AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

[W1zzard]

I think this $900 price is only temporary to help clean out remaining high end RX 6000 cards. I don't see many people buying this model until it's down well below $700, and I'm sure AMD is ok with that.

That's a very good point you're making. Let me mention that in the conclusion

 

[gupsterg]

As always thank you W1zzard for great reviews. Bounty of data to feast on .

 

[ZoneDymo]

why the insane multi monitor and video playback power consumption?

 

[shovenose]

Thank you for the review. I was pretty sure I was going to get a 7900XT but based on this review, I’m not so sure, and I might either go for a used 6900XT or a new 7900XTX… Although, since I don’t get paid til Thursday I might not be buying much of anything if I do decide to go new given they’ll probably be all sold out by then.

All that said, the XT should be $849 or $799 not $899 IMO. The XTX at $999 is fine in todays world I just don’t think the price on the XT is right in relation to how much performance is lost compared to the XTX.

Anyone have Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 benchmarks for these? Please?

 

[BigMack70]

Well, the 7900XTX is 19% faster and 10% more expensive... gotta sell defective dies somehow right, may as well make the top product look like better value.

It's pretty disgusting that both AMD and Nvidia are price gouging everyone horribly so that their most insanely overpriced products are the ones with the most "value".

I hope these rot on shelves alongside the 4080.

 

[tabascosauz]

Thank you for the review. I was pretty sure I was going to get a 7900XT but based on this review, I’m not so sure, and I might either go for a used 6900XT or a new 7900XTX… Although, since I don’t get paid til Thursday I might not be buying much of anything if I do decide to go new given they’ll probably be all sold out by then.

All that said, the XT should be $849 or $799 not $899 IMO. The XTX at $999 is fine in todays world I just don’t think the price on the XT is right in relation to how much performance is lost compared to the XTX.

Anyone have Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 benchmarks for these? Please?

+1 especially since the 5800X3D walks all over everything else in MSFS, definitely want to see how both 13th gen and 7000 series do there

On one hand, the reference cooler package is just perfect to me, temps are low, power is acceptable, no more 6900XT power spikes, performance is ok to me in relation to a product I'll never consider buying (4080 - hate the FE's size, hate the connector, hate the fact there are no more decent Nvidia AIBs)

On the other hand, this thing is going to be $1300-1400cad. That's nuts.

I guess I'll wait for the price to drop like 6900XT. Not paying $1400 just for MW2.

Also, @W1zzard during what test are the temps taken? Surprising that the XT and XTX came out identical, HWUB had the XTX at 9°C higher in game load

 

[ARF]

The performance is shockingly low.

It only manages to tie the 2-year-old RTX 3000 top card, while standing very poorly against the new RTX 4000 generation.

What a disgusting AMD move!

This thingie should cost not more $500 and even then I would be generous to pay that much for all the flaws that come with it!

 

[BigMack70]

This thingie should cost not more $500 and even then I would be generous to pay that much for all the flaws that come with it!

Yup. This is obviously a $500 GPU, and the XTX and 4080 are $700 GPUs.

But greedy corporations are gonna greed I suppose. It's a shame, and this move makes NO sense from AMD, who really need a good generation of GPUs to regain market share. Not gonna happen at these price points. I guess they're aiming to get down into single digit market share.

 

[wheresmycar]

Thanks for the review @W1zzard

A special note to AMD and NVIDIA (OUR SAVIOURS) as always nowadays... great cards!! but for the price NO THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH.... stick it where the sun don't shine!

 

[ModEl4]

RX 7900XT should have been ≤$849.
If 4070Ti has the same specs as "unlaunched" 4080 12GB, at $799 4070Ti will have better performance/$ in 1440p for those interested in high refresh QHD gaming (and for those interested in 4K there is the 7900XTX model / and if we take account Raytracing even in 4K 4070Ti will have better performance/$ when raytracing is enabled)
Just buy a 7900XTX for 4K or wait for 7800XT (full N32 i mean) for high refresh QHD gaming.

 

[ARF]

RX 7900XT should have been ≤$849.
If 4070Ti has the same specs as "unlaunched" 4080 12GB, at $799 4070Ti will have better performance/$ in 1440p for those interested in high refresh QHD gaming (and for those interested in 4K there is the 7900XTX model / and if we take account Raytracing even in 4K 4070Ti will have better performance/$ when raytracing is enabled)
Just buy a 7900XTX for 4K or wait for 7800XT (full N32 i mean) for high refresh QHD gaming.

Nah, this "7900 XT" is the same stupid shenanigan as nvidia's infamous attempt to deceive everyone with "RTX 4080-12".
This thingie should have been called 7800 with all the honesty, and its memory pool lowered to 16 GB because 16 GB is plenty for this junk disabled chip.

 

[ModEl4]

Nah, this "7900 XT" is the same stupid shenanigan as nvidia's infamous attempt tavo deceive everyone with "RTX 4080-12".
This thingie should have been called 7800 with all the honesty, and its memory pool lowered to 16 GB because 16 GB is plenty for this junk disabled chip.

Sure, i said the same thing 40 days ago (should have been 7800XT at $649-$699 since it's just a cut down N31) when AMD announced the models , i just wanted to point out that even an uninspiring value like a RTX 4070Ti at $799 will make this look like a bad value...

 

[holyprof]

AMD copied Nvidia with these cards

Card name​	What it really is​
4080​	4070 Ti​
4070 Ti​	4070​
7900 XTX​	7900 XT​
7900 XT​	7900​

I'm still having some hope for 4070 (Ti) or 7800 (XT) priced within my budget, but not holding my breath. Giving a full skip to all those $800+ (€1200+ in my country) GPUs.

 

[zlobby]

Frametime results, finally! Great review!

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Yup. This is obviously a $500 GPU, and the XTX and 4080 are $700 GPUs.

But greedy corporations are gonna greed I suppose. It's a shame, and this move makes NO sense from AMD, who really need a good generation of GPUs to regain market share. Not gonna happen at these price points. I guess they're aiming to get down into single digit market share.

They're already there, Nvidia sits at 88 percent, and 8, and Intel 4 in more recent sales polls. It's not 100 percent perfect but it does indicate AMDs attempt at being a "premium brand" is backfiring

 

[BigMack70]

They're already there, Nvidia sits at 88 percent, and 8, and Intel 4 in more recent sales polls. It's not 100 percent perfect but it does indicate AMDs attempt at being a "premium brand" is backfiring

I haven't understood anything AMD has done for over 10 years. Their last truly competitive top end product was the HD 7970. But they keep trying to play "me too" with their marketing and pricing, as if they can compete with Nvidia's top products. The market recognizes this for the obvious nonsense that it is, and nobody buys AMD's graphics cards.

They need to completely rebrand and reprice their prodcuts as being the gamer-friendly alternative to Nvidia, with aggressive pricing that exposes Nvidia's greedy anti-consumer practices.

What do they do instead? Market themselves as the superior 8k gaming option and price their cards so high that nobody is going to care to buy them. Their GPU division - at least those in charge of pricing and marketing - is a joke.

 

[Juventas]

Fantastic energy efficiency

It's less efficient than the RTX 4080. Isn't that it's primary competitor, at least in this review?

 

[Chrispy_]

As predicted by many people last month based on specs alone, the price of this card is wrong for its specs and performance.

The specs are cut down from the XTX by almost exactly 1/6th, and it performs at close enough to 5/6th of the XTX. It should cost no more than 5/6th of an XTX ($829) and arguably even that is too much because at that price there's no performance/$ penalty for skipping it and just getting the XTX instead. Realistically, it's a $749 card if it is going to coexist with a $999 XTX. I guess we'll see over the coming days just how realistic a $999 XTX is though....

The biggest problem with the 7900XT's MSRP isn't the price relative to the XTX, it's the 6900XT you can buy new for $650.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Honestly both cards are hugely underwhelmimg, 7900XT barely 22% faster than 6900XT in 1440 and 4K, huge power draw for mulit-monitor setups, overall worse efficiency than the 4080, p!ss poor RT performance. The hype was massive and to not even get anywhere near the 50% AMD promised is a joke. Maybe the drivers are garbage, but I doubt it for most games. If Nvidia drops 4080 price $200 AMD will be forced to major price cuts themselves. Also what disappoints is again seeing how relative performance drops in most games at 4K despite the larger bus widths. At this stage I'll keep waiting but looking more like a 6800XT, 3080 upgrade for my 1080 Ti although I want to move to a 4K monitor for productivity work and these cards won't be ideal for newer games.

 

[ymdhis]

Regarding the multi-monitor tests, how did you test that? There's a known "not-a-bug" where if you use screens with different refresh rates, the card can't lock into the vertical sync period to do its job at the minimum time, and instead has to run the memory at max speed to be able to refresh properly at the mismatching speeds. Since it has to run the memory at full speed, the card will end up using much more memory. Both my Vega and Polaris behaved like that, until I realized that I can set them to matching refresh rates and multi-monitor power usage fell down to the same level as single monitor one (note: this is with using 60Hz monitors only, with the secondary one sometime dropping to 59.94 because of HDMI connections dropping the max framerate on my amplifier).

 

[cityuser]

And suddenly 12bit color depth ,8K VC-1 decode/encode and display port 2.1 became unimportant when this is the advantage the AMD eqipped with ?

 

[W1zzard]

Also, @W1zzard during what test are the temps taken? Surprising that the XT and XTX came out identical, HWUB had the XTX at 9°C higher in game load

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT Review

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is built on the same Navi 31 GPU as the XTX, but with fewer chiplets, which helps bring down the price. In our review this $900 graphics card is able to match the performance of GeForce RTX 3090 Ti that launched at $2000 just a few months ago.

www.techpowerup.com

Thermal Analysis chart. If you report "max" temp, then you'll get a higher number, but that's unrealistic. I report the long-term stable temperature, as that's what matters for gaming.

Regarding the multi-monitor tests, how did you test that? There's a known "not-a-bug" where if you use screens with different refresh rates, the card can't lock into the vertical sync period to do its job at the minimum time, and instead has to run the memory at max speed to be able to refresh properly at the mismatching speeds. Since it has to run the memory at full speed, the card will end up using much more memory.

That's exactly how I test, intentionally. The thing is that this same test works perfectly fine on NVIDIA with lower power draw, so it must be possible.
It does not "have" to run the memory at full speed, that's just the way AMD runs their card, which is suboptimal.

 

[bearClaw5]

It only manages to tie the 2-year-old RTX 3000 top card, while standing very poorly against the new RTX 4000 generation.

The 3090ti came out earlier this year.

 

[ARF]

The 3090ti came out earlier this year.

The very same GA102 chip which was launched back in 2020, exactly 2 years and 3 months ago and counting

NVIDIA GA102 GPU Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

 

[Chrispy_]

Honestly both cards are hugely underwhelmimg, 7900XT barely 22% faster than 6900XT in 1440 and 4K, huge power draw for mulit-monitor setups, overall worse efficiency than the 4080, p!ss poor RT performance.

You're comparing the 2nd-tier model with last generation's flagship and disappointed that it's only 22% faster?

How is that different to Nvidia, or previous AMD generations going back at least half a decade?

As for multi-monitor power draw, that's likely a bug with launch-day drivers and should be patched soon. Neither the drivers nor the reference card's power delivery look great, but at the same time it's not as if either of Nvidia's last two launch generations have been problem-free either. That's why we get driver updates!

Efficiency is a big one that won't be solved with software or drivers; The fact it's not as efficient as Nvidia is potentially down to the chiplet design, which adds energy cost overheads and is one of the main reasons we only get monolithic AMD CPUs for laptops. Chiplet design increases the physical distance between bits of silicon that have to communicate with each other, and the additional interfaces between chiplets all have some internal resistance. It's small, but it adds up. Even if it doesn't beat the 4080, it's still MUCH more efficient than the previous generations.

You have to remember that every deesign decision has implications/drawbacks. Chiplet design reduces costs, at the expense of some efficiency (among other things) and with RDNA3 we are seeing cheaper cards. Unlike the 6900-series, the XTX is ~$400 less than the cheapest 4080 cards and the XT, even at it's "incorrect" price is better performance/$ than the 4080 by a decent margin. We'll have to see what price Nvidia launches the 4080 12GB 4070Ti at to truly compare the 7900XT against the competion though.