This is my eighth review of a Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX Navi 31 card, I've tested all the other major models.

Launched in December last year, the RX 7900 Series by AMD introduces the world's first graphics cards based on a chiplet design architecture. Why is that a big deal you ask? Making large chips is expensive, more expensive than making several small chips. AMD realized that years ago and built their Ryzen CPUs using the chiplet approach, which is the foundation for the company's tremendous comeback in the CPU space. Team Red is betting that the same can happen in the GPU world. Using chiplets gives another major advantage—you can combine multiple production processes. For the case of the Navi 31 GPU that powers the Radeon RX 7900 Series, the central compute die is fabricated on TSMC's leading 5 nanometer node, because efficiency greatly matters for its design. On the other hand, the memory-cache dies don't put out as much heat, and contain analog technology, which doesn't scale as well with process size. That's why AMD decided to build those with 6 nanometer tech, making them cheaper to produce.

The RX 7900 XTX is AMD's flagship for this generation—it comes with the full Navi 31 GPU: 6144 cores, 96 compute units, 24 GB GDDR6 and six MCDs with 96 MB of L3 cache. RDNA 3 also introduces an upgraded display engine, which has support for DisplayPort 2.1, for higher refresh rates on upcoming 4K and 8K displays, and you also get support for hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding—the video format of the future.

The ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi White is a highly customized variant of the RX 7900 XTX, using a stronger VRM design, with support for triple 8-pin power inputs paired with a powerful cooler. I've reviewed the regular non-white Taichi a while ago, the White in this review is identical except for the cooler shroud, which is white instead of black, the cooler underneath is the same, just like the PCB design and all specifications, e.g. clocks and voltage. It is still expected to see some small differences due to manufacturing variances. For example, the fan motor and its bearings will affect the fan noise and effective RPM, which will affect temperatures slightly. Also, there's quite a bit of variance in the leakage current of the Navi GPU, so even though both cards are powered by "Navi 31," at same clock and voltage targets, actual clock and voltage values will differ slightly because there's a feedback loop taking into account, power, heat and other factors.

Averaged over our whole 25-game test suite at 4K resolution, with RT off, the factory-overclocked ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Taichi White has a 4% performance lead over the AMD reference design, which makes it the fastest RTX 7900 XTX card we've tested. These gains increase the performance uplift to RTX 4080 from 2% to 6%—we're getting closer to AMD's marketing projections. Just like other custom designs, the performance increase of the factory overclock isn't huge, but it's still a welcome improvement. The gap to RTX 4090 shrinks to 18% now. Compared to the RTX 3090 Ti, the ASRock card is 23% faster and the increase over the RTX 3090 is 39%. Compared to last generation's RX 6900 XT, the Taichi is a whopping 56% faster. The differences between individual games are huge, in some titles the XTX beats the 4080 by 25%, in others it's 10% slower.

Back during the initial launch day reviews I speculated that we might see further driver optimizations, that make best use of the new RDNA 3 dual-issue compute units. So far it seems not much has happened, certainly nothing that can shift the balance of power in this segment. What AMD has addressed with newer drivers though is that power consumption in non-gaming states is considerably improved, so the driver team is certainly busy making things better.

Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a formidable choice for gaming at 4K, with maximum details and 1440p at high-refresh-rate. You can crank up everything and you'll still run at over 60 FPS. Things are different when you enable ray tracing though, here the RX 7900 XTX is considerably weaker than what NVIDIA offers. On average, the RTX 4080 is around 13% faster than the AsRock RX 7900 XTX with ray tracing enabled, which isn't monumental, but definitely more than what I would have expected. I think everyone agrees that ray tracing is the future, and just disagrees on how quickly that future is happening. If you're part of the "I want this now" camp, then you should probably consider the RTX 4080, or RTX 4090. On the other hand, if you feel like ray tracing is just minor additional eye candy, that comes with a huge performance hit, then you can happily grab the RX 7900 XTX. That's not to say that AMD's new cards are useless with ray tracing, but if you consider the differences in price and RT performance, then the value-proposition of both cards is virtually identical, with NVIDIA RTX 4080 giving you the higher overall performance.

ASRock's Taichi name is legendary, we've seen so many wonderful motherboards and graphics cards with that branding, so the RX 7900 XTX Taichi has big shoes to fill. The triple-fan, triple-slot thermal solution does a great job keeping the card cool. Gaming temperatures are below 60°C, which is an impressive achievement, especially considering the performance offered. Noise levels with the default BIOS are "pretty good," 34 dBA is considerably lower than the AMD reference card, but other custom designs are still quieter. It's surprising that the ASRock White runs at the same RPM as the non-White, but ends up a little bit louder. That's the manufacturing variances that I talked about, my guess is that the fan bearings run slightly louder on my sample of the White card. ASRock does include a dual BIOS feature with their card, which lets you activate a "Quiet" mode BIOS. Now the noise levels are stunning—the card is whisper quiet, the quietest RX 7900 XTX that we've tested, same as the non-white Taichi. Actually, with only 27.8 dBA it's among the quietest graphics cards that I've tested in a long time—and we're talking about a high-end GPU here that can achieve 4K60 easily. While nearly all other quiet BIOS designs that I know of lower the fan speed, while allowing higher temperatures at the same time, ASRock's approach is quite different. They've set their card to run at lower clock and voltage, which lowers the heat output considerably, because the card now operates closer to its maximum efficiency point. Lower heat output means the fans can run slower to achieve the same temperature. That's exactly what ASRock did: the regular and the quiet mode BIOS both have the GPU running at 58°C, but since the quiet BIOS has such reduced heat output, the fan speed can be lower. The performance cost is roughly 4%, which is reasonable, I still would have preferred higher temperatures, as a temperature increase by a few °C makes absolutely no difference, especially when you're starting from 58°C. Still, the noise levels are really impressive, good job ASRock!

In our apples-to-apples heatsink test, which runs all cards at the same noise and power levels for a fair cooler comparison, the Taichi heatsink does very well, too. It conclusively beats AMD's reference design cooler, and is roughly 8°C better than the XFX thermal solution. Only the Sapphire Nitro+ and ASUS TUF coolers, which are both quad-slot, are marginally cooler, by an insignificant 1-2°C. Just like all other modern graphics cards, the ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi comes with the idle fan-stop feature, which turns off the fans during idle, desktop work and Internet browsing. This test also confirms that the regular Taichi and the Taichi White share the same underlying cooler, as their results are identical in this test.

One of AMD's goal with RDNA 3 has been to improve power consumption, and they achieved that. While their cards are not as energy-efficient as NVIDIA's new Ada series, it's pretty close. In order to achieve their performance, frequency and binning goals, ASRock bumped their card's voltage quite a bit. We measured 1.034 V on average during gaming, the AMD reference XTX ran at only 0.934 V, ASUS TUF at 1.015 V, XFX Merc 310 at 1.017 V, Sapphire Nitro+ at 1.023, ASRock Taichi Black at 1.033 V. In return for that voltage bump you get the highest factory-overclocked performance, but it will increase gaming power consumption from 361 W to 408 W, which is a fairly steep increase. Interestingly, it's quite a bit lower than what we saw on the regular Taichi—more data that suggests variance in the GPU's leakage currents. Still, given the 4% real-life performance improvement, 13% extra power isn't exactly stellar efficiency. On the other hand, ASRock has included an awesome heatsink on their card, so this power draw increase doesn't compromise on the card's thermals or acoustics.

Overclocking is better on the ASRock Taichi White than on the regular Taichi, again, random variances between GPUs—the silicon lottery. OC is also much better than on the AMD reference design. What definitely helps here is the 3x 8-pin power inputs. While the AMD reference card very quickly ran into its power limit, even at the +15% power setting, the ASRock board has more headroom, which allows higher overclocks. The actual mechanics of overclocking are fairly complicated on Navi 31, just follow what I wrote on the OC page and you'll have a good starting point. Seeing all the pieces come together to unlock a large overclock with 10% real-life performance gained is pretty fun.

While supply of Radeon RX 7900 XTX has been fairly slim, and most models have been sold out for a long time, inventory levels have stabilized now and there's a good selection of cards available at various price points. The RX 7900 XTX launched at $1000, we're just now seeing first cards go below that, like the PowerColor Hellhound. There's also several cards available at $1000, like the XFX Merc 310, the Sapphire Pulse, and the ASRock Phantom Gaming. ASRock's regualar Taichi currently goes for $1080, which means there's a $50 price bump for the Taichi White that we've tested in this review. A price of $1130 for the Taichi White is not unreasonable, especially if you want a white graphics card for your build. If you can live with a black shroud, then the regular Taichi lets you save $50, or 5%—really not all that much. Either way, RX 7900 XTX Taichi is an amazing card, thanks to the great cooler it comes with and the amazing "Quiet" BIOS. Strong competition comes from the various NVIDIA RTX 4080 cards that are now available at price points of $1150, which will be tempting for many, because RTX 4080 offers higher ray tracing FPS, with better energy efficiency overall.