Looking for the latest on AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards? we’ve got the latest rumors and more from what you can expect from Team Red.
Despite Nvidia and Intel dominating the talk of graphics cards this year, here comes AMD bursting through the doors to reveal the latest RDNA 3 GPUs from their Radeon division.
The next iterations of their GPUs bring the RDNA 3 architecture, something that has been hotly anticipated by enthusiasts. The company has confirmed that they will not be using the 12VHPWR connector which has infamously caused some graphics cards to melt.
AMD RDNA 3 release date: RX 7900 XT & XTX
AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs – the two announced so far – will be launching on December 13th. The rumors all pointed to the top end GPUs being revealed, which came to fruition.
Both GPUs, the 7900 XT and XTX, will release on the same day along with their partner versions as well.
The announcement comes from Scott Herkelman, SVP & GM for AMD’s Radeon team over Twitter. AMD has remained incredibly quiet about their upcoming graphics cards, only teasing small tidbits over the last year or so about what they plan to bring.
However, as with any upcoming component for a PC, there are leaks just about everywhere. RDNA 3 is no different.
We’re suspecting that the lower tier cards in the RDNA 3 lineup will release some time in 2023, to compete with Nvidia’s upcoming 4070 and below.
AMD Radeon 7000 price
It seems AMD has looked at where Nvidia is going with its prices and seems determined to wrest control from the Green Team’s hands. The first step in this will be pricing both the 7900 XT and 7900 XTX far below the recently revealed RTX 4090.
The two cards will cost $899 and $999 respectively, against Nvidia’s $1500 minimum for the RTX 4090, of which, estimates put these two AMD cards at arm’s reach in terms of gaming performance.
As with any GPU in 2022, putting a pin on what the price will be is a tough situation. With cryptocurrency effectively tumbling, and certain lines of it abandoned mining via graphics cards, both AMD and Nvidia face a tough few months ahead.
A flood of second-hand or unsold GPUs is now entering the second-hand market. While Nvidia might potentially launch new lines of their 30-series cards to go alongside the slim launch lineup of the 40-series, we’re currently unsure if AMD will follow suit.
Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT specs and performance
AMD aren’t attempting to pull any punches here, but the presentation did not give any hints towards real world performance metrics. While we did get our specs, we only got vague multipliers and graphs. We’ll have to wait for the cards to begin dropping before we can attempt to make any good judgements on their performance.
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As for specs, here’s what you can expect this December:
| Spec | 7900 XT | 7900 XTX |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $899 USD | $999 USD |
| Fabrication Process | 5 nm | 5 nm |
| Stream Processors | 10752 | 12288 |
| Ray Tracing Cores | 84 | 96 |
| Compute Units | 84 | 96 |
| Base Clock | 1500 MHz | 1900 |
| Game Clock | 2000 MHz | 2300 |
| Boost Clock | 2400 MHz | 2500 |
| Memory Clock | 2500 MHz | 2500 |
| Effective Memory Clock | 20000 Mbps | 20000 |
| Memory Size | 20480 MB GDDR6 | 24576 MB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus Width | 320-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 800GB/s | 960GB/s |
| Release Date | December 13th, 2022 | December 13th, 2022 |
Outside of this, the specs do look like an impressive jump up, especially in terms of output. While we’re fully expecting these cards to do well with 4K gaming (with no ray tracing), the fact is that AMD are one step ahead of Nvidia.
DisplayPort 1.4 has been around for some time now. It’s still the default on a lot of PC motherboards, as well as providing that extra edge over HDMI. Things like high refresh rates and the like have been around for much longer than HDMI’s. However, Nvidia opted to remain on 1.4, while DisplayPort 2.1 will be coming to the RDNA 3 GPUs.
This should allow much higher refresh rates to be achievable at higher resolutions than before, without limiting the user due to a specific port.
AMD RDNA 3 and Radeon 7000 for creatives
What will be interesting to find out is how the AMD cards fare when it comes to creative tasks. Radeon’s support on video editors is often brute force, instead of being embraced like the CUDA cores on an Nvidia card. Meanwhile, other programs like Blender and 3D modelling, don’t perform as well due to the lack of support by developers expecting Nvidia cards.
It’s interesting to note that these are classed as ‘gaming’ cards, and not for anything else. While they’ll certainly be helpful in certain functions, it seems AMD aren’t ready to merge their professional Radeon brand with the gaming centric RX cards.
AV1 support is coming
What is coming is AV1, the new codec that should help streamers on Twitch and YouTube. With all three brand of cards now offering it, it will surely start to be embraced by the creatives that need it.
AV1 allows for a higher quality video to be processed and sent online, using much less data than before. Nvidia promoted it heavily, while Intel made it a core feature on their first line of low-cost cards. Now, AMD is including it.
What is AMD RDNA?
RDNA, or Radeon DNA, is AMD’s current architecture for running its graphics. Introduced with the RX5000 series, it was eventually succeeded by RDNA 2, which currently powers the Xbox Series X and S, PS5, and Steam Deck. It’s also found in AMD’s current lineup of GPUs.
RDNA 3, however, aims to bring 50% better performance than its predecessor. This performance gain will be achieved through AMD’s use of the 5nm process. By shrinking down the various parts on the GPU’s innards to 5nm from 7nm, they can fit a lot more onto the die, producing a better-performing card.
Nvidia’s 40-series is also based on the 5nm process, by the same fabricating facility, TSMC.
Now in its third generation, RDNA 3 graphics cards are reported to use PCIe 5.0 and DisplayPort 2.0. The utilization of DisplayPort 1.4a is one of our biggest criticisms of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 graphics cards, which are limited by the port’s display certifications. This may be an ace up AMD’s sleeve.