Release Date and Pricing
AMD has started rolling out its new series of graphics cards, with the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT coming out first. Both were announced on November 3 and will be launched on December 13 this year. The 7900 XTX will cost 1000$, making it a much cheaper flagship than the NVIDIA offering. If you’re in the market for a new GPU, read on to find out if the 7900 XTX could be the ideal buy for you this Christmas.
Specifications
The 7900 XTX is built on the RDNA 3 architecture with a process size of 5nm. Compared to AMD’s last generation, the number of transistors has more than doubled, reaching 58 billion.
When it comes to clock speeds, the base clock will run at 1900 MHz up to 2505 MHz when boosted. The shader and game clocks will run at 2300 MHz. It will have 24 GB of GDDR6 with a 384-bit memory bus and a bandwidth of 960 GB/s.
As far as power draw goes, many people feared that AMD’s new lineup would be just as power-hungry as the NVIDIA 4090, which needs 450 W, meaning you should probably run at least an 850 W PSU. Instead, they’ve achieved a TDP of 355 W, which will generally require a 750 W PSU.
For people who prefer multi-monitor setups, the 7900 XTX has one HDMI 2.1 a, two DisplayPort 2.1 connectors, and a USB Type-C. Switching to DisplayPort 2.1 is a massive bonus for people running 4K or even 8K monitors with high refresh rates, offering up to 165Hz@8K and 480Hz@4K. So if you’re the type of gamer that cares more about refresh rates rather than performance, the 7900 XTX could be the GPU for you.
Performance
Since the 7900 XTX is still not released, we only have AMD’s benchmarks to go on. As per usual, you should wait for 3rd party benchmarks before deciding to make a purchase. When directly compared to NVIDIA’s flagship, the 4090, the 7900 XTX will be about 10% to 15% slower, which given the price difference of 600$, is not bad at all.
If you own a 6950 XT, you will be happy to learn that the 7900 XTX boasts a performance increase of around 70%, making it an exciting buy if you’re itching for an upgrade.
Even though AMD has bragged about its Ray Tracing performance, they still have an uphill battle compared to NVIDIA. While it is mostly on par with the 3090 Ti, the 4090 blows it out of the water with more than double the RT performance.
Another important question will be how the 7900 XTX will stack up against the 4080 since the price difference between the two is only 200$. But only time will tell as we get more benchmarks available to us.
