AMD Casts Shade on its RX 7000-Series Value Proposition

AMD Radeon RX 7000 and RX 6000
(Image credit: AMD)

AMD has published a blog post that informs readers that there has “never been a better time to upgrade with Radeon graphics.” A slight issue with the post is that it shows the new RX 7000-series, based on the RDNA 3 architecture, offers a clearly inferior value proposition to the existing RX 6000-series. AMD’s charts show that from all its currently marketed GPUs, the newsome twosome offer the worst FPS per $USD figures of all.

(Image credit: AMD)

Another chart from AMD’s new blog post, suggests there is a valid place for the RX 7000 flagships in 4K gaming. The simple charts show that the new cards can offer frame rates of up to 180 fps (RX 7900 XT) or 220fps (RX 7900 XTX) in popular 4K gmes. However, there aren’t many high performance 4K monitors with refresh rates beyond 144Hz at the time of writing, limiting the appeal of spending more than the $579 MSRP for the RX 6800 XT, with an average 4K gaming frame rate of 148fps, according to AMD’s data.

AMD’s chosen selection of games for these summary charts included Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, The Callisto Protocol, Grand Theft Auto V, Apex Legends, Valorant, and Overwatch 2 — not the most demanding selection of titles, but most of these games are widely popular and some are competitive / eSports titles that benefit from very fast frame rates. We suggest you check out our review of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX  and XT for more extensive testing and a wider selection of games titles.

Tom’s Hardware regulars will probably be aware we regularly update our GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2023 with performance charts and comparisons across a multitude of games and common monitor resolutions. While you are comparing, it is also worth a look at our always up to date Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2023 feature.

In addition to the bigging-up of the value proposition of the existing Radeon lineup, AMD took this opportunity to highlight that its drivers are better than ever and stuffed with new features. Some particularly interesting claims were that drivers are tested across 6,000 unique systems configurations for performance and stability, and that over the last year some of its RX 6000 graphics cards have seen DX11 performance gains of up to 30% thanks to continuous driver tuning. (That's only in select situations, naturally.)

Are Mainstream and Budget RX 7000-Series Graphics Cards a Long Way Off?

AMD’s Tweet and blog post show off a hybrid lineup of Radeon RX 7000- and RX 6000 -series cards, presented as if they are a fixed range for 2023. In some ways this image of the Radeon landscape for 2023 implies that there is no urgent need for highly anticipated cards such as an RX 7800, RX 7700, or RX 7600 — with or without XTX/XT suffixes. It also raises the question of whether it may be a long wait for more RDNA 3 architecture graphics cards for desktop PCs. 

AND Radeon RX 7000 and RX 6000

(Image credit: AMD)

There have been only a few leaks regarding mainstream RX 7000-series graphics cards, but we really hope they materialize by summer at the latest, perhaps during Computex 2023. A more cynical view of things would be that AMD is trying to clear out inventory of the existing 6000-series parts in advance of launching midrange and budget 7000-series replacements.

Cynical or not, let's hope that's the case, as we could really use some better graphics card values in 2023. Our own rankings confirm the value proposition of AMD's previous generation RDNA 2 cards, as well as the poor value of the latest generation GPUs. And as bad as things might look for the RX 7000-series, Nvidia's RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace cards are equally overpriced. New midrange and budget offerings that actually meet those criteria — $250–$400 for midrange and less than $200 for budget — would be a welcome respite from increasing costs.

Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

  • TechieTwo
    Why would a company sell less expensive products when they can sell as many top of the line products as they can deliver? Nvidia, Intel, DRAM makers, etc. all do this. Once the demand drops for the top tier products then the lower priced models appear. This is Biz 101.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    TechieTwo said:
    Once the demand drops...
    This is why they make other GPUs besides the fastest possible option. And in fact, there are plenty of indications that demand for $1,000+ cards (especially from AMD) isn't really all that strong. 7900 XT is already below MSRP at Newegg, only the 7900 XTX is out of stock / overpriced. Same applies to Nvidia. RTX 4090 is out of stock / overpriced, likely due to professionals more than gamers, while the 4080 and 4070 Ti are generally available at close to MSRP.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    It looks like AMD wants to imply they have a full product stack, but these slides just demonstrate that they are either completely unwilling or unable to finish launching Navi 3.
    Reply
  • daworstplaya
    Keep voting with your wallet folks, they'll be forced to drop prices for the overprice mid and upper-mid tier GPUs.
    Reply
  • DavidLejdar
    I can't complain about the RX 6700 XT OC I have here, but the listed "average" for 1440p is somewhat misleading for a number of games when not using upscaling and when having graphics at max. I.e. in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, with raytracing at high and graphics at max, I get around 50 FPS - which is fine enough to play the game with, which arguably is a top-range example, but hardly anywhere near what the listed "average" would suggest.

    Of course, it isn't just AMD who are presenting stuff like that. E.g. for the PS5, one has to go into the fine-print to find out that only a handful of games support native 4K (and then only at 60 FPS, unlike the stated output of up to 120 FPS), while many other games get upscaled from 1080p. And one can of course argue that even upscaled FPS still count as FPS.

    But in this particular case, if AMD would not try to sell me (upscaled) 220 FPS in 4K for a 2D chessboard, but would instead show if e.g. RX 7900 XTX (with optimized driver) can run e.g. Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition at max with i.e. 80 FPS in 4K, then that would rather speak to me. Which isn't to say that I would not care about independent reviews anymore. But as far I am concerned, I rather play a graphically nice game at 80 FPS than a graphically somewhat simple game at 220 FPS, where the 4K resolution is additionally a bit of a moot point.
    Reply
  • MooseMuffin
    Its a bad marketing slide, but the value getting worse as you move up the lineup has generally been the case right? Decent price/performance in the low/midrange, and then a premium to get the fastest products.

    As for them presenting a 2023 lineup that includes all the 6000 series cards still, that's interesting in what it says about their plans for the rest of the 7000 lineup, but also what they expect from nvidia. Seems like they don't expect the price/performance landscape to change soon.
    Reply
  • artk2219
    MooseMuffin said:
    Its a bad marketing slide, but the value getting worse as you move up the lineup has generally been the case right? Decent price/performance in the low/midrange, and then a premium to get the fastest products.

    As for them presenting a 2023 lineup that includes all the 6000 series cards still, that's interesting in what it says about their plans for the rest of the 7000 lineup, but also what they expect from nvidia. Seems like they don't expect the price/performance landscape to change soon.

    They both have a TON of unsold previous gen stuff, so they're definitely not looking to roll out new hardware if they have stock that would work just fine for now, and they can slow roll setting up a new production line. I can't say its awesome from the consumer side, but from the business side, yeah it makes sense to clear inventory and actually get decent production rates up on the newer replacements. Also, can we really say that the previous gen stuff has all of a sudden become worthless? Its not like an RX 6600 or 6700XT immediately became a bad card when the RX 7000 series was released. Heck if you get down to it an RX 580 8gb is still a better deal than anything else in its $150 bracket, and that cards 7 years old. It out paces the GTX 1050(ti), 1630, 1650, Arc A380, and RX 6400 or 6500XT handily while also having more memory. Polaris was a good move, honestly maybe too good of one. It also shows the stagnation at that sub 200 price point.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    This is why they make other GPUs besides the fastest possible option. And in fact, there are plenty of indications that demand for $1,000+ cards (especially from AMD) isn't really all that strong. 7900 XT is already below MSRP at Newegg, only the 7900 XTX is out of stock / overpriced. Same applies to Nvidia. RTX 4090 is out of stock / overpriced, likely due to professionals more than gamers, while the 4080 and 4070 Ti are generally available at close to MSRP.
    You bring up a good point. The same is happening with cars. New cars today are way overpriced and the car dealers are just piling on. Most dealers in my area are adding at minimum $2,500 to the price. I'm in the market for a new car and when I mention the piling on of the dealer add-ons, they say they can't change that. So I leave.

    The same is happening in the GPU and PC market. Prices for GPU's are climbing higher with people struggling with inflation and job cuts. This is not a time to do that. I have the money but refuse to pay inflated prices for the 7900 XTX or 4090.

    Like I tell the car dealers, i'll wait for prices to come down.
    Reply
  • aalkjsdflkj
    I really hope the wait isn't much longer for for the 7800 and below cards. I'm still using my old 1070 on an UWQHD monitor which restricts me to either older games or low settings plus FSR. I planned on buying either a 3070 or 6700 / 6700XT two years ago when prices and availability went nuts. Now at least the 6700-series is available and reasonably priced, but I'd rather not buy a 2-year old card. My guess is that when Starfield comes out I'll finally get whatever I can so I can play it on release.

    Please, AMD, give us some idea of when the cards below the 7900-series are coming!
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    TechieTwo said:
    Why would a company sell less expensive products when they can sell as many top of the line products as they can deliver?
    There is a bunch of RX7900XT models available from Newegg at or near MSRP, not exactly a sign of stellar sales. While XTX models are out of stock almost everywhere, we have no idea how many of those have actually shipped. We do know that AMD lost 4% dGPU market share to Intel who is currently a tiny dGPU player. We also know that dGPU sales are at a 20 years low. Seems like whatever 7900XXX AMD is shipping may not amount to much.
    Reply