While AMD has yet to officially launch the 7040 Series Phoenix APUs, yet another SKU has been spotted online, the 6-core/12-thread AMD Ryzen 5 7540U. Based on AMD's Zen 4 architecture and featuring RDNA3 iGPU, this SKU will join the recently spotted Ryzen 5 7640U and the Ryzen 7 7840U.

It is not clear how many SKUs will AMD actually have in the Ryzen 7040 U-Series, but so far three SKUs have leaked online. The earlier slide, which mentioned the Ryzen 7040 Series, put it in the thin and light segment with TDP ranging from 15 W to 28 W. Bear in mind that AMD will also have the 7040 series non-U Phoenix APUs that will fit the 35 W - 45 W "thin enthusiast" HS-series segment. There is also the "ultra enthusiast" HX-series segment with the recently launched 7045 Series Dragon Range APUs.

AMD's 4 nm "Phoenix" silicon could serious turn the company's fortunes around in the ultra-thin notebook space. The 28-Watt Ryzen 7 7840U surfaced on Cinebench R23 screenshots, where it is shown beating the previous-generation 55 W flagship, the Ryzen 9 6900HX. If this is any indication of performance across the board, then the 15-28 W models of Ryzen 7040-series "Phoenix" could unleash an open-season against competing 15-28 W-category 13th Gen Core processors that have lower P-core counts, such as 2P+8E. The 7840U has all eight "Zen 4" CPU cores enabled, along with a fast RDNA3 graphics architecture based iGPU. In the screenshot, the 7840U is shown with a Cinebench R23 multi-threaded score of 14285 points, a score that is higher than that of the "Zen 3+" based 6900HX "Rembrandt," and a touch below the 45 W Core i7-12800H, which means it could have the upper hand over several 13th Gen and 12 Gen SKUs in the 15-28 W category.

AMD could tease its next-generation graphics performance enhancement rivaling NVIDIA DLSS 3, at the 2023 Game Developers Conference (GDC 2023), slated for March 23. While the company didn't name it, its GDC 2023 session brief references an "exciting sneak peek of new FidelityFX technologies" that will be "available soon," meaning that it isn't the recently released FSR 2.2. We expect this to be the very first look at FSR 3.0.

AMD frantically dropped in the first mention of FSR 3.0 in its Radeon RX 7900 series RDNA3 announcement presentation (slide below). The company let out precious little details of the new technology except the mention that it offers double the frame-rate versus FSR 2 (at comparable image quality). Does this involve a frame-rate doubling technology similar to DLSS 3? We don't know yet. It could just be a more advanced upscaling algorithm that doubles performance at a given quality target compared to FSR 2. We'll know for sure later this month. It would be a coup of sorts for AMD if FSR 3.0 doesn't require RX 7000 series GPUs, and can run on older Radeon GPUs, whereas DLSS 3 requires the latest GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs.

Prices of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT RDNA3 graphics card are on a downward slope, with the card now starting at $800 on US computer hardware retailer Newegg. The ASRock RX 7900 XT Phantom Gaming, a custom-design graphics card, has been holding at $799.99 for roughly a week now, while the next cheapest card, an XFX co-branded AMD reference graphics card, is going for $839.99 on the site. These prices put the RX 7900 XT in a direct clash with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. The RX 7900 XT was launched with an AMD MSRP of $899.99, with a performance level that compelled NVIDIA to re-position the RTX 4070 Ti (originally announced as the $900 RTX 4080 12 GB), to $800. In our testing, the RX 7900 XT is about 5% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti in conventional raster 3D graphics, but with a ray tracing performance that's comparable to the previous-generation RTX 3080 Ti.

AMD's next-generation RDNA4 graphics architecture will retain a design-focus on gaming performance, without being drawn into an AI feature-set competition with rival NVIDIA. David Wang, SVP Radeon Technologies Group; and Rick Bergman, EVP of Computing and Graphics Business at AMD; gave an interview to Japanese tech publication 4Gamers, in which they dropped the first hints on the direction which the company's next-generation graphics architecture will take.

While acknowledging NVIDIA's movement in the GPU-accelerated AI space, AMD said that it didn't believe that image processing and performance-upscaling is the best use of the AI-compute resources of the GPU, and that the client segment still hasn't found extensive use of GPU-accelerated AI (or for that matter, even CPU-based AI acceleration). AMD's own image processing tech, FSR, doesn't leverage AI acceleration. Wang said that with the company introducing AI acceleration hardware with its RDNA3 architecture, he hopes that AI is leveraged in improving gameplay—such as procedural world generation, NPCs, bot AI, etc; to add the next level of complexity; rather than spending the hardware resources on image-processing.

MSI Radeon RX 7900 XTX Gaming Trio Classic, the company's first Radeon 7000 series RDNA3 graphics card, is finally listed online. American retailer Newegg put it up for sale at $1,100, a $100 premium over the $1000 AMD baseline price for the RX 7900 XTX. This is a "sold and shipped by Newegg" listing. MSI showed this card off last month, at the 2023 International CES. It pairs a custom-design PCB with a previous-generation Tri Frozr 2.0 cooling solution—the same one it used with its RX 6950 XT Gaming series. The PCB, however, is an MSI in-house design, with a meaty VRM that draws power from three 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and should hence feature a higher power-limit than the reference-design board, which has been known to scoop out a far greater overclocking headroom on other cards with a similar power setup (such as the ASUS TUF Gaming RX 7900 XTX).

The MSI RX 7900 XTX Gaming Trio Classic comes with clock speeds of 2.30 GHz game, and 2.50 GHz boost, which surprisingly are AMD's reference clocks. Perhaps MSI is saving factory-overclocks for the RX 7900 XTX Gaming X Trio Classic, which it will price even higher. Maxing out the 5 nm "Navi 31" GPU, the RX 7900 XTX offers 6,144 stream processors across 96 RDNA3 compute units, with 96 Ray Accelerators, 384 TMUs, 192 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, running 24 GB of memory at 20 Gbps (960 GB/s memory bandwidth).

PowerColor today teased its Radeon RX 7900 XTX Liquid Devil flagship graphics card. Designed for those with a DIY liquid cooling setup, the Liquid Devil essentially combines an RX 7900 XTX Red Devil PCB with a factory-fitted full-coverage water block. The water block is sourced from EK Water Blocks, just like with the previous-generation RX 6900 XT Liquid Devil, and is likely based on the company's Quantum Vector series, which combines nickel-plated copper primary material with a clear acrylic top that's studded with addressable RGB LEDs; and capped with vinyl decals specific to PowerColor. The card probably features a metal backplate with an illuminated PowerColor Devil logo. It remains to be seen if the Liquid Devil is differentiated from the air-cooled Red Devil OC Limited Edition with slightly higher factory-overclocks or power-limits.

Acer through its gamer-focused brand, Acer Predator, is reportedly preparing custom-design AMD Radeon graphics cards for launch in 2023. The company already made an entry into the DIY gaming PC components space with Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards, and Predator-branded high-end memory products, such as M.2 NVMe SSDs and memory kits. The company already showed off its engineering chops with custom-design graphics cards, such the likes of its Arc A770 Predator models, and it's expected that the Taiwanese PC giant will do the same with AMD Radeon cards. 2023 will see AMD ramp up its Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture, across several price-points.

AMD possibly has a straightforward path to increasing the performance of the "Navi 31" RDNA3 GPU to power future high-end SKUs, according to semiconductor engineer Tom Wassick. The GPU's main SIMD machinery is located in the Graphics Compute Die (GCD) built on the 5 nm EUV foundry process, surrounded by six Memory Cache Dies (MCDs) built on 6 nm, which each contain GDDR6 memory controllers, and a 16 MB segment of the GPU's 96 MB Infinity Cache memory.

In microscopic observations, Wassick noticed structures on the MCD which he thinks look like an array of through-silicon vias (TSVs), of the kind used in "Zen 3" and "Zen 4" CCDs, to wire out stacked 3D Vertical Cache memory on the L3D (L3 cache die). If the theory holds up, it could be possible for AMD to increase the L3 cache segment size per MCD from 16 MB, and the GPU's overall Infinity Cache memory size. With its RDNA2 graphics architecture (RX 6000 series), AMD significantly enlarged on-die caches on its GPUs, particularly the last-level L3 cache, even giving them the special branding of "Infinity Cache," claiming that they had a big impact in lubricating the memory sub-system, letting GPUs with 256-bit memory buses compete with NVIDIA GPUs with wider 320-bit to 384-bit interfaces.

AMD Radeon RX 400 series and RX 500 series graphics cards based on the "Polaris" graphics architecture are simply unable to run "Forspoken," as users on Reddit report. The game has certain DirectX 12 feature-level 12_1 API requirements that the architecture does not meet. Interestingly, NVIDIA's "Maxwell" graphics architecture, which predates AMD "Polaris" by almost a year, supports FL 12_1, and is able to play the game. Popular GPUs from the "Maxwell" generation include the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 960. Making matters much worse, AMD is yet to release an update to its Adrenalin graphics drivers for the RX Vega, RX 5000, and RX 6000 series that come with "Forspoken" optimization. Its latest 23.1.2 beta drivers that come with these optimizations only support the RX 7000 series RDNA3 graphics cards. It's now been over 50 days since the vast majority of AMD discrete GPUs have received a driver update.

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX RDNA3 graphics card does cross the 3 GHz engine clocks barrier, but not in gaming use-cases, finds a ComputerBase.de article, in which the German publication compares the overclocking experience between the RX 7000-series RDNA3 and NVIDIA RTX 40-series "Ada" architectures. The RX 7900 XTX was found to hit engine clock speeds as high as 3455 MHz, but when handling the Blender rendering benchmark, and not typical gaming workloads.

The GPU could even be pushed to 3548 MHz with a power-draw of around 400 W, but it wasn't stable, the article notes. The top frequencies the GPUs could hit with gaming workloads were around 2.90 GHz. We could be happening with games is that more of the GPU's hardware resources are tapping into its power-limit (such as the memory controllers, caches, and other special SIMD functions, which could be impacting the engine clock boosting headroom. ComputerBase.de used a Sapphire RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ custom-design graphics card in its testing, which comes with three 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and a higher overclocking headroom than what the reference-design cards are capable of.

MSI Afterburner is arguably the most popular graphics card overclocking utility that everyone from gamers to professional overclockers swear by. It is used across graphics card brands, and helps you tune up both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. While you enjoy Afterburner with your new-generation GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada" and Radeon RX 7000 series RDNA3 GPUs that were released in 2022, do remember that Afterburner's developer hasn't been paid a penny for it.

MSI Afterburner is developed by Russian national Alexey Nicolaychuk, who goes by the name Unwinder across tech forums. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early-2022, MSI stopped payments to Unwinder citing "political reasons." Unwinder had been independently (read: without payment) supporting Afterburner out of personal interest throughout 2022 in hopes that MSI would figure out a way to pay him. Interestingly, MSI PC hardware continued to be sold in the Russian market throughout 2022. Despite continuing to develop Afterburner throughout 2022 without payment, MSI hasn't resolved its payments. In a community post, Unwinder announced that he is finally calling it quits, and is halting development of the app. This development ensures that the app works reliably with new GPUs as they're being launched, fixes bugs, and patches security issues.

The online datasheets of some of the first AMD Ryzen 7040 series "Phoenix Point" mobile processors went live, detailing the processor's I/O feature-set. We learn that AMD has decided to give PCI-Express Gen 5 a skip with this silicon, at least in its mobile avatar. The Ryzen 7040 SoC puts out a total of 20 PCI-Express Gen 4 lanes, all of which are "usable" (i.e. don't count 4 lanes toward chipset-bus). This would mean that the silicon has a full PCI-Express 4.0 x16 interface for discrete graphics, and a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 link for a CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot; unlike the "Raphael" desktop MCM and the "Dragon Range" mobile MCM, whose client I/O dies put out a total of 28 Gen 5 lanes (24 usable, with x16 PEG + two x4 toward CPU-attached M.2 slots).

Another interesting aspect about "Phoenix Point" is its memory controllers. The SoC features a dual-channel (four sub-channel) DDR5 memory interface, besides support for LPDDR5 and LPDDR5x. DDR5-5600 and LPDDR5-7600 are the native speeds supported. What's really interesting is the maximum amount of memory supported, which stands at 256 GB—double that of "Raphael" and "Dragon Range," which top out at 128 GB. This bodes well for the eventual Socket AM5 APUs AMD will design based on the "Phoenix Point" silicon. Older Ryzen 5000G "Cezanne" desktop APUs are known for superior memory overclocking capabilities to 5000X "Vermeer," with the monolithic nature of the silicon favoring latencies. Something similar could be expected from "Phoenix Point."

MSI was conspicuous in its lack of a Radeon RX 7900 series RDNA3 graphics card when AMD launched these cards on December 13, 2022. The company later came out with a clarification that while it was skipping reference-design made-by-AMD (MBA) graphics cards under its marquee, it would release custom-design RX 7900 series cards in the first half of 2023 with some of the first cards being unveiled at CES. Well, here they are.

The MSI Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT Gaming Trio Classic gets the latter part of its name from the fact that MSI used the older Tri Frozr 2.0 cooling solution from the previous-generation of graphics cards (RX 6000 series and RTX 30-series), rather than the latest Tri Frozr 3.0 it unveiled with the RTX 40-series. This cooler also gets the slightly older TorX 4.0 fan compared to newer TorX 5.0 fans with the RTX 40-series. This cooler has dealt with 350 W-ish TDP cooling requirements of GPUs such as the RX 6950 XT or the RTX 3090, so we reckon they could suit the RX 7900 series. There's still a brand new custom-design PCB underneath it, which pulls power from a trio of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and so we could expect a fairly good power-limit for these cards.

AMD today released its first mobile discrete GPUs based on its latest RDNA3 graphics architecture, the Radeon RX 7600M series, and the RX 7600S series. Although based on the latest architecture, AMD decided to built these GPUs on monolithic 6 nm dies, along with many of the power-management features incorporated from Ryzen 6000-series "Rembrandt" processors. The unnamed silicon these GPUs are based on physically features 32 RDNA3 compute units (2,048 stream processors), along with the updated dual instruction-issue rate SIMD components, 2nd generation Ray Accelerators, and AI acceleration. The silicon also features a 128-bit GDDR6 memory interface, supporting speeds of up to 18 Gbps.

The Ryzen 7600M series consists of the top RX 7600M XT with 32 CU, and the slightly lower RX 7600M with 28 CU. Both come with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across the chip's 128-bit memory interface. The RX 7600M XT uses 18 Gbps memory clocks, while the RX 7600M uses 16 Gbps. The RX 7600M XT has a power band of 75 W to 120 W, while the RX 7600M needs 50 W to 90 W. The RX 7700S and RX 7600S have the same core-configurations as the RX 7600M XT and RX 7600M, respectively, but lower power draw (up to 100 W for the RX 7700S, and up to 75 W for the RX 7600S). Both GPUs feature updated display- and media-acceleration engines, with support for QHD+ displays up to 240 Hz. AMD claims that the RX 7600M XT beats the performance of desktop NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB.

AMD today launched two distinct kinds of mobile processors, the Ryzen 7045 "Dragon Range" serves the 45 W H- and HX-segments of performance and enthusiast notebooks with CPU core counts of up to 16-core/32-thread; while the U-segment, P-segment, and a portion of the H-segment (ranges of 15 W, 28 W, and 35 W), will be led by the Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix Point." Unlike the "Dragon Range" MCM, "Phoenix Point" is a monolithic silicon built entirely on the TSMC 4 nm EUV foundry node, and introduces a wealth of process-level and system-level power-management features.

AMD "Phoenix Point" combines an 8-core/16-thread CPU based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, with a powerful iGPU based on the latest RDNA3 graphics architecture, and a feature-packed AI acceleration engine based on the XDNA architecture AMD built after the Xilinx acquisition. The CPU component is a fully-fledged "Zen 4" CCX, with 8 CPU cores featuring 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per-core, and sharing a large 32 MB L3 cache. This is an increase from the previous generation "Rembrandt" and "Cezanne" dies that had a reduced 16 MB L3 shared among the eight "Zen 3" or "Zen 3+" CPU cores.

AMD's latest GPUs have been reported to be experiencing overheating issues, with many users claiming that the vapor chamber cooler works better in a vertical rather than a horizontal position. Regardless of orientation, vapor chamber coolers should equal roughly the same heat dissipation performance and move the heat away from the source; however, testing showed that some reference AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs feature defect coolers. According to the testing conducted by Roman "der8auer" Hartung, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX RDNA3 GPUs are experiencing problems with overheating caused by a faulty vapor chamber design.

What der8auer found is that these coolers could have a defect in the manufacturing process, where the liquid inside the vapor chamber faces problems in circulation after condensation. It could relate to manufacturing issues of the cooler itself, with an inadequate amount of fluid or insufficient pressure inside the chamber. For more in-depth testing and performance benchmarks, see the video below. It is important to note that we didn't see other reports that replicate this behavior, so always take these reports with a dash of salt.

FinalWire Ltd. today announced the immediate availability of AIDA64 Extreme 6.85 software, a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking tool for home users; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Engineer 6.85 software, a professional diagnostic and benchmarking solution for corporate IT technicians and engineers; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Business 6.85 software, an essential network management solution for small and medium scale enterprises; and the immediate availability of AIDA64 Network Audit 6.85 software, a dedicated network audit toolset to collect and manage corporate network inventories.

The new AIDA64 update introduces AVX-512 optimized stress testing for AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors, and supports the latest AMD and Intel CPU platforms as well as the new graphics and GPGPU computing technologies by both AMD and NVIDIA.

DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 Extreme v6.85

AMD's next-generation Radeon RX 7900 high-end graphics cards are set to arrive next week and bring the new RDNA3 GPU architecture to the masses. However, it seems like the customers will have to fight for their purchase as the availability could be scarce at launch, leading to potentially increased prices with low stocks. According to Igor's Lab report, Germany will receive only 3,000 reference MBA (Made By AMD) units of Radeon RX 7900 series cards. In contrast, the rest of the EMEA region will receive only 7,000 MBA units. These numbers are lower than expected, so AIB partners may improve the supply once their designs hit shelves.

On the other hand, mainland China will not receive any MBA units of the new cards as a sign of increasing tension with Taiwan. Of course, AMD's board partners will supply their designs to China, and they are allowed to; however, it seems that only AMD is making a statement here. In addition to supply issues, the launch is rumored to be covered in BIOS issues such as memory leaks and the COVID-19 outbreak affecting production in closed factories. Of course, all of this information should be taken with a grain of salt, and we must wait for the official launch before making any further assumptions.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card has been out since mid-November and is a great performer in many resolutions and titles. However, with NVIDIA setting its price tag at $1200, it is an expensive product to afford and represents a considerable price jump compared to older xx80 GPU generations. According to MyDrivers, NVIDIA could lower the price starting in mid-December, to better suit the needs of consumers and have a competitive product. With AMD's RDNA3-based graphics cards releasing in the following days, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX costing $999 is a direct competitor to GeForce RTX 4080. If NVIDIA plans to cut the massive MSRP of the RTX 4080, then we expect it to be in the range of Radeon RX 7900 XTX to create better market competition.

Of course, this is only wishful thinking and a rumor that MyDrivers has reported, so we have to wait until the middle of this month to find out if NVIDIA announces the alleged price cut.

The unified shader (stream processor) counts of AMD's upcoming second- and third-largest GPUs based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture, have been leaked in some ROCm code, discovered by Kepler_L2 on Twitter. The "performance.hpp" file references "Navi 32" with a compute unit count of 60, and the "Navi 33" with 32 compute units. We know from the "Navi 31" specifications that an RDNA3 compute unit still amounts to 64 stream processors (although with significant IPC uplifts over the RDNA2 stream processor due to dual-instruction issue-rate).

60 compute units would give the "Navi 32" silicon a stream processor count of 3,840, a 50% numerical increase over the 2,560 of its predecessor, the "Navi 22," powering graphics cards such as the Radeon RX 6750 XT. Meanwhile, the 32 CU count of the "Navi 33" amounts to 2,048 stream processors, which is numerically unchanged from that of the "Navi 23" powering the RX 6650 XT. The new RDNA3 compute unit has significant changes over RDNA2, besides the dual-issue stream processors—it gets second-generation Ray Accelerators, and two AI accelerators for matrix-multiplication.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT RDNA3 graphics cards debut on December 13, 2022. This is when you will be able to buy one, at an MSRP of $999 for the RX 7900 XTX, and $899 for the RX 7900 XT. These will, however, only be reference-design MBA (made by AMD) graphics cards sold though the company's various add-in board (AIB) partners. The non-reference (custom design) RX 7900 series reportedly releases to the market 1 to 2 weeks after December 13, according to a Board Channels report seen by Wccftech.

Unlike the NVIDIA Founders Edition graphics card that's sold exclusively under the NVIDIA marquee, AMD's reference-design cards are sold by its AIB partners, with minimal or nil partner branding on the cards. The after-sales support, including product warranties and other brand-specific inclusions, are handled by the AIBs themselves. Custom-design cards are those designed by the AIB partners, with customization extending to both the cooling solution and the PCB; and with some cards even featuring factory-overclocked speeds. These are the ones that could launch 1 to 2 weeks after December 13, which would put their launch anywhere between December 20 to 27 (our yikes go out to reviewers).

AMD in its technical presentation confirmed the reference clock speeds of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT RDNA3 graphics cards. The company also made its first reference to a GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada" product, the RTX 4080 (16 GB), which is going to launch later today. The RX 7900 XTX maxes out the "Navi 31" silicon, featuring all 96 RDNA3 compute units or 6,144 stream processors; while the RX 7900 XT is configured with 84 compute units, or 5,376 stream processors. The two cards also differ with memory configuration. While the RX 7900 XTX gets 24 GB of 20 Gbps GDDR6 across a 384-bit memory interface (960 GB/s); the RX 7900 XT gets 20 GB of 20 Gbps GDDR6 across 320-bit (800 GB/s).

The RX 7900 XTX comes with a Game Clocks frequency of 2300 MHz, and 2500 MHz boost clocks, whereas the RX 7900 XT comes with 2000 MHz Game Clocks, and 2400 MHz boost clocks. The Game Clocks frequency is more relevant between the two. AMD achieves 20 GB memory on the RX 7900 XT by using ten 16 Gbit GDDR6 memory chips across a 320-bit wide memory bus created by disabling one of the six 64-bit MCDs, which also subtracts 16 MB from the GPU's 96 MB Infinity Cache memory, leaving the RX 7900 XT with 80 MB of it. The slide describing the specs of the two cards compares them to the GeForce RTX 4080, which is what the two could compete more against, especially given their pricing. The RX 7900 XTX is 16% cheaper than the RTX 4080, and the RX 7900 XT is 25% cheaper.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference-design isn't a first-party product with limited availability like the NVIDIA Founders Edition; but rather a classic reference-design that's sold by AMD's add-in board partners under their marquee (without sticking their own labels on the product). AMD and its partners internally refer to reference-design cards as "MBA cards" (made by AMD cards). The company gave us a technical overview of the reference-design PCB. As with every reference AMD PCB for the past several generations, the RX 7900 XTX PCB has a premium selection of components. The card uses an expensive 14-layer PCB with 4 additional layers of 2-oz copper. 14-layer PCBs are typically used with enterprise-grade products, and graphics cards typically tend to have PCB layer counts of around 10. The PCB also uses ITEQ IT-170GRA epoxy and laminate materials, which enable a glass transition temperature (Tg) of 175 °C (no, the GPU won't get anywhere near as hot).

The reference-design RX 7900 XTX PCB draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. With the typical board power of the RX 7900 XTX rated at 355 W, this falls inside the 375 total power-draw capability when you add up the 150 W input from the two connectors, and 75 W from the PCIe slot. AMD worked to minimize power-draw spikes at least from the PCIe slot. Excursions, if any, should be localized to the 8-pin power connectors. The card features 20-phase VRM solution, using "high efficiency" DrMOS power-stage phases (could be very high current). The "Navi 31" GPU is surrounded by 12 GDDR6 memory chips given the GPU's 384-bit memory interface. Two of these memory pads could end up unused on the RX 7900 XT, which has a 320-bit memory interface. Display outputs of the RX 7900 series include two standard-size DisplayPort 2.1, one USB type-C with DisplayPort passthrough; and one HDMI 2.1a.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference design graphics card features an innovative new real-time monitoring feature, the Fan Intake Temperature Sensors. The reference-design RX 7900 XTX cooler has the ability to report individual fan-speeds to software (which isn't new, given that each fan will independently connect to the PCB); but what's new is that each of the fans has a temperature sensor that can detect the temperature of the air as it's being drawn in, before reaching the heatsink.

The temperature measurement of the fan intake sensors should give you a fair idea of what is the ambient temperature inside your case. At this point we don't know if the feature is exclusive to the AMD reference design, or if the company has shared the know-how with its add-in board (AIB) partners to add to their custom-design products. This sensor should be accessible by AMD Software, the utilities included by AIB partners, and we will try to add ability to read from this sensor to TechPowerUp GPU-Z. The reference RX 7900 XTX cooler also features addressable RGB LEDs, first ever for a reference-design graphics card (they've had single-color lighting).