With Nvidia having launched the RTX 4090 and more recently the RTX 4080 and their pricing being out of range of a lot of users, people have been clambering for AMD's next generation of cards. AMD's latest generation was announced early in November but until today their performance has been under embargo. Today I’m going to check out what AMDs two new RDNA 3 based GPUs have going on and put both to the test as well starting with the RX 7900 XTX in this review. So let’s dive in and see what they are about and what this card is capable of and find out once and for all if AMD's new cards will be the saving grace for anyone not willing to take out a loan for a new video card.

Product Name: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

Review Sample Provided by: AMD

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

 

RNDA 3

So what sets the new Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT apart from the 6000 series cards? Well at their core, this is a new architecture RDNA 3. AMD has taken their experience on the CPU side to bring their chiplet design into their GPU architecture. This means that the GPU uses multiple dies, not just everything on one die, and this offers a few advantages. It offers more flexibility in their product stack and more importantly, it means that they can combine different manufacturing processes. So the GCD or graphics compute die is made on the new 5nm process but the memory cache die or MCD is made on the larger 6nm process. This puts their GDDR6 interface and 2nd generation infinity cache on the more mature process and the GPU itself on the newer smaller 5nm process for better performance per watt. This design can help keep costs down as well. You can see the smaller process at work in the specs with the 7900’s having 57.7 billion transistors to the 6950 XT’s 26.8 billion transistors but with the 300 mm GCD and 220 mm² MCD vs the 520 mm² of the 6950 XT.

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AMD changed up their infinity cache as well this time around which can be seen in the specification listing down below when we compare the 6950 XT to either of the 7900 models. The 6950 XT had 128MB of infinity cache with a 256-bit memory bus and 18 GB of GDDR6 memory. The 7900 XT on the other hand has 80MB of the 2ng gen infinity cache and a larger 320-bit memory bus, the 7900 XTX has a little more at 96 MB of infinity cache and a larger 384-bit memory bus with both having the same 20GB of GDDR6 memory. But those changes take the memory bandwidth from 1793.5 GB/s on the 6950 XT to 2912 GB/s on the 7900 XT and 3494.4 GB/s on the 7900 XTX, a big improvement while using less cache.  

The new architecture also introduces new AL accelerator cores similar to Nvidia’s Tensor cores which the 7900 XTX has 192 AI cores and the 7900 XT has 168 AI cores. These will help with FidelityFX performance and open up more options for AMD there in the future. They have also improved the ray tracing cores with a new Gen 2 design. Those match with the compute cores 1 for 1 so the 7900 XTX has 96 of each and the 7900 XT has 84 which both are an improvement over the 9650 XT which had 80 each with the older gen 1 RT cores. As far as clock speeds, AMD has stayed in the same range as the 6950 XT before which had a game clock speed of 2100 MHz and would run up to 2310 MHz for boost clock. The 7900 XT is a little lower on the game clock at 2000 MHz but higher on the boost clock at 2400 MHz and the 7900 XTX is higher on both with the game clock at 2300 MHz and the boost up to 2500 MHz.

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Specifications

RX 7900 XTX

RX 7900 XT

RX 6950 XT

Architecture

RDNA 3

RDNA 3

RDNA 2

Manufacturing Process

5nm GCD + 6 nm MCD

5nm GCD + 6 nm MCD

7nm

Transistor Count

57.7 billion

57.7 billion

26.8 billion

Die Size

300 mm² GCD

220mm² MCD

300 mm² GCD

220mm² MCD

520 mm²

Compute Units

96

84

80

Ray Accelerators

96

84

80

AI Accelerators

192

168

-

Stream Processors

6144

5376

5120

Game GPU Clock

2300 MHz

2000 MHz

2100 MHz

Boost GPU Clock

Up to 2500 MHz

Up to 2400 MHz

Up to 2310 MHz

Peak Single Precision Performance

Up to 61 TFLOPS

Up to 52 TFLOPS

Up to 23.65 TFLOPS

Peak Half Precision Performance

Up to 123 TFLOPS

Up to 103 TFLOPS

Up to 47.31 TFLOPS

Peak Texture Fill-Rate

Up to 960 GT/s

Up to 810 GT/s

Up to 739.2 GT/s

ROPs

192

192

128

Peak Texture Fill-Rate

Up to 480 GP/s

Up to 460 GP/s

Up to 295.7 GP/s

AMD Infinity Cache

96 MB

80 MB

128 MB

Memory

24GB GDDR6

20GB GDDR6

16GB GDDR6

Effective Memory bandwidth w/AMD Infinity Cache

Up to 3500 GB/s

Up to 2900 GB/s

Up to 1793.5 GB/s

Memory Bus Interface

384-bit

320-bit

256-bit

PCIe Interface

PCIe 4.0 x16

PCIe 4.0 x16

PCIe 4.0 x16

Board Power

355W

315W

335W

 

AMD took a few different stabs at Nvidia in their presentation on the new cards. They put together a direct comparison showing how both cards are significantly smaller than the RTX 4080 which will help a lot when it comes to fitment. They also point out that their cards aren’t using the new 12VHPWR plug which has caused some people issues.

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Another jab at Nvidia comes with their inclusion of what they call AMD Radiance Display Engine which is what brings the support for DisplayPort 2.1 connections on the cards. This opens up long-term support for much higher refresh rates. At 1440p for example the connection is capable of 900 Hz where 480 Hz is the limit for DP 1.4. This bandwidth becomes more important at higher resolutions like 4k which is capped at 240 Hz with DP 1.4 but can do 480 Hz with DP 2.1. Then at 8K DP 1.4 is limited to 60 Hz but DP 2.1 can do 165 Hz.

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They also highlighted the adoption rate of FidelityFX Super Resolution and Super Resolution 2 which is available or upcoming in 226 games after one year of availability.

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The new cards also have AV1 support which is going to be an important feature when consuming video content online and especially for streamers as it can open up higher-quality video streaming at lower bandwidth. AMD has included support for two simultaneous encode or decode streams similar to what the 4090 and 4080 can do.

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The other big feature is of course AMDs pricing. They have the base suggested price for the 7900 XT at $899 and the 7900 XTX at $999 which is an improvement over the RTX 4080’s Founders Edition price of $1199. Once I get into testing we will have to see how they compare performance-wise, but AMD has themselves positioned well here.

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Before getting into testing I did also run GPUz which I normally do to double-check clock speeds but as of writing this GPUz hasn’t added support for the new GPUs yet and the clock speed readings are all over the place. The BIOS revision also isn’t shown but we can at least document that I am testing with the prerelease press driver which is Adrenalin 22.40.00.57.

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Packaging

Considering the size of the boxes for the last few Nvidia launches I was expecting to see something similar when AMD sent their stock cards but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX packaging was compact and similar in size to what Nvidia’s Founders Edition’s used to come in before all of their cards had too much thanksgiving dinner and bulked up. The box for the RX 7900 XTX does something else that I love to see on any hardware packaging, they have a picture of the card across a majority of the front of the box. There is a black background at the top with a fog effect which is where they have the AMD branding as well as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX model name which is all in a metal finish. But the card itself on the front has its lighting on and features the Radeon branding that is printed on the card.

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The back of the box for our sample doesn’t have a UPC but you can see the location where that will be and below that, it has all of the certification logos needed. The bottom half of the box has the contact information for AMD and some legal text. The top half then features the AMD Adrenalin software including a picture and a few short descriptions. These don’t really see retail stores, so not having the card dimensions and things like the rear I/O isn’t a big deal. I was surprised as a whole though that the box doesn’t have the normal AMD wrap-around that all aftermarket cards have to have for consistency but without it, the packaging looks great.

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Once you cut the seal and open the box for the RX 7900 XTX up AMD has the card exposed without a static protective bag and sitting in its own foam cutout. I love this jewelry-like unboxing experience, it gives the card importance. The RX 7900 XTX model name is printed around the foam cutout and the smoke from the front is here as well which also carries up onto the underside of the top of the box. That is where they have a small foam ring used to keep the card safe but in the middle of that, they have text welcoming you to the RED team.

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When you pull the card out you can see a foam panel under the card used to tilt it up. There is also a small foam panel that can be removed. This is where they have the documentation tucked away. You get a card for the red team with a QR code on it and a user manual that unfolds with some information and a QR code as well for more information.

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Card Layout and Photos

For the 6000 series of cards, we sadly didn’t get any of AMDs in house designed cards, so while the 7900 XTX does share a lot with last year's design this is a completely different look from the 5000 series AMD reference cards and the aftermarket 6000 series cards I have seen in the past few years. As someone who has been a big fan of Nvidia’s Founders Edition designs, AMD has taken big steps in that direction with cards with full cast aluminum fan shrouds, a solid metal backplate, and overall a much better construction than the average card. The 7900 XTX is also completely blacked out whereas the 6900 XT was black with silver and grey accents and the 5000 series was a dark grey. The cast shroud design also means that AMD was able to get plastic-like shapes like the curves you see between the fans at the top and bottom which give the design a little more shape while not having to go ultra-wide or tall.

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Speaking of wide or tall, AMDs design is surprisingly compact compared to what you would see from anything aftermarket and compare to Nvidia’s latest cards which have adopted their BFGPU theme. The 7900 XTX is still larger than the old “standard” card sizes with it being a 2.5-slot card at 50mm in total width which still leaves room for the triple axial fan design to pull air even if up near something else. The card is a little taller than the PCI standard which is normally less than 10mm over the top of the PCI bracket and this card is 18mm over the top, but again this is still a lot better than any of the competition. Then for length, it is 287mm not counting the mounting lip on the PCI bracket. As a big fan of SFF builds, it is promising to still at least see some options that aren’t just comically large.

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The overall cooling design on the 7900 XTX has three axial fans which all spin in the same direction laid out blowing down into the cooler across the vertically oriented sheet metal heatsink which directs the warm air up and down in the card. Each of the fans has a unique triangle-like shape on the center cap and the blades are all tied together with a ring on the outside to give them additional strength. All three fans are the same size and measure 84mm for the blade width and 87mm for the overall opening. The 7900 XTX also has two gloss black accents above and below the middle fan which also have LED light diffused accents around them as well. The Radeon branding is also in the middle up towards the top but is printed on, not backlit thankfully.

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Around the outside edges, we get a better look at the heatsink itself which can be seen at the top and bottom edges. This is where AMD has the cooling venting which does mean that M.2 slots under your card may get some extra heat so keep that in mind. I love that the entire heatsink no matter the angle has a blacked-out finish which keeps the view from the top and bottom all blacked out like the rest of the card. The bottom does have a small sticker with the serial number on it as well. On the top, though AMD has painted three heatsink fins to give a cool red accent. Then at the end of the card, we can see that AMD has included mounting screw locations for stability brackets and the all-metal fan shroud wraps all the way around to the backplate.

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In addition to the red accent, the top does have the power connections which are at the end of the card which tells us that the PCB runs the length of the card as well. AMD avoided all of the 12VHPWR drama by sticking with the old standard cable connections with two 8-pin power plugs. For detail, I love that the backplate wraps around this area and keeps any extra heat from the heatsink from adding to the heat at the power plugs.

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The fan shroud design wraps around and ties in with the backplate as well which is also blacked out. They have stamped this out of sheet aluminum so it is metal as well and can transfer heat out. The design has a surprising amount of shapes stamped into it which gives it a little more strength but also styling as well. They have the Radeon branding printed on it upside down so it is readable when installed as well as a small heat warning logo. Then there are a few small holes that have that Radeon red accent color used as well. Overall though with the way the shroud and backplate combine it does a great job of enclosing the card and protecting it.

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The PCI bracket on the 7900 XTX is interesting. Even with other axial fan designs, they all end up having at least some ventilation left in the bracket but AMD has dropped that completely to focus the airflow out the top and bottom of the card which is cool. That has left even more room for activities on the bracket and they have filled a lot of that up with the card information that you might normally see on the PCB with things like the certification logos, the part number, and the serial number. All of that is a bright white which I could go without, something a little more subtle wouldn’t be bad but I like that you should be able to see your serial number and part number without opening up your PC. Then for the rear I/O, the card has three connections. At the top it has an HDMI 2.1 port then there are two DisplayPort 2.1 ports. Where most cards would have a third DisplayPort AMD has swapped that with a Type-C connection which can support DisplayPort but I do wonder if it also supports VirtualLink for VR which died out quickly but was a great all-in-one port that did USB and display over one connection.

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Before getting into testing I did also get a few pictures of the lighting. I love that AMD didn’t backlight their branding, keeping the lighting just too small accents. They light up white but I am hoping that like with the 6000 series AMD they may be RGB and get software later to control that. The color of the white looks like it is from RGB lighting, but I can’t confirm.

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Test Rig and Procedures

 

Test System

CPU: Intel Core-i9 12900K – Live Pricing

Motherboard: MSI MEG Z690I UNIFY Gaming Motherboard – Live Pricing

Cooling: Corsair H100i Elite LCD DisplayLive Pricing

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal PasteLive Pricing

Memory: Crucial 32GB Kit (2 x 16GB) DDR5-4800 UDIMM– Live Pricing

Storage: Sabrent Rocket Q4 2TB – Live Pricing

Power Supply: Corsair AX1200Live Pricing

Case: Primochill WetbenchLive Pricing

OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bitLive Pricing

      

Our Testing Procedures

3DMark

All 3DMark-based tests are done using the most recent version. We test using all three versions of Fire Strike and both Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme. Tests to look at ray tracing performance are done with Port Royal when supported and for Nvidia cards that support DLSS, the DLSS subtest is also done at 1440p with the performance setting and DLSS 2.0.

Unigine Superposition

1080p Extreme and 4k Optimized benchmarks along with the VR Future test are done. The VR test is done at the Oculus resolution

VRMark

Only the Blue room test is run

CS:GO

This test is done using the workshop map called CS:GO Benchmark. You can find more information at this link. https://www.gamingpcbuilder.com/how-to-install-csgo-fps-benchmark-map/  I test at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. All auto settings are turned off and detail is set to their highest settings. shadow quality high, model texture detail high, shader detail very high, AA set to 16x, uber shaders enabled

Mafia 2 Definitive Edition

This uses the built-in benchmark to test High and Medium detail presets at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions

Watch Dogs: Legion

Built-in benchmark testing at ultra and high details. Tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. I also do RTX and DLSS testing on Nvidia cards at 4K using the Ultra detail settings as a base as well.

Borderlands 3

Built-in benchmark testing with the ultra detail setting and medium detail setting, done at full screen with default settings at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k on DX11

Metro Exodus

Using built-in benchmark, testing at ultra and normal details at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. I also do RTX and DLSS testing at 4K with the ultra-detail base settings for Nvidia cards as well.

World War Z Aftermath

The built-in benchmark in DX11 testing both the Ultra detail and Medium detail levels at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions

The Division 2

Built-in benchmark at Ultra detail with V-Sync turned off at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k resolutions.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Built-in benchmark using the Battle Benchmark setting. Tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k at both high and ultra detail settings

Far Cry 6

Built-in benchmark tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k with the Ultra and Medium detail settings

Ghost Recon Breakpoint

Built-in benchmark tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k with the Ultra and Medium detail settings

Boundary Benchmark

Testing different DLSS detail levels on cards that support it. All testing is done at 4k with RTX on

Bright Memory Infinite RTX Benchmark

Benchmark all of the different RTX detail levels. Resolution at 4k and DLSS on balanced for each test

Passmark Performance Test 10.2

Test using the GPU Compute Score inside of Passmark’s Performance Test 10.2

Blender

Using the new Blender Benchmark with the Quick Benchmark setting set to use the GPU, not the CPU. Nvidia cards are tested twice, once with CUDA and the other with Optix, and AMD cards are run on OpenGL. The result is in total seconds the test took, lower is better. The 2.93.1 build is used and I run all six tests, BMW27, Koro, Classroom, Pavillon, Fishy cat (my favorite), and Victor

OctaneBench 2020.1

OctaneBench is designed to test rendering in OctaneRender. RTX and non-RTX are both run. This is a CUDA-only test so only Nvidia cards are tested

Power Testing

I run three power tests. Two I use a Kill-A-Watt hooked up in line with the power cord for the test rig. Two tests are done, one using the AIDA64 Stress Test and the second using the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark on the second test. I also use GPUz to document the GPU only reading off the card itself for wattage when doing the Time Spy test. The Time Spy test uses only the second test here because the 3rd test is the combined test that loads the CPU as well.

Noise Testing

Our Noise testing is done using a decibel meter 18 inches away from the video card on the bottom/fan side of the card. We test at 50% and 100% fan speeds as well as a third test while under load using AIDA64's stress test. This is done using a Protmex PT02 Sound Meter that is rated IEC651 type 2 and ANSI S1.4 type 2. Tests are done set weighted to A and set to a slow response using the max function and tested a second time with C weighting as well.  The ambient noise level in the testing area is 33.3 decibels using A weight and 50.0 using C weight.

 Temperature Testing

Using AIDA64, the GPU stress test is run for 30 minutes or until the result has leveled off. The test is run twice, once with the stock fan profile and a second time with 100% fan speed. During this, I also document the 100% fan speed RPM and document the delta between the fan profile and 100% fan speed as well.

 

 


Synthetic Benchmarks

As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. For this time around with the 7900 XTX being the first of AMD's newest cards I don’t have any matching GPUs to compare against so my focus is going to be its performance compared to the RTX 4080 which is the closest competitor.

The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. AMD has always done better on these Fire Strike benchmarks compared to any of the Nvidia RTX cards and this is no different, in fact, the 7900 XTX is up at the top running not far behind the big dog RTX 4090, especially in the Fire Strike performance test. On these older DX11 tests the 7900 XTX is well ahead of the RTX 4080.

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The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark and I have also included the latest DX12 test, Speed Way. Time Spy has two detail settings, the standard test, and the extreme test. In the standard Time Spy test the 7900 XTX comes in just over the overclocked RTX 4080 and on the more demanding extreme test it is again ahead of both the stock and overclocked RTX 4080s by a few points. The new Speed Way test on the other hand shows a different picture with the 7900 XTX running down below the 3090 Ti and 1500 points below either of the RTX 4080s. This test includes ray tracing which gives us a little glimpse at ray tracing performance as well.

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I also tested using the Unigine-based Superposition benchmark and I tested at 1080p with the extreme detail setting as well as the 4K optimized setting. In the extreme detail setting the 7900 XTX came in just a hair above both RTX 4080 again in this benchmark.

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Because I don’t have a full ray tracing section I did also test using the 3DMark Port Royal test which takes a look at ray tracing performance. AMD has made huge improvements here with the new 2nd gen ray tracing cores. The 7900 XTX came out in front of the 3090 Ti here but is still a little behind the 4080 on this test. These results are very similar to the Speed Way test which also includes Ray Tracing and is a good look at performance in the future as tech like ray tracing is included more across the board.

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VR Benchmarks

As for Virtual Reality, I love it but it is more demanding than traditional gaming. This is partially because of the resolutions needed to render for two eyes and because they render more than what is immediately visible. But also because of post effects to get the proper “fisheye” effect for it to look proper in your eyes with the HMD. You also have to have much higher expectations for frame rates in VR, skipping frames or lower FPS can cause motion sickness in VR. Because of that, I ran a few tests.

My first test was again in Superposition. This time I tested the VR Future test using the Oculus resolution. Here the 7900 XTX, like the RTX 4090, maxed out the test with its 10000 score. This most importantly puts it ahead of both of the RTX 4080s.

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My second round of VR testing was in VRMark which has three tests that are similar to the VR tests in Superposition. I only focused on just the most demanding test called Blue Room which is looking more at future VR performance. The 7900 XTX just barely edged out in front of the RTX 4080’s once again here but the gap between it and the 4090 is huge here.

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In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 10 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 54 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the 7900 XTX do? Well much like with the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 the 7900 XTX completely dominates all of the tests at 1080p and 1440p with both with every result running at over 120 FPS and most significantly higher than that. It's only at 4k that we can see any differences. The 7900 XTX had 9 of the 4k results at over 120 FPS and 7 at over 60 FPS which means everything was still smooth but a majority of the results can be played on a high refresh rate 4K display. For comparison with the 4080 Founders Edition came in at 8 and 8 meaning the 7900 XTX improved performance enough to take one result up over 120 FPS that the 4080 didn’t do.

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Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. Everything is sorted by 4K as that is the only important result, at 1080p and 1440p we see significant performance drops from being CPU limited at these performance levels. There were a few interesting results at the lower resolutions like in World War Z which had a huge drop in performance at 1080p and 1440p compared to anything else at the top of the charts. I don’t know if there is a driver issue potentially causing that. Overall though the 7900 XTX is consistently ahead of both RTX 4080’s with it being ahead in 13 out of 16 results.

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Compute Benchmarks

Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases people who game also do work on the side. So it is also important to check out the compute performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. My first test was a simple GPU Compute benchmark using Passmark’s Performance Test 10 and the 7900 XTX didn’t keep up with the RTX 4080 here but did outperform the RTX 3090 Ti which was a compute monster itself.

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Blender is always my favorite compute benchmark because the open-source 3D rendering software is very popular and it isn’t a synthetic benchmark. With the latest version of Blender, they redid the benchmark so we now have a new test that runs three different renderings and gives each a score. I have all three stacked together so we can see the overall performance. The 7900 XTX struggled here a lot more than I expected given the performance we have seen so far. The 7900 XTX came in just below the RTX 3070 and slightly ahead of the RTX 3060 Ti.

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Cooling Noise and Power

For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage. For this, I use our Kill-A-Watt hooked up to the test bench to record the total wattage of the system. I ran two tests with the first using 3DMark Time Spy to put the system under a load similar to normal in game performance. Here our test system with the 7900 XTX pulled 584 watts total which put it 30 watts over the same system with the RTX 4080 and well below the 3080 Ti, 3090 Ti, and 4090 which top the chart. I also ran AIDA64’s stress test on the 7900 XTX to load up only the GPU and using the Kill-A-Watt the test bench with the 7900 XTX and the system pulled a total of 450 watts which was lower than the overclocked XFX 6800 XT but still over 50 watts more than the overclocked 4080.

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While the overall system numbers are nice, with the addition of a PCat into our testing hardware I have finally been able to look at the total power draw of just the GPU by monitoring the power over the PCIe slot and the power cables. For this test I have also expanded the number of tests I run by testing power usage in two games (Fay Cry 6 and Watch Dog Legion both at 4k and ultra detail) testing with Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme, AIDA64’s GPU workload, and Blender 3.4. I take those numbers and average them out for our average number and also look at the max wattage which is with just one exception always the Time Spy Extreme result. This gives us a much better look at the power usage across multiple situations and also the max power draw. The 7900 XTX pulled 425 watts at peak and averaged 399 watts which was a lot closer to the 4090 that I would have expected and 100 watts over the 4080 on the average result.

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My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. The 7900 XTX reference design did well here, especially for having three fans reading 39.1 decibels on the 50% fan speed test, and was also down at the bottom of the chart at 100% fan speed at 56.4 decibels. The fan RPM chart does show us a little why that is though with the fans running just at 2874 RPM at 100% fan speed. I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Here the 7900 XTX was higher up in the chart with its 41.4 decibel result which was a little higher than the 4090 FE did in the same test.

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To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up. Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the 7900 XTX peaked at 65c which put it in the lower half of our charts, and given the higher noise results under load in my noise testing, this also tells us that AMD was a little more aggressive with their stock fan profile. Then with the fans cranked up, the 7900 XT was running at 57c which is even higher up in our charts, having the lower fan RPM is a limitation here. Overall neither were bad results, especially for a normal sized card against mostly giant cards. The 8c delta between the two results does tell us that at the limited fan speeds the cooler doesn’t have too much more headroom left in it so if you are looking to overclock some of the larger aftermarket cards would be the better option. I should also point out that I did also keep an eye on the GPU hotspot temps when doing these tests as well and both the stock fan profile and 100% fan speed tests had the hotspot at a steamy 109c.

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While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. The 7900 XTX on the fan side has its hottest spot up on the top where the air is being pushed which isn’t a surprise a tall. There is some extra heat down below the card as well but not as bad as on the top. Through the fans, things are running cooler but overall not bad at all. From the top-down view we get a better look at where the heat is and the hottest areas are along the PCB which isn’t a surprise, the heatsink itself even with all of the warmed air coming out this direction is a little cooler, especially towards the ends of the card. The power connection area is also especially cool with that insulated section keeping it away from the heatsink. Then on the back, we can see the metal backplate is transferring the heat out. The middle section near the back of the GPU is the warmest but overall the temperature difference across the back is minimal.

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Overall and Final Verdict

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX launch is an exciting one, not just because of the pricing that AMD announced the card with. But also because with the new RDNA 3 architecture we see big improvements in ray tracing performance, the inclusion of AI processing cores, two AV1 encoders, and DisplayPort 2.1 support. The result of all of that is impressive performance when it comes to raster performance, the 7900 XTX even at its stock speeds was consistently faster than the RTX 4080 in game. It does fall behind in tests that include ray tracing even with the performance improvements there and while FidelityFX Super Resolution is great Nvidia does have some significant advantages there on their 4000 series cards with DLSS 3 having frame generation, I can’t wait for AMD to bring that to FidelityFX as well. The 7900 XTX also struggled in our Blender benchmark but it didn’t do too badly in the other compute test.

AMD's triple fan reference card design impressed me. I missed out on seeing their design of the 6000 series cards and as someone who is a big fan of the Founders Edition designs due to their higher quality and less “gammery” designs, AMD hit the nail on the head perfectly with their design of the 7900 XTX which looks amazing in its blacked-out styling and has impressive build quality. Not only that but I feel like they kept people in mind by not just going with a huge cooler design, while this isn’t small it is far from the size of a 4080 or 4090 Founders Edition or any of the aftermarket cards out. They did the same by sticking with the PCIe power connections, not moving to the new 12VHPWR cable. I do like the more compact plug, but with some people having issues with them melting it is nice to not have to have that concern in the back of your head.

AMD's cooler design ran surprisingly quiet in our noise tests, especially for a three-fan design. They managed this by having lower than average max fan speeds. Of course when it came to thermals the smaller size of the cooler and the limited fan speeds did put the card higher up in the charts, but still not terrible for cooling performance. The 109c GPU hotspot results on the other hand were higher than I would want to see. Beyond that in our power testing, the 7900 XTX averaged 100 watts higher than the RTX 4080 showing that AMD did have to crank things up to edge out the 4080 in performance, putting its power usage up close to the RTX 4090 FE.

Of course, it all comes down to pricing which is exactly what people have been saying about Nvidia's RTX 4080 and AMD came out swinging here with the 7900 XTX prices starting at $999 which is $200 less than where the RTX 4080 starts. It isn’t at all what I would consider to be cheap, but when compared to its direct competition it is priced right. You give up some ray tracing performance and DLSS 3 and save $200 and also get a more compact card and sidestep the 12VHPWR issues altogether. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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