AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
The little brother that misses out on all the attention. $1,619 | www.amd.com
The Radeon RX 7900 XT is the more affordable of the two RDNA 3 cards. It’s based on a trimmed down variant of the Navi 31 GPU. It’s priced at $1,619, which – relatively – isn’t too bad.
The RX 7900 XT has 84 out of the maximum possible 96 GCD compute units enabled plus five out of six MCDs. This gives it 5,376 shader processors, 84 Ray Accelerators and 168 AI processors. There’s 20GB of 20Gbps GDDR6 memory over a 320-bit interface, which delivers 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
After testing several of Nvidia’s gargantuan RTX 4090 and 4080 models, the 7900 XT seems small in comparison! It’s still a 2.x slot card – effectively a triple slot, but it’s the height that gives it its smaller appearance. It’s almost small form factor friendly. Almost. We think it looks great, with a mostly black finish with some splashes of Radeon red. There are three red coloured fins on the side to denote the third RDNA generation.
The cooler is a very efficient and compact vapour chamber design. The memory and VRM are cooled by a separate metal assembly with plenty of cooling pads for the memory and VRM circuitry. A full cover backplate protects the rear of the card. Overall the cooler and card are very well built. The idea that reference cards are the generic ones in a given family doesn’t really apply anymore.
The cooler performs well. We saw a peak temperature of just 60 degrees which is outstanding given the card lacks the sheer surface area of the bigger coolers. It becomes audible under load, sure, but these cards are so much better than the leaf blower cards of old.
The PCB is quite large, extending the length of the card. The GPU is powered by a 14+3 phase VRM with 70a stages. With a 315W TDP, the 7900 XT doesn’t require more than dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors. They can provide 300W, while the card can pull another 75W from the slot. The card comes with dual DP 2.1, HDMI 2.1 and USB-C outputs.
How does it perform? Generally, very well, and a big step up over the previous generation offerings. Though both RX 7900’s can’t match the RTX 4080 in ray tracing, they do well in traditional rendering, sometimes beating the 4080, while matching Nvidia’s last gen at ray tracing at a lower cost and power budget. But performance and relative efficiency are not the XT’s problem. Its price positioning relative to the XTX is.
Ahh, price. How often do we talk about it? At $1,619, the card is only $170 cheaper than the XTX. That makes it tough to recommend because if you’re spending $1,600+ already, $200 extra isn’t a huge jump and the extra performance of the XTX is worth the money. But the real competition for the 7900 XT is going to be the upcoming RTX 4070 Ti. If AMD sees fit to drop the price of the XT, then its revised price and performance relative to the 4070 Ti will ultimately determine the 7900 XT’s true standing in the market.
The RX 7900 XT is a fast and efficient offering but the XTX is the smarter buy for just 10 percent more.
Chris Szewczyk
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★★★★☆
"How does it perform? Generally, very well, and a big step up over the previous generation offerings."