AMD has recently launched Radeon RX 7900 series last month based on their new 5nm-based RDNA3 architecture that makes AMD’s new GPUs a direct competition to NVIDIA’s RTX 40-series. Thanks to an affordable starting price of $899, these new graphics cards are really great when it comes to value-for-money nature.
While we have received both the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, we will primarily focus here on the $999 flagship reference card that we got recently. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX clearly is made to challenge the RTX 4080 with its exorbitant 24GB GDRR6 memory while still maintaining its same dimensions compared to the older RX 6000 series.
Also, if you do not know, these new AMD Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards are the only ones in the market to support DisplayPort 2.1 which make them extremely good for high refresh rate gaming at 4K. Having tested this flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX extensively, let’s talk about its performance and whether you should buy the card that is currently available in the market at MSRP:
Specifications of AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
AMD has launched the Radeon RX 7900 XTX as their new flagship card which comes with a similar reference design and dimensions compared to the RX 6900 XT last year. With a cool sign of black shadow and those triple fans look cool when you use it along with strips of white light on this reference card, we are sure OEM cards will look better but this AMD variant does have its own masculine presence for sure.
The GPU is on the heavier side but not as huge or bulky compared to the RTX 4080 or 4090 but indeed is powerful enough to challenge the NVIDIA counterparts. Drawing only about 350W ideally and nearly goes about 450W during gaming, you generally will not require a 1000W PSU but it’s better to have one. It’s also ideal for content creation but enough to beat RTX 4080, we will make a dedicated comparison article for that, so keep following us.
Now, with up to 96 compute units with a 2.3GHz Game clock speed, this AMD flagship GPU uses chiplets to reduce costs while still maximizing performance. It also includes a 384-bit interface and AMD promises significant improvement over its predecessors which will directly compete against the $1199 priced RTX 4080 which is retailing for no less than $1300.
Delivering up to 61 TFLOPs of peak single precision performance, this is nearly three times the performance of the last-gen flagship RX 6950 XT. However, there’s very minimal improvement in the number of Ray Accelerators but we now have 6 Shader Engines, a memory bandwidth of up to 960 GB/s alongside AV1 Decode/Encode support.
Test Config Specifications:
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z690 UD AX WIFI Motherboard
- CPU: Intel Core i7-12700KF
- RAM: 32GB (2X16) Corsair Vengeance Performance DDR5 Memory
- Primary SSD: Western Digital SN850 500GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
- Secondary/Game SSD: 480GB Crucial SATA SSD, WD Green 960GB SATA SSD
- Power Supply: Antec HCG-1000-EXTREME PSU
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
- CPU Cooler: DEEPCOOL GAMMAXX L360 ARGB
- Cabinet: Cooler Master MasterBox K501L
- OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Productivity
Never did AMD market this RX 7900 XTX as a GPU for productivity neither they compared it to NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 on that but referred to it as a Gaming GPU only. In recent years, it’s evident that AMD has been dominated by NVIDIA in terms of rendering speeds or boasting superior encoder/decoder.
So, we have tested this new AMD flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX to the RTX 4080 and its own old GPUs to see the results, while the results are quite similar in some cases while in some NVIDIA has clear dominance. Here are the synthetic benchmarks for your reference:
As you see in the productivity tests, the RX 7900 XTX does perform quite well but the generational leap isn’t that convincing in some benchmarks though. However, most 3DMark benchmarks show the prowess of these new GPUs, posting some impressive results across a number of tests.
The RX 7900 XTX is a leader when compared to the last generation but it can be pushed further with proper cooling if you compare it against the RTX 4080, in some benchmarks like Port Royal or OpenCL tests, NVIDIA has a good lead. In most productivity tests you will both the new RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XTX drawing toe-to-toe with each other NVIDIA’s recent leap in productivity is clear considering AMD’s price, and the GPU is decent enough for professional work as well.
Gaming
In gaming, AMD has very much stressed the rasterization performance of these new RX 7900 series cards while they did say the ray tracing performance has been improved but doesn’t seem so especially when you compare it against the like NVIDIA’s RTX 40-series.
Now, here have a series of benchmarks in 15 modern games which will give you a better idea about the raw performance you can expect from this graphics card:
As you see in most of the high-end games like Control, Unchartered, and Watch Dogs Legion, this Radeon RX 7900 XTX is comfortably giving you over 100FPS+ performance which is identical to the RTX 4080 we recently reviewed. So, why we haven’t included the data of other GPUs and the RTX 4080? Well, we are planning for a mega comparison between the RX 7900 XTX, RX 7900 XT and RTX 4080, so do follow us if you wanna see that detailed comparison.
Coming back to the gaming performance of this AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, I’m quite satisfied to see that whether it is any game, the AMD GPU comfortably gives you good frame rates at 4K even at the highest preset possible. This makes raw 4K gaming even more detailed and crisp, even without using FSR you are able to see the insane GPU crunching great numbers.
AMD is also working on similar technology with FSR 2.2 that helps the Frame Generation technique to be used similarly to DLSS 3, currently only a few games have this feature, so we haven’t tested it extensively but if needed we will bring a dedicated article as more games get launched with FSR 2.2.
Now, back to the gaming performance of this RX 7900 XTX, we have also played the most GPU-intensive game Cyberpunk 2077 and tested the ray tracing performance and here are the numbers:
When you turn on Ray tracing, the performance declines even further but without RT, we get 60FPS+ even at Ultra settings. However, when compared to previous generations, without FSR the ray tracing performance isn’t that good and when you compare it against the likes of RTX 4080, AMD has to work on improving this.
While the rasterization performance of this RX 7900 XTX GPU is insane and toe-to-toe against the likes of RTX 4080 but AMD has to improve the ray tracing performance down the line with RDNA3 or RDNA4 in future.
However, if you want a flagship GPU that is slightly more affordable, and gives good performance at 4K, AMD’s new RX 7900 XTX is rightly priced and if you aren’t willing to go down the expensive NVIDIA road then this is a serious option for gamers to consider.
Verdict
Now, one of the key takeaways of this AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX review is a good GPU for flagship-grade 4K performance but lacks that mature ray tracing that NVIDIA offers you. However, if you need a GPU that isn’t breaking your bank and is worthy for future high-paced 4K gaming thanks to DisplayPort 2.1 support, the RX 7900 XTX is certainly a good option.
AMD has rightfully delivered a strong GPU series yet again with RDNA3 but is not certainly as powerful as it was suspected before the launch. Also, they have maintained better stocks this time but as people are more interested in buying this RX 7900 XTX by just paying $100 more than the RX 7900 XT, it is sold out almost everywhere.
Well, the bottom line of this review is AMD has again lived up to the hype somewhat and has again challenged NVIDIA in the flagship race but yes, they could have done better with ray tracing or brought an RTX 4090 killer at the same price. It will be interesting to see how AMD improves the performance of these new Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs and what its other GPUs have to offer in 2023.
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