AMD Radeon RX 7900M RDNA 3 Surpasses NVIDIA RTX 4090 Laptop GPU in Vulkan Benchmark

The AMD Radeon RX 7900M, the leading gaming GPU for laptops from AMD, marks a milestone as the first laptop GPU to employ a chiplet design. Although officially unveiled last month exclusively for the Alienware m18 laptop, there has been a notable absence of reviews for this new Radeon GPU.

A teaser from YouTuber GizmoSlipTech provided some insight, but comprehensive details were lacking until now, with the latest benchmarks leaking in Geekbench’s OpenCL and Vulkan tests, revealing intriguing results.

More About the AMD Radeon RX 7900M

Specifications for the AMD Radeon RX 7900M “Navi 31” GPU indicate that it operates on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, boasting 36 WGPs or 72 Compute Units, totaling 4608 cores. This represents a 20% increase in cores compared to the 7800 XT and a 10% reduction compared to the 7900 GRE.

The GPU achieves clock speeds peaking at 2090 MHz. In terms of memory, it incorporates four MCDs, facilitating a 256-bit wide bus interface and 16 GB of memory capacities, aligning with NVIDIA’s top RTX 40 offerings like the RTX 4090. Power configurations place the AMD Radeon RX 7900M at a TGP of 160W, extendable to 200W with SmartShift technologies.

Benchmark results from the Alienware m18 laptop, equipped with a Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU, showcase impressive performance. The AMD Radeon RX 7900M scores 171,430 points, surpassing both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 laptop GPUs and closely rivaling the RTX 4070 Ti Desktop graphics card. It demonstrates a 9% performance boost over the RTX 4090 Laptop and a 25% advantage over the 4080 Laptop GPUs.

However, in the OpenCL benchmark, the Radeon RX 7900M records 144,611 points, positioning it behind the RTX 4080 Laptop GPU by -11.5%. It falls between the 7800 XT and the 6800 XT in this test.

Notably, the Vulkan performance stands out, with the Radeon RX 7900M leading and showcasing AMD’s strength in a more widely used API for games compared to OpenCL. The GPU’s higher target TGP than the RTX 4080, combined with the potential for more cost-effective laptops featuring this GPU, suggests a competitive edge for AMD. Despite its strengths as a robust RDNA 3 Laptop GPU, enthusiasts express a desire to see it in a broader range of laptop configurations and options.