperpunk AAA category of games? No way!
Game developers are largely constrained by current console hardware. A game needs to run acceptably on the weakest specced device it’s supported on.
So 2023 that would be Xbox Series S or in some cases the Nintendo Switch. (Let’s ignore mid-range Android handsets to simplify this discussion.)
No games are only designed for the RTX 4090 class hardware. That market is insignificant.
Nintendo Switch? 130 million units and counting…
The 7800XT in particular would be a tough sell without FSR 3.0 and a free copy of Starfield, since it's looking worse than the 6800XT for more money. Unless a bunch of very marginal gains matter to you (efficiency, RT, AV1, FSR 3.0, slightly more bandwidth) this is basically a 80% of a 6800XT with 10% higher clocks. My prediction is that the fight between a 6800XT and 7800XT will be a wash at best, with feature support and other perks tipping the balance.
It should have been max $429 (and $399 in order to create the same impression as 7800XT price positioning)
It doesn't matter that the GCD is 200mm² , Navi 23 & 24 has small sizes also but AMD launched them (full vs cut-down version) with sufficient price difference.For example RX6600 and RX6600XT has the same die size and the same memory but 6600XT was +15% more expensive throughout the life of 6600XT (and 6650XT is 20%++ more expensive)
RX7700XT has one less MCD and 4GB less memory, that's around $30 less in retail for the MCD only (37mm² at 6nm, check RX6500XT pricing and extrapolate) and an additional $20 less in retail price just for the memory different, so $50 without even touching the performance difference and the fact the RX7700XT is a (slightly) cut-down Navi32...
So 7800XT at the same price and with the same memory as 4060Ti 16GB is going to be around +37% faster in QHD raster (based on AMD claims) but 7700XT with only +20% better QHD performance vs 4060Ti is asking $50 more?
In 4K 7800XT should match 6800XT or be close and at $499 is a better deal even now with the lower 6800XT prices, but 7700XT is going to be at best 25% faster than 6700XT and based on the low retail pricing of 6700XT should have been a $399 product if AMD wanted to create buzz and at the same time close somewhat the pricing gap with RX7600
Navi 32's GCD is small by Monolithic die standards, thanks to the separate MCDs that a chiplet design allows, and on one of TSMCs higher-yielding processes - one which is considered mature by now as well.
I can either spend £60 on Starfield, or I can lose £60 selling my 6800XT and buying a 7800XT.
This gen, amd brought nothing to compete with the 4090. They thought that by naming them 7900 they would automatically be tier 9. But no, you can name them whatever you want, they are 8 tier gpus.
Just like XeSS works faster on Intel gpu's and it uses DP4a for all other gpu's.
Still the gap with RX7600 is big, I wonder if we are going to see a 7600XT with a little bit higher GPU and memory clocks and higher TBP (but within 1x8pin territory for the reference) but with 16GB, at $299 it would be an interesting proposal for 1080p gaming with lower settings but with ultra textures for future games.
I think both AMD/Nvidia feel gamers spending under 300 are lucky to even get a current generation gpu it's been like that for a while now.