A huge upgrade in performance without a huge increase in power draw
Published: 3rd November 2022 | Source: AMD | Author: Mark Campbell
AMD has revealed its RDNA 3 graphics architecture, and it is impressive
AMD has officially revealed its Radeon RX 7000 series, promising breakthrough performance, solid pricing, and graphics cards that are neither too large for normal PC cases or too power hungry for all but the beefiest of power supplies. RDNA 3 is here, and it is impressive.
For $999, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a 355W graphics card that promises users a 50-70% performance increase over today's Radeon RX 6950 XT. This increase in performance comes without a huge increase in power draw, which is a massive win for power efficiency.
With RDNA 3, AMD is focusing on gamers and semi-professional users. With a new media engine, dual video encoders, and support for AV1 encode/decode support, AMD's RDNA 3 graphics cards are designed to excel in gaming workloads and in video editing workloads, which is great news for gamers and creators alike.
With 24GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD's RX 7900 XTX offers users a frame buffer that is 50% larger than the Radeon RX 6950 XT. With DisplayPort 2.1, this graphics card also supports 4K 480Hz screens, 8K 165Hz screens, and insane 1440p 900Hz screens.
With RDNA 3, AMD is offering gamers that Nvidia doesn't, though it is worth remembering that DipslayPort 2.1 monitors have not reached the market yet, but they will...
AMD's pricing for RDNA 3 is aggressive, because AMD's chiplet-based GPU design has likely significantly decreased the manufacturing costs of Radeon's latest flagship. Not only that, but this allows AMD to offer more VRAM than Nvidia's RTX 40 series at all current price points, with AMD's 24GB RX 7900 XTX being cheaper than Nvidia's RTX 4080 16GB.
AMD's RX 7900 XT offers users most of the features of AMD's XTX model, but with fewer CUs, lower clock speeds and a lower total board power. For $100 more, AMD's RX 7900 XTX offers more VRAM and more raw performance. TBH, these two GPUs should probably have a large price gap.
With 20GB of VRAM over a 320-bit memory bus, this graphics card will likely compete with Nvidia's RTX 4070. Nvidia's RTX 4070 will likely offer users 12GB of VRAM, giving AMD a huge advantage in terms of cost per GB.
With AMD keeping their power limits within reasonable levels with RDNA 3, AMD can offer their RDNA 3 graphics cards as an easy upgrade path for gamers. AMD's reference RDNA 3 RX 7900 XTX is 2.5 slots thick and 287mm long. This should fit into most modern PC cases with ease, which is great news for anyone who isn't planning to upgrade their entire systems.
With their Radeon RX 7900 XTX, AMD has showcased 50-70% performance increases across a variety of games, including both ray traced and non ray traced titles. With RDNA 3, ray tracing is no longer a sore spot for AMD, though a lack of comparison with Nvidia graphics cards suggests that AMD may be still behind within the world of ray tracing.
With RDNA 3, AMD has delivered a claimed 54% increase in performance per watt, which is great news for everyone who doesn't want their gaming system to be a space heater, or simply wants their power bills to remain low.
One of the ways that AMD has increased RDNA 3's performance while keeping power draw in check is by decoupling their GPU's front end and shader clocks. By doing this, AMD has claimed that their front end is now 15% faster and that their RDNA 3 architecture delivers 25% power savings.
AMD's front end appears to be an area what is often a limiting factor for Radeon's performance. By offering higher front end clock speeds, AMD can deliver higher levels of performance without also increasing shader clock speeds. Increasing shader clock speeds would increase AMD's power draw significantly, which is why clock decoupling can delivers for AMD a major performance increase without a huge power draw increase.
For overclockers, shader and front end overclocking should deliver interesting results, depending on whether your workloads are front-end or shader limited.
With RDNA 3, AMD are delivering compelling performance levels and aggressive prices. This generation, AMD wants to be seen as the value king, which is great news for PC gamers who do not want to spend over $1,000 on a new graphics card.
AMD's RDNA 3 RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT are launching on December 13th.
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