With our RX 7800 XT testing out of the way with both the reference card and the XFX overclocked card I can finally jump into the Radeon RX 7700 XT to check out its performance. For this card AMD doesn’t have a reference design so to check out stock clocked performance I’ve got the Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pulse. It has the stock clocks and is Sapphire’s budget friendly card which in the past has combined great performance while avoiding adding in all of the unneeded flashy features you see on higher-end cards including RGB. So I’m going to dive in and check out what Sapphire has done with their card design, and then after that, we can put it through our test suite. When we are done we can then step back and see how it all comes together and where the 7700 XT as well as the 7700 XT Pulse fit into the market.

Product Name: Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pulse

Review Sample Provided by: Sapphire

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

 

AMDs new RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT

At Gamescom this year AMD announced two new GPUs to fill in a few big gaps in their current 7000 Series GPU lineup. Before the announcement, they had the RX 7600, RX 7900 XT, and RX 7900 XTX. That covered the higher end of the market with their 4K focused cards and the 7600 which is a mid-range 1080p focused card. The two new models fit in the middle with a 1440p resolution focus. While 1080p is still the most widely used resolution on Steam hardware surveys, the 1440p resolution is growing quickly, AMD highlighted this in the presentation pointing out a 44% growth year on year on the Steam hardware survey.

To get a look at where the new RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT sit spec wise I have the specs from the AMD briefing as well as a full breakdown that includes the RX 7600 and RX 7900 XT which for the 7000 Series sit above and below the two cards as well as the RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 which are the comparable cards from last generation. Both the 7700 XT and the 7800 XT have the same 5nm and 6nm combination of manufacturing process that the 7900 XT has. The two GPUs have the same die size and transistor count with them sharing the same base GPU but the compute units and the stream processor counts show us that it has been cut down slightly for the 7700 XT compared to the 7800 XT. The 7800 XT is right with the 6800 in stream processors as well as compute units and ray accelerators but last generation's cards didn’t have the AI accelerators which the 7800 XT has 120 and the 7700 XT has 108. The 7800 XT has a slightly lower game GPU clock than the 7700 XT with it at 2124 MHz to 2171 MHz on the 7700 XT. The same goes for the boost clock which the 7800 XT can see up to 2430 MHz whereas the 7700 XT can do up to 2544 MHz. The single precision performance numbers give us an idea of what the lower clock speeds but higher core counts translate to. The 7700 XT can do up to 35 TFLOPS whereas the 7800 XT is slightly higher at 37 TFLOPS. The 7900 XT is way out ahead of that at 51 TFLOPS and the 7600 is well below the two at 21 TFLOPS. Then both the 6700 XT and the 6800 are well below the 7600 at 13.21 TFLOPS and 16.17 TFLOPS.

The 7700 XT has 48 MB of the 2^nd generation Infinity Cache whereas the 7800 XT has 64 MB. Then for memory, the 7700 XT has 12GB of GDDR6 memory to the 16GB on the 7800 XT. They also have different memory bus interfaces with a 192-bit interface for the 7700 XT and 256-bit for the 7800 XT and the memory on the 7800 XT is also clocked faster with it running at 19.5 Gbps and 18 Gbps for the 7700 XT. Overall the higher cache and everything else translates to the 7700 XT having an effective memory bandwidth of 1995.3 GB/s to the 2708.4 GB/s for the 7800 XT. Both cards have a traditional PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, not the x8 that the RX 7600 had. Then for power, the two cards do have different total board power ratings with the 7700 XT at 245 watts and the 7800 XT at 263 watts. AMD also announced the base pricing of the cards at Gamescom with the RX 7700 XT at $449 and the RX 7800 XT at $499. The 7800 XT is available in a reference design directly from AMD as well as designs from their partners but the 7700 XT doesn’t have a reference design and will only be available with the partner designs.

Specifications	RX 7600	RX 6700 XT	RX 7700 XT	RX 6800	RX 7800 XT	RX 7900 XT
Architecture	RDNA 3	RDNA 2	RDNA 3	RDNA 2	RDNA 3	RDNA 3
Manufacturing Process	6nm	7nm	5nm GCD + 6nm MCD	7nm	5nm GCD + 6nm MCD	5nm GCD + 6nm MCD
Transistor Count	13.3 Billion	17.2 Billion	28.1 Billion	26.8 Billion	28.1 Billion	57.7 Billion
Dia Size	204 mm²	335 mm²	200mm² GCD 150mm² MCD	520 mm²	200mm² GCD 150mm² MCD	529 mm²
Compute Units	32	40	54	60	60	84
Ray Accelerators	32	40	54	60	60	84
AI Accelerators	64	--	108	--	120	168
Stream Processors	2048	2560	3456	3840	3840	5376
Game GPU Clock	2250 MHz	2424 MHz	2171 MHZ	1815 MHZ	2124 MHz	2025 MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2655 MHz	Up to 2581 MHz	Up to 2544 MHz	Up to 2105 MHz	Up to 2430 MHz	Up to 2394 MHz
Peak Single Precision Perf.	Up to 21 TFLOPS	Up to 13.21 TFLOPS	Up to 35 TFLOPS	Up to 16.17 TFLOPS	Up to 37 TFLOPS	Up to 51 TFLOPS
Peak Half Precision Perf.	Up to 43 TFLOPS	Up to 26.43 TFLOPS	Up to 70 TFLOPS	Up to 32.33 TFLOPS	Up to 74 TFLOPS	Up to 103 TFLOPS
Peak Texture Fill-Rate	Up to 339 GT/s	Up to 413 GT/s	Up to 550 GT/s	Up to 505.2 GT/s	Up to 583 GT/s	Up to 804 GT/s
ROPs	64	64	96	64	96	192
Peak Pixel Fill-Rate	Up to 169 GP/s	Up to 165.2 GP/s	Up to 244 GP/s	Up to 202.1 GP/s	Up to 233 GP/s	Up to 459 GP/s
AMD Infinity Cache	32 MB (2nd Gen)	96 MB (1st Gen)	48 MB (2nd Gen)	128 MB (1st Gen)	64 MB (2nd Gen)	80 MB (2nd Gen)
Memory	8GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	20GB GDDR6
Memory Speed	18 Gbps	16 Gbps	18 Gbps	16 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	20 Gbps
Effective Memory Bandwidth w/AMD Infinity Cache	Up to 476.9 GB/s	Up to 1278.0 GB/s	Up to 1995.3 GB/s	Up to 1664.2 GB/s	Up to 2708.4 GB/s	Up to 2900 GB/s
Memory Bus Interface	128-bit	256*bit	192-bit	256-bit	256-bit	320-bit
PCIe Interface	PCIe 4.0 x8	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 x16
Total Board Power	165W	230W	245W	250W	263W	300W
Launch MSRP	$269	$479	$449	$649	$499	$899

 

Alongside of the two new cards, AMD also announced their FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 which brings frame generation to AMD cards. Unlike DLSS from Nvidia AMD has this as an open standard so it can not only work with all of AMDs cards, but it can also work with Nvidia cards as well. FSP 3 with upscaling can work with AMD cards back to the RX 590 and Nvidia 10 Series cards but that doesn’t include frame generation. For that, you will need an AMD 5700 or better and RTX 20 Series or higher. They showed off the performance differences that you can see with Forspoken from Square Enix where they were able to go from 36 FPS up to 122 FPS at 4K by using FSR 3 performance mode. FSR 3 has a list of upcoming games and game support of course will make or break this as a feature. The performance is great, but if none of the games you play support It, well that doesn’t help at all. FSR and FSR 2 have 300 games with current or upcoming support so if that is any indication. They also have combined Radeon Boost, Anti-Lag+, and Super Resolution on the driver side into one feature they are calling Hyper-RX which helps make getting better performance easier, with that they showed off some performance improvements you can see with average FPS improving and latency dropping by big margins in all of the games shown.

AMD also touched on the streaming capabilities as well on their call. Highlighting AV1 support which is the future of streaming. AV1 can get you higher quality while lowering the bandwidth needs. They also touched on AMDs noise suppression which can help cut out background noise from your microphone.

With the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT hitting stores tomorrow September 6^th, the cards are also timed to launch the same day as Starfield which utilizes AMDs technology. AMD is also offering a copy of the game to anyone who picks up the 7700 XT or the 7800 XT. This is a great way to add some value to the cards and also make sure everyone has access to a brand new game to check out how your new cards can perform.

Before getting into testing I did also run GPUz to double-check that our clock speeds matched up with the specifications. The Radeon RX 7700 XT has a game clock speed of 2171 MHz and a boost clock of 2544 MHz, the Sapphire 7700 XT Pulse matches that and isn’t an overclocked card. GPUz confirmed those clock speeds as well. GPUz also documents the driver I tested with which is the Adrenalin 23.20.01.05 driver that AMD provided press ahead of the launch. It also documents the BIOS of the Pulse as well for future reference.

Sapphire 7700 XT Pulse Specifications
SKU	11335-04-20G
GPU	AMD Radeon™ RX 7700 XT Graphics Card 5nm GPU AMD RDNA™ 3 Architecture
Stream Processors	3456
Compute Units	54 CU (with RT+AI Accelerators)
Infinity Cache	48MB
Ray Accelerators	54
Displays	Maximum 4 Displays
Resolution	HDMI™: 7680×4320 DisplayPort 2.1: 7680×4320
Interface	PCI-Express 4.0 x16
Output	2x HDMI 2x DisplayPort
BIOS Support	UEFI
Game Index	1440P
Sapphire Features	Digital Power Design Ultra High Performance Conductive Polymer Aluminum Capacitors Fuse Protection High TG Copper PCB Optimized Composite Heatpipe Dual-X Cooling Technology Intelligent Fan Control Precision Fan Control Metal Backplate Angular Velocity Fan Blade Dual-Ball Bearing Fans TriXX Supported TriXX Boost
AMD Features	AMD RDNA™ 3 Architecture 54 AMD RDNA™ 3 Compute Units (with RT+AI Accelerators) 48MB AMD Infinity Cache™ Technology DisplayPort™ 2.1Support AMD Radiance Display™ Engine 12GB GDDR6 on 192-bit Memory Bus PCI® Express 4.0 ready AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution technology Microsoft® DirectX® 12 Ultimate Support Microsoft® DirectStorage Support Vulkan® Optimized AMD Smart Technologies AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ AMD Noise Suppression AMD Privacy View AMD Radeon™ Super Resolution technology AMD Link AMD FreeSync™ technology
Cooling	2 Fans
Form Factor	2.5 slot, ATX Dimension: 280(L)X 128.75(W)X 52.57 (H)mm
Power Consumption	230W Total Board Power
OS	Linux®, Windows® 10, and Windows 11. 64-bit  operating system required
System Requirement	Minimum 700 Watt Power Supply 2 x 8-pin Power Connector. PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard. Minimum 8GB of system memory. 16GB recommended.
Warranty	2 years