AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT: The Ultimate Gaming Graphics Card

As of the time of writing, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is still being sold at its manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of £899 including VAT, which is a positive sign given the current market conditions. However, some speculate that the reason for its availability may be due to its pricing being too close to its respective flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 4080. With only £100 separating the two cards, it is possible to purchase a stock-speed Radeon RX 7900 XT X for the same price as an overclocked Radeon RX 7900 XT, making the former a better option. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that two top-end GPUs are launching below £1,000 inc VAT in these high-priced times, and the Radeon RX 7900 XT remains a powerful card.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT utilizes AMD’s new RDNA3 architecture, which separates the GPU package into a Graphics Compute Die (GCD) and several Memory Cache Dies (MCDs). The Radeon RX 7900 XT has five enabled MCDs compared to six on the Radeon RX 7900 XT X, resulting in a reduced L3 cache of 80MB and a narrower memory interface of 320 bits, allowing the card to address 20GB of memory rather than 24GB. Despite this, the memory runs at the same speed as the flagship GPU, resulting in an overall memory bandwidth of 800GB/sec, higher than the GeForce RTX 4080’s 716.8GB/sec.

Additionally, some Compute Units (CUs) on the GCD have been disabled, resulting in 84 CUs on the Radeon RX 7900 XT compared to 96 on the RX 7900 XT X. Each CU contains a 2nd-generation AMD ray tracing core and 64 dual-issue stream processors, totaling 5,376 on the Radeon RX 7900 XT. The clock speeds have been slightly reduced, with a typical game clock of 2025MHz and a 2394MHz boost clock, though benchmarking has shown that the Radeon RX 7900 XT can peak at 2913MHz. These lower clocks and specs put less strain on the cooler than the RX 7900 XT X, with a peak GPU temperature of 62°C and a top hotspot reading of 78°C, similar to the temperature readings of the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition.

Performance

The Radeon RX 7900 XT performs admirably, even with its lower specs, surpassing the GeForce RTX 4090 in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 1,920×1,080 and competing well against the GeForce RTX 4080 at 2,560×1,440. It falls behind at 4K, but still outperforms the Radeon RX 6950 XT and GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. However, its performance varies in different games.

In Metro Exodus without ray tracing, the Radeon RX 7900 XT is slower than the RTX 4080 at 2,560×1,440 but still ahead of last-gen GPUs. Its performance drops off at 4K, and adding ray tracing causes it to fall behind the RTX 3080 Ti and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. In Cyberpunk 2077 without ray tracing, the 7900 XT performs well, but it struggles with ray tracing enabled at 4K.

While the 7900XT performs well in Doom Eternal, it falls behind the XTX model. It draws more power than the RTX 4080 but less than the RTX 3080 Ti. At £899, it’s a bit expensive compared to the XTX model, which offers better performance for just £100 more. It also can’t compete with Nvidia’s latest GPUs, but it’s still a significant improvement over AMD’s previous flagship, the Radeon RX 6950 XT.

Overall, the Radeon RX 7900 XT is a solid card for playing games at 2,560×1,440, even with ray tracing enabled, and FSR 2.1 can help maintain decent framerates. However, it struggles at 4K, and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX performs better in that regard. Considering the price difference between the two, the 7900 XT may be more appropriately named the 7800 XT and priced lower. Nonetheless, it’s commendable that AMD is pricing both its new GPUs below £1,000.