AMD carved the Radeon RX 7900 XT in this review from the “Navi 31” GPU, by enabling 84 out of 96 RDNA3 compute units physically present on the silicon, and 5 out of 6 MCDs. This results in hardware specs of 5,376 (out of 6,144) stream processors, 336 (out of 384) TMUs, the chip’s full 192 ROP count, and a 320-bit GDDR6 memory interface, which runs 20 GB of 20 Gbps memory, resulting in an impressive 800 GB/s memory bandwidth.

The RDNA3 graphics architecture introduced dual issue-rate compute units, with a high degree of optimization in the way idle SIMD resources are utilized, support for newer math formats, and a new AI accelerator that retasks the SIMD resources for matrix math functions. Together, these optimizations produce a 17% IPC uplift over the RDNA2 CU. There are 96 CUs on the silicon, which work out to 6,144 stream processors. The architecture also sees an increase in engine clocks, and a decoupling of the shader clock speeds to those of the GPU’s Front End, which operates at a 10-15% higher frequency. The most striking aspect of the RDNA3 architecture is that the typical board power of these GPUs is well contained, with the RX 7900 XTX rated at just 350 W, and the RX 7900 XT at 315 W—both of which can be fed by just two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and cooled by solutions much smaller than those found on the competing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 “Ada.”

AMD is transferring the costs saved with its chiplet architecture over to customers, by aggressively pricing the Radeon RX 7900 XT at $900. Its bigger sibling, the RX 7900 XTX, goes for just $1,000. Compared to these, the NVIDIA offerings are quite expensive, with the RTX 4080 priced at $1,200 and the flagship RTX 4090 at $1,600. What’s more, the RX 7900 XT has a typical power of just 315 W, and makes do with two conventional 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and the reference board design by AMD is as compact as the RTX 3080 Founders Edition, making it friendly with even some SFF cases. In this review, we compare the RX 7900 XT with its segment rivals, as well as a small but growing selection of graphics cards, on our swanky new 13900K-based VGA test-bench.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT debut AMD’s 3rd generation RDNA graphics architecture, termed RDNA3. With it, AMD plans to repeat the generational 50% performance/Watt gain it achieved with RDNA2, which sprung it back to the high-end graphics segment after a long gap. AMD claims it succeeded in this endeavor, with a 54% generational performance/Watt gain. At the heart of this effort is the switch to the new TSMC 5 nm EUV foundry node. AMD figured out early on that it cannot build large monolithic GPUs on 5 nm without thinning its margins in the fight against NVIDIA, and set out to innovate the Chiplet architecture for the GPU. Under this, specific parts of the GPU that actually benefit from a switch to a newer foundry node, such as the Shader Engines, would be built on a centralized 5 nm die called the Graphics Compute Die (GCD), while those components that can make do with a less advanced node, namely the memory controllers and L3 cache, would be spun off to chiplets called Memory Cache Dies (MCDs), built on 6 nm.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT follows the same design theme as the XTX, it looks fantastic, but is just a little bit smaller. AMD has refined their design approach even further, the card is dominated by black in various shades of gray. On the metal backplate you get some red highlights, and three fins on the side have been painted red to represent the third generation of the RDNA architecture.

With those performance characteristics, RX 7900 XT is an excellent choice for gaming at 4K, with maximum details. You can max out everything and you’ll still run at over 60 FPS in nearly all titles. As mentioned before, the card is especially strong at 1440p, definitely an outstanding option if you want to drive a high-refresh-rate monitor. Things are different when you enable ray tracing though, here the RX 7900 XT is considerably weaker than what NVIDIA offers. On average (new chart in the RT section), the RTX 3090 Ti is 16% faster, and the RTX 4080, which has new architectural RT improvements is even 36% faster. I think everyone agrees that ray tracing is the future, and just disagrees on how quickly that future is happening. If you’re part in the “I want this now” camp, then you should probably consider the RTX 4080, or RTX 4090. On the other hand, if you feel like ray tracing is just minor additional eye candy, that comes with a huge performance hit, then you can happily grab the RX 7900 XT.

While NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are huge cards that will not fit all cases, the AMD reference cards that we’re reviewing today are relatively compact. While they are not “small” by any standard, they roughly match the size of the previous generation boards, so you can easily upgrade just the graphics card. Power requirements are very similar, too, and there’s no 16-pin power connector, so your existing PSU will be fine for upgrading from a 6800/6900-Series to a 7900 XT/XTX. A smaller cooler does mean that keeping things cool isn’t as easy.

Temperatures are actually super low on the RX 7900 XT, just 58°C, which is among the lowest I’ve seen in a long time. The Hot Spot temperature reaches 74°C under full load, which is also comfortably low, especially when considering that AMD confirms that “up to 110°C” is “within specification.” While such low temperatures are certainly nice, they come at the cost of increased noise levels. With 37 dBA, the RX 7900 XTX is not “loud,” but it’s definitely not “quiet.” NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 Founders Edition is considerably quieter than that, and custom designs are nearly inaudible. I’ll be testing a bunch of RX 7900 XT custom designs soon, hopefully these will offer a better balance between noise levels and temperature. As expected from all modern graphics cards, both the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT come with the idle-fan-stop capability that shuts off the fans when not gaming.

Power efficiency of the new Radeons is fantastic, clearly much better than the previous generation of RDNA2 and NVIDIA Ampere cards. NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 40 cards are a bit better still, by 18% (RTX 4090) and 24% (RTX 4080). Even the RX 7900 XTX is 7% more efficient. It seems that for the XT AMD forgot to lower the operating voltage, which should be possible because it runs lower clocks. During gaming the RX 7900 XT uses around 320 W of power, sitting right at its power limit.

While the choice for dual 8-pin makes a lot of sense, it slightly limits the card in what it can do in terms of power. I also noticed that as the card heats up, the frequencies will drop by a lot. In our thermal load test, the card starts out running at 2666 MHz, and stays in that state for around 20 seconds, good to get a boost on short running benchmarks, but then clocks go down to 2505 MHz and stay there until the card cools down again at the end of your gaming session. This 6% drop is clearly significant and costs AMD against NVIDIA’s cards, which don’t drop nearly as much.